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Blog posts tagged manifesto
Marketing Donut's Customer Service Manifesto for small businesses
October 09, 2009
At the start of the week we asked you to put forward your key ideas for a best practice customer service manifesto that small businesses should adopt and you didn’t let us down. Below are the best tips that any small firm should abide by, not on occasion but all the time. Thank you very much to everyone who contributed.
“Great customer service as a standard, not a bonus.”
Our basic core principles are built on:
Listening. By @picseli
Being nice, being helpful and being there. By @RealTrevorLever
Honesty. By @Web_D
Thinking about how we would wish to be treated in the customer’s position. By short couture
Understanding the context of our customers. How does your service affect their life/business? By @tazbride
Good communication and respect for your customers. By @atkirby
In our endeavours to provide a first rate customer service, we will:
Show that we appreciate their business. Say thank you once in a while. By @SonjaJefferson
Think of our customers' needs. Focus on their problems and make ourselves invaluable. By @SonjaJefferson
Care (and don't just pretend). By Digital Jonathon
Treat our customers as we would like to be treated. Call when we say we will, even if we have nothing new to tell them. By @nigel_dean
Act fast, speak truth, admit mistakes, undertake to fix and follow through fast...do NOT pass the buck! By @DebraTemplar
In improving our existing customer service offering, we will:
Acknowledge it is OK to make mistakes but crucially, to learn from them. Be genuine and humble in our apology. By @jamesainsworth
Communicate in ways they appreciate. Find out how they want to hear from us. Don't spam. By @SonjaJefferson
Be reliable. Do what we say we'll do or be honest when we can't. By @SonjaJefferson
Measure our success - get regular feedback from customers on our service quality. By @benpopps
To ensure that our high standards of customer care are uniform across our business, we will:
Be consistent. By Will Stone
Give authority to ALL staff to fix problems for customers without miles of red tape. By @DebraTemplar
Provide multiple contact channels. Customers are different and have diff contact preferences. By @benpopps
Empower front line team to recover service without having to go to a 'supervisor' - give a budget and ensure they spend it. By @michellecarvill
Incentivise 'extra mile' service from staff. By @benpopps
To keep up with the competition and to go the extra mile in a way a larger business can not, we will:
Always be thinking about what we can do that their larger competitors can't. By Andrew McMillan
Treat every customer as an individual. By Chris W
Adopt proactive communication...at beginning, middle and end of service delivery. By @benpopps
Transparency helps in customer service - if we are open and honest customers often feel they can trust more. By @ronkelawal
Stay in touch. Too many businesses chase new business when existing customers are much more valuable. By @mickdickinson
Have a phone number so a customer can contact a real person directly. By @yBCmels
The quicker a caller speaks to a real person the better, even if they gone on hold/into a queue after that. By @jakepjohnson
Have we missed anything important? Please share your thoughts and comments with us in the box below.
Integrity - the secret of good customer service
October 08, 2009
When the Marketing Donut asked me to make a short contribution to their customer service manifesto for small businesses, I struggled to keep it brief. That’s because I think there are three customer service ingredients that are critical to every business, and they are all connected - leadership, communication and motivation.
The first, leadership, is easy to sum up concisely: it’s about having a vision of where your business is going.
Communication is very strongly linked to leadership, because every piece of communication between your workforce and your customers has to be aligned with your business vision. When I say communication, I don’t just mean what you say and write, but everything you convey to your customers. It’s the impressions and experiences they take away with them.
The third ingredient in good customer service is what I call ‘aligning the motivators’. Let me explain: what I see in most organisations is that they have a great vision of what they want to be and they have lots of communication around that vision. Then they motivate people to do the wrong things.
I’m thinking, for example, about the call centre with a strong customer service promise that gives people bonuses based on the number of calls they make per hour. The result is that if someone gets a difficult call, it’s in their interest to end the call as quickly as possible rather than to deal with the problem properly. So what about the customer service promise? The rewards you offer your team for work well done have to promote your vision, not undermine it.
So we have leadership, communication, motivation – the three ingredients of effective customer service. Then I thought about integrity. Really, what we’re talking about here is integrity - of vision, of communication and of practice.
You can’t be saying how important customers are to you and then slating them behind their backs. Nor can you say that your people are your greatest asset and then call them your ‘staff’ and not your ‘team’. You certainly can’t sell a product that’s not right for your customer. Whatever you do, do it with integrity and strong customer service will follow. Believe me, the customer soon knows if the integrity isn’t there.
Marketing Donut Customer Service Manifesto
October 06, 2009
At some point in time there was a shift in customer care in British retail and services. From the days of being ever-so British and polite, we now only talk about customer service in the positive when it is good — as a bonus, not a standard.
As the various political parties are in full conference swing and talking policy and proposals, here at the Marketing Donut we thought we’d produce a manifesto of our own.
This week is National Customer Service Week and to that end we want you to help us draw up a Customer Service Manifesto by sending your suggestions to us. At the end of the week we’ll turn your ideas into our golden standard of customer care and, of course, give credit where it is due to you the contributor.
What would you add to a Customer Service Manifesto to be the minimum level of practice for small businesses all the time and not just in exceptional circumstances?
Please keep your contribution brief and to the point and send it to us by:
- leaving a comment at the bottom of this blog (you’ll have to be registered and sign in)
- tweeting it to our Twitter account (@MarketingDonut)
- sending us an email to info@marketingdonut.co.uk
Update: The results are in and YOUR manifesto can be found here
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