Service culture. How to communicate to meet customer expectations
Communication is a determining tool to develop an adequate service culture in organizations that have understood that this is a competitive advantage for their business. But what to communicate and to whom, to achieve the ambitious goal of standing out in service?
I like to talk about a "hinge" communication. That is, working in two directions at the same time, starting from a single coherent message that is reinforced and makes each actor be on the same page, producing a satisfactory service and according to the expectations that have been generated in the clients.
"Hinge" between clients and collaborators
It is essential to work on coherence between external communication -the messages that are issued to customers- and internal communication -which is communicated to all members of the organization, who must provide the service as it has been communicated to customers-.
External communication is marketing and sales messages. These messages seek to attract customers and provoke the purchase decision. But the truth is that the moment of truth begins later. We would be wasting our marketing budgets if we were to settle for turning those customers into an isolated transaction, without taking advantage of the great long-term potential that materializes when that customer establishes a relationship with the organization.
These long-term relationships are the piece that enhances the profitability of a service strategy, and it is interesting to note that they are generated with the personnel that provide the service (not with those who sell it). It is the operations staff who, although they have never been trained in marketing, are exercising the most important marketing function of each customer's life cycle: satisfying them with the service, in order to achieve loyalty.
The importance of internal communication
And here is the importance of the second direction of our hinge. Do these collaborators know everything that the client in front of them has been promised? The advertising you have seen, the promotions that made you decide, the promises the seller made to convince you, have they been duly agreed with those who now have the great challenge of reaching and exceeding the expectations created?
This is the first point of our “hinge” communication: complete harmony between the communication that is issued to customers, and that received by all the equipment that must satisfy it by delivering the service.
Unfortunately, disagreements at this level are more common than we think. The manager of a prestigious hotel shared this problem with me a few days ago. Because the commercial and operations functions are separate and with little internal communication. So, those communication potholes explode in customers.
At the counter, when the client expects to be recognized that benefit they promised, and the receptionist was not even aware… And there the mess, internal consultations, discussions, while the level of customer satisfaction does not stop crumbling watching this scene, waiting, receiving explanations, and with the uncertainty of thinking that, perhaps, they will not give you what they have promised.
In your organization, is internal communication developed in such a way that each member knows what customers expect, to satisfy them consistently?
