Giva Blog

Many companies treat employees like they are interchangeable parts. Companies that have the capability to amaze and delight their customers, always have an outstanding corporate culture that treats employees with dignity and respect. Make people feel like they are needed and important to your organization. It is a poor company culture to make people feel that it is a privilege to work at your company. You see, you want your employees to go those extra miles for your customers.  Some of your competitors will go AN extra mile. You want your people to go an extra FEW miles!!  This is what will inspire loyalty and commitment from customers. Don’t you want to inspire your employees to think outside the box and come up with innovative solutions? If you create a company culture of, "you're lucky to have a job at this mighty company xyz", then you will likely get that same exact attitude translated into how your employees treat your customers. The degree to which you treat your employees with dignity and respect with a great corporate culture will be the tone that is reciprocated with  your customer when you are not looking. That's what's important. How do your employee's treat your customers when you are not looking and they are left on their own to deal with a customer issue.  I guarantee you that they're going to treat your customers the same way your company treats them.

One of the reasons why JetBlue is a stand out in the airline industry is because of their unique culture of how they treat their employees. Unions never caught on at JetBlue...which is part of the very highly unionized airline industry.  How did that happen?  Think what you may about Unions, but organizers can only get traction within a company if there are seeds of employee dissatisfaction. In October 2007, JetBlue was named the number one U.S. domestic airline by Conde Nast Traveler magazine's "Readers' Choice Awards" for the sixth year in a row.  JetBlue has approximately 11,000 employees. Happy employees...make happy customers. Make a reservation with a JetBLue Agent or fly JetBlue and you'll get it. 

After you have amazed and delighted your customers on an ongoing basis for a long period of time, it is appropriate to document some of these successes with pictures and stories. You have earned their admiration and respect. Your company is in a class by itself.  Now it's time to leverage this customer loyalty and spread the word around your company's brand and approach to customer satisfaction. Ask the customer if it is appropriate to jointly write a customer case study. Perhaps post a short video clip of the people who are featured in the customer case studies.  Utilize the power of the Internet in spreading your brand of customer service and satisfaction.  Ask customers for referrals. You want the world to understand what customer service means to your company. You'll be in a class all by yourself.  You can turn your important customers into walking evangelists for your cause.  That will translate into profits for your company, financial rewards for you, job security and the satisfaction of knowing that you practice your art of caring for your customers with great success.

Do you really want to impress a major customer with your brand of delight and amaze? If you are a senior executive or the head of customer service, give a major customer your personal cell phone number and tell them that you are reachable anytime. Your problems are their problems. How many of your competitors do this? If the Division President knew that you were doing this, what would this executive think of you? Do you just want to meet customer expectations? If so, you're not competitive enough and you're missing out on the joy of building long term relationships with important customers.

Here are a few features that you should look for in a knowledge base.

Knowledge Base Accepts Attachments and Screen Shots

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. With a good knowledge base software system, files and screen shots can be attached to knowledge base records for further documentation. Attachments that are audio and video presentations of typical "How To" questions are excellent examples. The files are indexed by the knowledge base search engine and become part of the knowledge base software system.

Import Third Party Knowledge Bases for Agent and Customer Self-Help

This provides the ability to purchase knowledge bases from third party vendors and import for use in your own knowledge base software system. Assign security levels to knowledge records This provides the ability to assign a security level to knowledge base records, agents and customers. Accordingly, agents and customers can only view knowledge base records designated with the matching security level in their profile.

Knowledge Base Approval Process

All new knowledge base records must go through an approval process.

"Contact Me" option

After a customer reviews knowledge base records in a customer service self-help portal, if no records answer the query, the customer can request someone contact them. By clicking a "Contact Me" hyperlink, the knowledge base software application automatically creates a service request with the search criteria already tried by the customer. This service request also documents the possible need for new knowledge base information to fill voids.

If you really want to impress an important customer, send a senior executive to the site when things are not going well. Every company sends executives to close the big deals. Your customers never see senior executives again until it is time for more deal closing. Senior executives as a group are not use to having demanding people talk to them. Everybody around the office treats them with respect and walks on eggshells when around them. They have isolated themselves into a corner office. If you are a senior executive or want to be one, understand that one important measure of your success is in your ability to turnaround situations. If you are a smart executive, hook up with a few top sales people in the company and let them use you as a resource when trouble strikes. Many of your peers will be hiding in their offices. Go out and face the music and take some responsibility for your company. Just simply listen to what your customers tell you. Bring that skillful listening back to your company and work with the appropriate teams to make the necessary changes.  Also, keep the customer informed on the status and what you plan to deliver to make them happy again. If you can turn the situation around, many people will hear about it.  Let your Division President know that you are trying to delight and amaze an important customer that is not very happy with your company. Simply taking initiative and trying to fix things will earn you a lot of credit while your peers shy away from this type of customer engagement. If you actually lead a turnaround success, all the more valuable you will become to your company. When senior executives are trying to figure out who adds the most value to the company your name will be on that list.

Thanks for reading. Here is a good White Paper on customer service best practices. See https://www.givainc.com/wp/customer-service-best-practices-features-functions-customer-service-software.cfm

Within the marketing department, some companies have competitive intelligence gathering organizations. However, the customer service department is the best and the least expensive forum to obtain competitive intelligence. Agents can be trained to ask questions about competitive products. Your customers might be using your products along with competitor's products. You want to keep on making sure they use more of your products and services. Customers have friends and colleagues that are using competitive products. This is a rich opportunity for dialogue and it's dirt cheap. Just say no to the high priced market research firms and start a competitive intelligence program in the customer service department.  Better yet, talk to the the VP of Marketing and run this idea by them over lunch. When you explain that your agents can be leveraged for competitive intelligence and save the marketing department a lot of money, the VP better pick up the tab for lunch!

On April 29th, I wrote about customer feedback loops. Here are a few more thoughts.

Your customers will be amazed when they are transferred directly to an engineer that works on the product they are using. It is a very satisfying experience for your customers to establish a dialogue with more than just the customer service department. There is nothing so quite as satisfying as to have a direct impact and effect on a product that we use. Customers will give the people who build your products and services the best ideas for enhancements and new products. Also, consider placing some of your biggest and most important customers on a Customer Advisory Board and invite feedback from them on a regular basis.

Listen to your customers! Encourage and invite their feedback. They will tell you things that will never occur to you or anybody in your company.

Here is a great White Paper that may interest you.

https://www.givainc.com/wp/customer-service-best-practices-features-functions-customer-service-software.cfm

Yes, it is important to build a knowledge base to help increase first call resolution, provide consistent answers and stop your team from reinventing the solution every time the same type of call is received by the call center or IT help desk.  A great knowledge base software tool should also have exceptional Real-time Reports. You should be able to generate the following Real-time Reports about your knowledge base and employees to lead your organization.

• In ten seconds or less, can you determine which employees are generating knowledge records and at a very granular level can you determine if this knowledge is solving problems?
• In ten seconds or less, can you determine what categories of knowledge employees and customers need?
• In ten seconds or less, can you determine the quality of knowledge by user ratings and how often knowledge records were used to solve problems?
• In ten seconds or less, can you determine if an increase in knowledge records is causing an associated increase in First Contact Resolution?

Does your firm provide valuable incentives to reward employees for building and maintaining a high quality knowledge base? People need to know that you can measure their contributions and differentiate between employees on the help desk or in the call center. If you provide some valuable incentives to motive people and you can measure the value/quality of knowledge over time...just watch your high performers..they will seek to impress and help you build an outstanding knowledge base.

Let everybody know about the incentives that are available. Think iPods, iPhones, digital camcorders and cameras or some of the bling on display at https://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/bling/  It will actually be cool to work on the help desk or in customer service.

Here is a White Paper with more detail. https://www.givainc.com/wp/customer-service-best-practices-features-functions-customer-service-software.cfm

Any good help desk and customer service software should allow you to, in ten seconds or less, measure overall customer satisfaction as follows:

By Service Group

By Analyst

By Call Category

By Root Cause

           Further by time:   This morning, Yesterday,  Last Week, Last month

           Further by:  Region, Country, Office,  Department, Customer

Also, in ten seconds or less, can you also review survey comments made by customers?

If you have to spend hours preparing reports, that will not allow you to react in Real-time to important customer situations. Reports are everything!

Thanks for reading.

You may find this White Paper interesting. https://www.givainc.com/wp/customer-service-best-practices-features-functions-customer-service-software.cfm