Greater Communication Can Enhance Customer Service
Enhancing the way you communicate with your customers is essential to improving service but implementing a change in culture can prove tricky.
Introducing a customer-facing culture into an organisation does not just happen overnight as processes need to be redesigned and employee attitudes need to be altered to fit a new approach to service.
Performance improvement consulting professionals can help an organisation interact more efficiently with their customers by putting into action business theory such as systems thinking.
Applying systems thinking to processes enables an organisation to view their business from their customer's perspective which helps them transform how they work in order to improve the level of service provided.
Systems thinking will allow an organisation to see how their businesses should work as a whole instead of operating as separate departments loosely linked under a broad company umbrella.
Increasing ongoing interaction within a business is one way to improve customer communication as employees on the front line will understand when it is appropriate to include workers from other departments.
Instead of shielding departments from customer calls, front line employees should realise when it is necessary for them to contact executives and this understanding can only be created through greater departmental cooperation.
Building bridges between departments will help customer-facing employees deal with incoming complaints and queries as they will be better equipped to cope through better access to colleagues in other areas of their organisation.
With improved processes and a better understanding of their business as a whole, employees will be able to resolve past complaints and focus on how to enhance the customer's experience of the organisation in the future.
Through improved communication lines, employees on the front line will be able to provide other departments with information about where processes are failing and ideas on how to eliminate these errors.
A customer-facing approach will only work effectively if employees are committed to creating close relationships so they may need to be educated about how this change will benefit both themselves and the business as a whole.
It is likely that business will have to invest in training to fully demonstrate the advantages of a customer-facing strategy to their employees but this initial short-term cost will result in greater long-term profits.
Once an organisation is content that a customer-facing culture has been effectively implemented, it is essential to measure whether the goals of this strategy are being achieved whether it is through greater customer satisfaction or improved profits.