Customer Service

According to today’s Wall Street Journal report on customer service, while all businesses can expect customer complaints, many organizations respond poorly to them poorly. The article goes on to say that customers not only want their problem solved, but want to know what caused it, and that the systems that caused the failure be fixed so they and other customers are not subjected to the problem in the future. Customers, the article says, have more tolerance for poor service than for poor problem resolution.

In past posts I have written of excellent customer service at the Minneapolis Hilton, and poor service from my lawn care company. What separates good service from poor, is a service oriented corporate culture. When top management understands the value to the bottom line of excellence in customer service, a culture will be established with procedures to deal with complaints and empowerment to employees who come in contact with customers. It is also important to track customer complaints in the interest of seeing that systems causing the complaints in the first place are fixed. Incentives should be provided to employees who provide outstanding service.

I think that today consumers are so conditioned to poor service, that companies that provide excellent customer service really stand out.

Will Limkemann
Limkemann Business Advisors
440-871-0976
www.neobizadvisor.com