A Winning Customer Service Strategy
Providing high-quality customer service in the help desk requires
much more than just technical troubleshooting skills. Employees must
have excellent listening and communication skills, telephone skills,
writing skills and they must be able to solve and prevent problems in
the help desk. In addition, the ability to handle difficult customers
and minimize stress during the workday also increases the level of
customer service they provide. These "soft" skills are often more
important in ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction than an
employee's technical knowledge.
Release Date: December 8, 2002
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Providing high-quality customer service in the help desk
requires much more than just technical troubleshooting skills.
Employees must have excellent listening and communication
skills, telephone skills, writing skills and they must be able to
solve and prevent problems in the help desk. In addition, the
ability to handle difficult customers and minimize stress
during the workday also increases the level of customer
service they provide. These "soft" skills are often more
important in ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction
than an employee's technical knowledge.
Link Satisfaction to Training
In order to improve customer satisfaction within the support
environment, a customer service strategy should be in place to
solicit feedback from customers. Do they enjoy their support
experience? What do they think about the level of service?
What do they say when they complain about the service? The
answers to those questions and data from the problem
management system should then be used to develop a training
program to improve the skill level of the help desk employees.
Combine the customer service strategy with a solid employee
hiring process that recruits new employees with the necessary
skills and it will result in an increase in customer satisfaction.
It is important to understand the link between customer
satisfaction and the skills of the help desk employees.
Step 1: Develop a Customer Service Strategy
A winning customer service strategy provides quality service
and resolves customer complaints. In the help desk industry,
much effort has been placed on customer satisfaction
measurement. This includes developing processes to measure
satisfaction, implement changes to increase customer
satisfaction and communicate the enhancements to the
customers. A critical element that is missing is an emphasis on
customer complaints. A support organization should also
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develop processes for the management of complaints. A
winning customer service strategy includes six steps:
SOLICIT – Solicit customer complaints and feedback.
RESOLVE – Resolve customer complaints on first contact.
TRACK – Track, trend and proactively eliminate customer
complaints using the problem management system.
SURVEY – Survey customers on a regular basis.
TRAIN – Train employees, based upon complaints, survey
results and performance metrics, to increase quality of
customer service and improve complaint resolution.
MARKET – Market the winning customer service strategy to
help desk employees and customers to establish expectation.
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C U S T O M E R
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S E R V I C E
S E R V I C E
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SOLICIT
RESOLVE
TRACK
SURVEY
TRAIN
MARKET
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Why Focus on Complaints?
According to the 1996 report, Serving the American People:
Best Practices in Resolving Customer Complaints published by
the National Performance Review, there are five reasons why
successful companies succeed at resolving customer
complaints and thus increase customer satisfaction and
loyalty. A best practice environment must:
♦ Make it easy for customers to complain and customers will
make it easy for you to improve.
♦ Respond to complaints quickly and courteously with
common sense and you will improve customer loyalty.
♦ Resolve complaints on the first contact and save money by
eliminating unnecessary additional contacts that escalate
costs and build customer confidence.
♦ Technology is critical in complaint handling systems.
♦ Recruit and hire the best for customer service jobs.
Customer satisfaction is more than just solving a customer's
technology problem or fulfilling a request as quickly as
possible. It is also about how you handle "poor" service. You
can't expect every call to be handled perfectly every time.
Some customers get mad and get vocal. This often leads to the
bad reputation of the help desk. So even when you provide
"bad" service, develop a clear strategy for how to make it right
- quickly and prevent similar problems in the future.
Step 2: Hire Only the Best
Quality service comes from quality employees. Develop a solid
new hire process that recruits only those employees who have
the necessary skills. The new hire process has four steps:
RECRUIT – Recruit for technical resolution, listening and
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communication, telephone, writing and customer service
skills.
HIRE – Hire only those employees who possess a complete
skill set.
TRAIN – Train employees regularly to invest in their success,
increase employee retention and increase customer
satisfaction.
PROMOTE – Promote and retain only those employees who
make the grade in your support organization.
RECRUIT
HIRE
TRAIN
PROMOTE
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Step 3: Invest in Your Employees
In both the customer service strategy and the new hire
process, there is an emphasis on training. A robust training
program should address all the critical skills that are
necessary to provide the best service to the customer. In the
same report by the National Performance Review they state,
"Best-in-Business leaders consider training an
investment, not an expense. They use complaint
trends/data to identify training needs."
Organizations that spend a sizeable portion of their budgets
on training can see a direct link between training and
increases in customer satisfaction and loyalty.
According to the American Productivity & Quality Center in
their report titled Best Practices in New Customer Service,
"The foundation of any successful customer service
organization is the empowered customer service
agent. Management in the best-practice
organizations recognizes that external customer
satisfaction requires granting power to those
internal company representatives who serve as the
critical link between the company and the
customer."
eService Consulting Practice Can Help
Our eService Practice consultants can assist support
organizations in creating a winning customer service strategy
with our Customer Communication Plan, Customer Satisfaction
Plan, Customer Marketing Plan and Customer Service Training.
Communication Plan – This deliverable helps to establish
communication standards in all written and verbal
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communications as well as defines the process for how to
communicate effectively with the customer.
Customer Satisfaction Plan – This deliverable develops a
customer satisfaction measurement process, assists with tool
selection and provides sample surveys.
Marketing Plan – This deliverable is a help desk marketing
strategy to inform customers of the help desk services, help
change the perception of the help desk and establish customer
expectations.
Customer Service Training – This class is designed to train
help desk staff on how to improve customer communication
skills, develop effective listening skills and develop strategies
for dealing with difficult customers.
CUSTOMER
SATISFACTION
PLAN
MARKETING
PLAN
CUSTOMER
SERVICE
TRAINING
COMMUNICATION
PLAN
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Our consulting practice can help your customers to achieve
higher levels of customer satisfaction and at the same time
help to increase employee retention. According to Gartner
Group,
"Organizations must begin to evaluate customer
service as a competitive weapon and make
appropriate investments in infrastructure, cultures,
people and processes."
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About the Author
Julie Mohr is a Managing Consultant for Alternative Resources
Corporation based near Sacramento, California. She has 14
years of experience in the IT industry with 8 years of
progressive management responsibility in information
technology services. Ms. Mohr has a degree in Computer
Science from the Ohio State University and is pursuing an MBA
in Technology Management. She is a Certified Help Desk
Director from Help Desk 2000.
Ms. Mohr has published over 130 articles on computers,
technology, education and training. She has served as a
speaker on help desk enhancement topics at Support Services
Conferences, HDI Conferences and local HDI chapter meetings
over the past four years.
If your organization needs to improve customer service, ARC
can help. We would be happy to meet with you to provide you
with more detail about our Customer Service Training class. To
arrange a meeting, please call our Marketing Department at
(847) 620-4165.