Customer Satisfaction is a crucial component of the survival of every human interaction and most importantly for the survival of businesses. Customer service arguably is the most critical factor in an organization’s long-term success. It clearly goes beyond attending to customer needs – there should be that desire to offer superior service.
Gradually, there is evidence that HR drives customer satisfaction – by carefully paying attention to who is hired, how they are trained, how they are coached, and how they are treated on the job. Hiring is the first and most critical step in building a customer-friendly company. You need to select the best – it will be better to train and develop people who exhibit the right personality and possess the qualities to work with customers than it is to struggle to teach those skills to whoever walks in the door for a job. They may not have the passion in the first place but they just simple want to work to keep body and soul together. Having the qualification and experience may not be enough to deliver on the job – there should be the burning desire to enrich your customer experience.
Employee orientation and onboarding process must therefore be relooked at to ensure that the content for delivery is centered on a proper and effective corporate culture and providing excellent services to both internal and external customers. A well designed service level agreement (SLA) and turnaround times must be part of key performance indicator’s (KPIs) assigned to employees to ensure that they do not compromise on standards. It is highly possible that some customers can be very difficult and berate you for their impatience and put your professionalism to test, one must demonstrate a high level of emotional intelligence to be able to handle such situations. One of the most basic steps in teaching good customer-service skills is fostering employees’ self-awareness – first understand yourself and know how to handle others. The ultimate indignity comes when the customer proceeds to attack your person but remember it is service you are providing to humanity and therefore you need to exercise some restrain.
Some years back, customer service was seen as the sole responsibility of sales and marketing staff and all others who directly interface with external customers. The dynamics have changed, progressively, organizations are beginning to recognize that HR plays a pivotal role in building a customer-friendly culture throughout the business units.
Throughout the business world, HR departments are focusing their efforts on improving customer satisfaction. They’re using HR activities – hiring, training, coaching, and dipstick programs — to give employees the tools and support they need to develop and nurture positive, lasting relationships with clients.
The evidence is compelling that HR practices can promote customer satisfaction — and, in the process, improve corporate revenues. According to workforce.com, a landmark analysis of 800 Sears Roebuck stores, for example, demonstrated that for every 5percent improvement in employee attitudes, customer satisfaction increased 1.3percent and corporate revenue rose a half-percentage point.
Moreover, subtle changes in hiring or training sometimes can produce major improvements in customer happiness. A company with strong customer satisfaction and loyalty can survive and prosper even when faced with a tough economy or an unforeseen disaster.
Conversely, a company that provides lousy service may have trouble hanging onto its customers over time, and thus may be forced to continually replace lost accounts that have fled in frustration. The cost of acquiring new customers is five times higher than the expense of servicing existing ones, says Michael DeSanto, a consultant for Walker Information, an Indianapolis-based business research firm.
The key indicator of customer-service potential is a high level of qualities such as optimism, flexibility, and the ability to handle stressful situations or criticism without feeling emotionally threatened. Those are, of course, good qualities for many jobs and HR professionals and recruiters must be looking out for these traits in job applicants apart from the well drafted CVs. An appropriate customer-service person demonstrates an even-handed view of things, a strong sense of fairness and the desire to put smiles on the face of customers even when the situation suggest otherwise. HR must ensure that employees portray that corporate culture where employees will be willing to show a balance of their interest, the company’s interest and the outmost interest of the customer.
There must be the finest way and approach designed and deployed by HR and recruiters in finding out those employees who are more likely to satisfy customers from applicants who need jobs to occupy their time. Some companies have tried standardized psychological tests competency based interview metric amongst others but many consultants and HR professionals say that it’s more effective to observe an applicant at work. The scrutiny therefore must begin the moment that a job-seeker walks in the door for an interview.
There are various interventions that can be used by HR – abilities such as a facial expression, choice of words, attention to details or active listening can help make a good impression to a customer. A comprehensive policy and strategy on dealing with customers will be a useful tool in improving service quality. In designing such a policy, hiring, evaluation, and other programs should be dominant, nothing should be left to chance most especially detailed product knowledge content for frequent refresher training – group dynamics, moreso, role plays scenarios can also help bring out either the best or worse in every one. HR must help employee become aware of themselves, self-assessment tool can be used to determine personality style, temperament and how to relate to customers.
In this era of competition, having the best of product is simply not enough – there is the huge responsibility on both the employer and employee to ensure that customer satisfaction and the delivery of superior services is paramount. It is the only way to stay relevant in the competition and attract, retain and increase your clientele base. Recruiters must ensure that their employees demonstrate a high sense of values, integrity and ethical standards in their interactions with customers. The labour Act, 2003 (Act 651) section 11 (g) and (h) demand of employees to protect the interest and assets of their employers. The action and inaction of employees can cost the employer a huge reputational damage and legal suit in some instances – if a company goes down, it sinks with all the employees including the innocent once. Report bad customer service if you see one, don’t compromise on service standards on the altar of friendship or fear of been labelled the bad one.
At the blind side of the employer, workers showcase all kinds of behaviors and some of these bad experiences are not reported for many reasons. Some affected customers may decide not to do business with you again, use mystery shopping as a means to determine how your employees relate to customers and get firsthand information.
With the upsurge of social media, one bad publicity is enough to sink your business, be very much interested in how your staff treat customers, customers bring in the money that pays all the bills including the pay cheque.
A large part of achieving great customer service is keeping the employees happy. Service-quality experts say that customer-service employees and all employees for that matter tend to model externally the treatment they receive from management. Treat your employees well and be rest assured that they will take good care of your customers.
Source: Bright Ampadu Okyere|workforce.com| Tel. #: 0244204664|Email Address: hrtoday@gmail.com
