It’s no secret that when the time comes to evaluate your customer service, the finger pointing begins – and all fingers point suspiciously somewhere else. Let’s be courageous and look at the Top 10 reasons why customer service fails:
- You’re doing all the talking – my grandmother used to say: “we have two ears and one mouth for a reason. They are meant to be used proportionally.”
- You are not doing anything about it – you don’t follow through with the feedback you request.
- Your customer service reps don’t have the power to help – you are putting the most junior and least supported staff up front.
- You have no idea of the cost to you of losing customers – if you were paying attention, you would know that good service means you retain more customers. Acquiring new customers costs more.
- You see customer service as a cost, not a benefit – when you look at your department as overhead, you tend to under fund it and under staff it.
- You are not keeping your brand promises – it does you no good to spend millions in advertising when customers find you difficult to deal with. A good experience is one of the best investments in your brand.
- Your product needs help, start there – it is quite natural to think that your baby: your product or service is the best. Well, it may not be and that’s where you need to start helping customers, by providing a better one.
- You did not notice the problem, so you’re behind on fixing it – this is how crisis get started.
- You don’t have customer service – nobody is assigned to it, nobody owns it.
- You don’t listen to your customer service reps – they know what’s going on and they would tell you.
[reposted from FC Expert blogs]