Improving customer service can be very easy. Are you aware of these opportunities?
There are very easy steps to take that will improve customer service significantly. It is enough to be attentive, and fundamentally focused on the needs of your customers. How the vocation of service, the messages of the management and the work systems influence.
Although there are complex actions that must be carried out within organizations to improve customer service, involving different actors, generating the necessary structures, training the personnel involved…
It is also true that there are very easy steps to take, which will improve customer service significantly. It is enough to be attentive, and fundamentally focused on your needs.
However, when internal structures and our own comfort zones trap us, we miss those valuable opportunities.
This weekend we have met a group of mothers from my daughter's school, as we are used to every year. We went to share dinner at a pizzeria. One of the moms has a health problem, for which she should not eat fat or salt. When placing the order, we then asked the waiter if he could bring him a salad, explaining the problem. "We don't have salads," he answered us, blunt and inflexible. This mom ended up choosing to order a pizza with vegetables, from which she could eat whatever her diet allowed.
The rest of us enjoyed a delicious pizza, which we ordered half of each flavor. Only, so that each one could taste both flavors, we had to divide the portions, because we were 5 people, and each half had 4 portions.
For the next pizza, we asked the waiter if they could cut it into 5 slices instead of 4. "The cutting is automatic," he replied, with the same inflexible attitude as before.
We take it with humor, because the occasion lent itself to not complicate us with these trifles, but this lack of flexibility and willingness to serve of the waiter did not cease to bother us.
What was the complication that the customer's requirements brought to this employee, and the rest who would be involved in the solution?
- To the waiter, send a special message to the kitchen, which changes the standard orders to the ones they are used to. A salad instead of a pizza; Cut into 10 slices instead of 8. In the kitchen, if they have the ingredients that can make up a salad (and they sure did), it's simply a matter of serving them on a plate instead of arranging them on a pizza. Not to mention changing the cut of the portions… can placing the knife in another position be so complicated? To the add-on, charge an item that is not on the list of products for sale. Like "several"? Or just get it for the value of a pizza!
Obviously, the solution would be so simple… and with very little they could have provided excellent customer service.
How much could customer service have improved with those simple actions?
- Contemplating a health problem of a client is not something minor. This mother ended up eating little (what she could of the pizza they brought) and badly, because they put raw ham on top of the vegetables, passing part of its fat and salt to what she could eat. Make the client feel that he is the one who is honored. with the service, and not who has to adapt to the conditions that the provider imposes for your comfort. This message should undoubtedly characterize excellent customer service.
What was the brake that kept you from making an easy but relevant improvement in customer service?
- Get out of the waiter's comfort zone. He did not want complications, he had several tables to attend to, so it is very easy to respond so that the customer adapts to the standard, and does not bother with special requests, perhaps not having flexible work systems. Many times the system is built in such a way that it does not allow adaptation to small changes, even if they are necessary. It may also have been that the waiter did not have permission to take responsibility for adapting the service to the customer's requirements. Employees are often penalized when they take the side of the client, rather than the company, which shows a great failure of the management. If the management is busy with such pettiness, certainly one cannot even dream of employees who develop a true vocation for service.
What can you do to improve your own customer service?
With this simple example, I want to encourage you to look at your own service:
- What opportunities to improve customer service with very little are you missing? Are your customer contact employees prepared to tailor the service to your customers' genuine needs? Do you encourage them to take the risk and work of flexing, or does it end up rewarding a conservative and inflexible attitude (disguised as productivity and siding with the organization), which ends up killing customer service? Is your service system prepared to adapt with small changes to the requirements of your customers ?
Do not miss the opportunity to improve the service to your customers, with very little! It is enough to be attentive, and very focused on their needs (not on your comfort).
