Great customer service isn’t simply a matter of best practices. It is also achieved by learning from, and avoiding, major service missteps. While you can certainly glean these lessons from your own mistakes, it’s much better (and less costly) to observe and learn from others.
In Kiplinger.com’s “The Five Worst Companies for Customer Service -- And What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes,” Chuck Kapelke provides insight from the worst of the worst:
- Make It Easy to Conduct Business: Using Bank of America as a bad example, Kapelke writes how customers, “rail against BoA’s myriad fees and a bureaucracy that makes even the simplest transactions difficult.” Think about how your policies and procedures get in the way of great customer service and change them.
- Don’t Keep Customers Waiting: Comcast’s poor customer satisfaction ratings are tied into what clients consider slow and incompetent service. “Every employee should be empowered to make a decision on the spot in favor of the customer – not a day later, not an hour later, but in seconds,” says John Tschohl, president of Service Quality Institute in Minneapolis.
- Take Care of Employees: While it scores high in terms of value, Wal-Mart is among the worst-rated for customer service. The reason, Kapelke writes, is underpaid and disempowered employees, who share their misery with customers. “Take care of your workers, and your workers take care of your customers,” says Emily Yellin, author of the new book, Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us.
Take The Tip:
Click here to learn more customer service don’ts and see examples of companies that are doing it right.
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