1) Develop a customer support/service strategy for THE COMPANY
A clear well-focused support strategy is necessary to optimize production and delivery of customer oriented services.
a) Segment THE COMPANY customers by support levels
· Marketing segmentation concentrates on customer needs, customer support segmentation focuses on expectations. (I.e. Residential, business, community support services, etc.)
Solution and resources will betailored to meet specific different needs of each customer group.
· The types and quality of services and support delivered to each THE COMPANY market segment needs to be defined.
· Understand where to substitute low-touch for high-touch support
· Involve customers as co-producers of services and support quality.
b) Discover what THE COMPANY customers expect
· Base customer expectations on data (research, focus groups, trouble tickets) not hypotheses. Research will be ongoing and flexible, customer expectations grow and change through time.
· Research will also evaluate competitors' customers' strategies.
c) Influence and manage customer expectations
· Manage customer expectations are the key to exceed those expectations, a successful strategy is to “under promise and over-deliver.”
2) Develop leadership ”Put words into action”
No company can triumph in customer support unless its leaders drive the process hard. Creating a customer support-driven company calls on employees to do hard emotional work to create a positive social process. Employees will make a continuing commitment to excellence only with a constant demonstration of support from management.
a) Foster a support-driven, service-oriented culture
· The environment management creates for the THE COMPANY employee is the environment the THE COMPANY employees will create for customers.
b) Make customer support everyone’s responsibility
c) Decentralize authority
· Empower employees and encourage ownership
3) Develop and reinforce people policies
Establishing employee-friendly people policies to nurture an effective customer support environment. Customers judge support efforts by the quality of their interaction with the people who provide support. The prime shaper of employee behavior is company culture, (personnel policies embody culture).
a) Hire and develop great people
b) Train, Train, and retrain
· Strike a balance between social training that is informal and technical training that is formal and specific.
c) Motivate lavishly
· Customer support calls for heroic emotional labor. The more contact employees have with customers the more motivation they need. Create customer support heroes and legends within the company.
Use an abundance of emotional and material rewards frequently and meaningfully. It is important to let employees know that their performance is vital to the company's success.
4) Design customer support/service into current and new products and service
As new products and services are developed insure that customer service is built in or planned.
a) Anticipate and constantly re-evaluate potential products and services failure points
b) Enlist the commitment of customer support staff
c) Share the work
· Involve the customer in the product and services, incorporating diagnostic into the core product or services at every chance.
5) Build an effective customer service Infrastructure
The operational infrastructure is the backbone of an effective customer support, put the tools in place to support customer service.(software, records, history)
6) Measure the progress
Measurement is absolutely necessary. THE COMPANY needs to insure the right things are being measured. THE COMPANY will know from the measurements' results what action to take to improve customer support.
a) Let your subscriber say what counts
· Measure what customers say, not what managers think is important.
b) Beware of the wrong carrot
· Insure measurements are designed to measure product and service satisfaction.
c) Close the loop
To be effective the measurement system must have tangible and quantifiable impacts on employee behavior.
