The Top Five Customer Service Mistakes Companies Make – And How Your Organization Can Avoid Them
I’ve recently put together a white paper titled, “The Top Five Customer Service Mistakes Companies Make, and How Your Organization Can Avoid Them.” The mistakes addressed in the white paper come from working with and observing hundreds of organizations, large and small, and noting the issues that seem to come up again and again.
My purpose in writing the paper, however, was not to simply point out the mistakes. For each of the five issues addressed, I’ve offered approaches for avoiding the mistake or for making course corrections if things have gotten off track.
The five customers service mistakes addressed in the white paper are:
- Not clearly defining what the customer experience is supposed to be.
- Designing processes for the company’s convenience, not the customer’s.
- Hiring the wrong people.
- Not making customer service a significant part of new-hire orientation as well as ongoing training.
- Tolerating poor service performance from employees at any level within the organization.
To download the white paper, simply click on this link – Top Five Customer Service Mistakes – fill in the requested information, and click the download button. Be sure and let me know if you have any problems with the download.
Please forward this post to anyone you feel might benefit from the information provided in the white paper. And I would welcome any feedback, pro or con, you might have based on what you read.
Most of all, I hope the information helps you and your organization in delivering the best possible customer service
[...] Snow recently wrote a white paper about the 5 Mistakes Companies Make with Customer Service. In the nut shell they are [...]
Seth Brickner | Developer & Facilitator, Impact Learning Systems International
So true, so sad and so avoidable!
Note that #4 (about customer service training) and #5 (about tolerating poor service performance) are closely related: too often an organization will provide customer service training as a one-time event and expect that this will change the service culture of the organization. That won’t happen unless there is follow-up from supervisors and managers to make sure employees are applying the skills from the training.
When organizations decide to make excellent customer service part of their culture, they need to look to training programs that support the participants & supervisors after the training event. Post-training support, with reinforcement tools and job aids to sustain the impact of the training, are crucial to long term success.
See http://bit.ly/avMygm for a variety of programs aimed at improving customer service and sustaining long-lasting change.