What do these companies have in common, Southwest Airlines, Neiman
Marcus, Marriott, Disney and the car rental company? They are pioneers
in customer service. Each company has created a new way through his
commitment, dedication, and innovation, to become known as leaders in
providing excellent customer service. Customer service is more than a
few words of luxury with their mission statements. Customer service
really represents the essence of each of the companies existence.
These companies, along with hundreds more, have already done the
hard work that laid the foundations of work, setting examples, and the
layout of the trails for others to follow. Have demonstrated success in
serving the customer.
Why, then, not all companies follow this path to success?
Do not know the basic principles still these companies?
To borrow a concept from the Late Show with David Letterman, this
is a list of ten principles for all companies should implement to
achieve service excellence.
Issue 10: Focus – The customer must always be the number one focus
of any company. All decisions, services and products should be based on
meeting the needs and expectations.
Number 9: Take Action – The best laid plans never come to life
without action. If you talk the talk, walk the walk. When companies,
which boast of the importance of customer service, not delivering
exceptional service, customers and employees lose faith and confidence
in them.
Number 8: Creating Happy Workers – Your employees beliefs,
attitudes and behavior to determine the quality of service provided to
customers. The quality of customer service will never exceed the
quality of the people who provide it. Happy employees create happy
customers.
Number 7: Develop Employees – The three key words in employee
development are education, training, and training. Teach your employees
how to serve the customer, equip them to serve, and then give them the
opportunity to serve with excellence.
Number 6: Establish Relationships – Customer loyalty is achieved
by having a relationship with their customers. The stronger the
relationship, the more accurate it becomes your customer. Relationships
are based on trust, communication and interaction. Every customer
interaction is an opportunity to further improve communication and
increase trust.
Number 5: Measure of Performance – If you can not measure it, can
not handle it. The measurement of customer satisfaction, customer
feedback, employees and compliance with standards of customer service
is paramount in delivering an exceptional customer service with any
degree of consistency. Always inspect what you expect.
Issue 4: Creating Unity Team – To achieve the optimum success of
the whole world should be on the same page, looking for the same goal,
which aspire to the same vision, and functioning as a team. Teamwork
always produce better results, then the people who work alone.
Number 3: Develop a plan – is the attention to its customers by
design or default? Without a clear and well defined set of universal
standards of customer service will leave the customer satisfaction to
chance. If no plan is going to fail.
Number 2: Commit to Excellence – Customer service is the number
one differentiator in the competitive market today. Having a good
product or a low price does not guarantee a competitive edge or
customer loyalty more. Commit to establishing and promoting a culture
of customer first within your company. Andalusia service excellence is
an option.
Number 1 and the principle of all companies should implement to achieve excellence in service is:
Faith – Believe in the power of customer service. Believe in the
need for customer retention. Believe in the relationship between
customer loyalty and business growth. We believe that becoming
customer-focused not only makes good business sense, but guarantees
increased revenue and profits. It has been said, “A belief is not
merely an idea the mind possesses, it is an idea that possesses the
mind.”
I challenge every company to not only the application of these
principles, but the faith, courage and vision to go beyond providing
excellent customer service to build a reputation as a pioneer customer
service.
Some companies make things happen
Some companies see what happens
Some companies are asking what happened
