Who Manages Your Customer Experience?
Four Ways Your Service Department can Excel at the Customer Experiencence
The customer experience – it sounds like more of a function of marketing than of the service department. We are set up to provide service to our customers, but we don’t have to give them an experience, right?
Wrong.
Whether you’re running a contact center, a mobile field force or both, a good customer experience is key to keeping customers satisfied and your company profitable. Below we’ve outlined four ways you can start making your service department a customer experience department.
VISABLE CUSTOMER DATA ALL AROUND
One of the first steps you’ll need to take is making your customer’s data visible to anyone and everyone who comes in contact with your customers. This data can include service level information, past issues and their resolutions and parts usage and repair information. This will give the people who have the most contact with your customers the ability to service them the best. Most call centers have this information on hand, however, in mobile field service it isn’t as prominent yet. This shouldn’t be that much of a concern since mobile devices and wireless Internet are both becoming more commonplace and less expensive, and mobility software such as Metrix Mobile Techlink can feed the data to these devices.
USE A KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOL
A knowledge management (KM) tool will allow your employees to view solutions to common customer issues. When an employee does a search for a particular issue, the KM system starts a “dialog” with them to eventually narrow down solutions until they get the best possible answer. KM systems are great for sharing the knowledge throughout your organization and retaining this knowledge after employee turnover. In addition to making your technical support and field employees more productive, this can make for a more consistent and pleasant customer experience,. Read our previous knowledge management article here.
LIVE THE BRAND
OK, here is where a little marking speak comes into play. Many organizations have a brand reputation that differentiates them in their marketplace. For example, your brand might state that you do anything you can to solve a customer issue, even if it means staying up all night. If this is the case, your field and contact center staff should be trained on this and be expected to work with a customer until an issue is solved (i.e. stay up all night, if needed). Another example of branding could be that your organization always has the right parts on hand, and if you don’t, you’ll get them within a day. Again, your employees will need to be trained on this and processes will need to be put in place so that you’re always living up to this promise to your customers. Staying true to your brand will differentiate your business from your competitors and keep your customers happy.
FIELD TECHS BECOME CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE REPS
At many organizations, the field force has more face-to-face contact with customers than anyone else. Why is it then that they aren’t trained to act as more of a customer representative? Well, in the leading organizations they are – and if you want to be a leader you should start doing the same. Field techs can perform a variety of duties while on-site that can both increase customer satisfaction and improve your productivity and profitability. These duties range from checking and renewing contracts and warranties, ordering spare parts and selling customers new products or services. Read a previous story on field techs as sales reps here.
So there you have it – four easy ways you can create a better customer experience through your service organization. Implement these suggestions and your service department will be on the way to increased customer satisfaction and retention, along with increased profits.
Originally from the November 2006 Metrix eNewsletter