When we learnt of this year’s Customer Service Week theme – Dream Team – it got us thinking; “Wow! Can customer service be ever perfect?”
Let’s assume we agree with the notion that perfection doesn’t exist and only try to dream about it for a minute; what would our Dream customer service Team look like?
Let’s put the question to you first of all: as a customer, what is your dream customer service experience? As a business owner or employer, what is your best wish of a customer support unit?
Our bet is that answers would differ from person to person, even though a couple of persons might share one or two wishes. For example, all customers might desire faster responses to queries, on-time, every time and all business owners might want super-efficient support units.
However, needs are never the same and customers’ preferences would always differ at some point. While one might want his fast response via text, another might prefer it through phone call and another just wants a quick fix with no communication whatsoever.
As business owners, it is these differences in customers’ needs that defeats the so-called ‘Dream Customer Service Team‘. We can rapidly resolve customers’ queries whether by human input, use of bots or both, but satisfying their needs requires special efforts. Your business ability to identify and satisfy customers’ individual needs is what turns their idea of a dream customer service experience into a reality.
To achieve this feat in support providence, businesses need to think beyond just setting up a support unit, staffing it, developing bots and letting everything run. Customer Service today is about perceiving customers’ needs and providing them even before they ask. It is about listening once to 1 customer and ensuring 9 others don’t report the same complaint. The Dream customer service Team is about proactivity, not reactivity.
Service really begins from the passion of CEOs or managers to prioritize customers interests – after all, what are you in business for? If the head of an organisation doesn’t value the customer, we can as well close down the business and make our monies serving monkeys. Your customer is your first bank, your banker comes second. We cannot emphasise this enough.
But it doesn’t stop there. The importance of customer satisfaction needs to be communicated across all departments within the organisation. Customer service is not the job of a specific unit but every human and systems working within an organisation. The efficiency of one team rubs off on the other and the overall efficiency of all departments impacts how well your business satisfies customers.
Our thoughts going into the Customer Service Week wasn’t to celebrate our customers and support units alone, but to involve everyone working with SMSexperience. Our Dream customer service Team is one where all staffs are willing to assist the customer, where customers call or text in, not to complain but to compliment and where customers encounter the best service of their lives.
Happy Customer Service Week!