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Copyright Spearhead Training Ltd & Velag Norbert Muler GbmH

PREFACE

Getting better at meeting customer’s needs is now universally recognised as the most important challenge facing any organisation and therefore customer service training is an integral part of business success. The knowledge, attitude and ability to accomplish this task is not, however, widely found. This customer service training material will enable you to grasp all the main elements of customer care, and will establish firm foundations on which further development can be based.

What can you expect to gain? You will learn how you can give your customers what they really want. This will bring benefits too numerous to mention, both to you personally, and to your organisation.

Firstly, you will focus on your customers and their needs. You will understand the implications of customer expectations that are currently changing at an accelerating rate. You will then learn a framework of key skill areas, all of which must be continually developed. You will also examine some specific issues, such as what to do when things go wrong. You will then be challenged to assess (honestly) your own and your organisation’s current effectiveness in the area of customer care. At this stage, the idea of systematically evaluating customer satisfaction will be introduced.

The notes will conclude with a call to action and a review of how to maintain the momentum. You will look briefly at aspects of company culture; the notions of empowerment, personal responsibility, and accountability for results rather than activity. You will see how all of these issues work together to bring constant innovation focused always on the customer and the customer’s needs.

We suggest that you do not read it as you would a novel. It has been edited and laid out for easy reading. The best way to learn is to study it a page at a time. Read each page several times until you are satisfied that you have understood and can use the points in your own dealings with customers. You are encouraged to use the notes as a personal training manual.

AN ORGANISATION AND ITS CUSTOMERS

In this section you will identify the crucial importance of customer care and learn a simple definition of what customer care is.

Why does an organisation exist?

What reply do you think your colleagues would give to this question? Here are some answers that are often given...

to make money

to pay a dividend to shareholders

to provide employment

I don’t know - I’ve never really thought about it!

Now we come to look at it, surely it’s very important for us to understand why the company/organisation for whom we work exists. If we were able to come up with an answer, it would presumably be of great value: we would be able to prioritise activities, we might be able to measure whether or not we were “getting it right”, we could enjoy the satisfaction that comes from a job well done and we should feel much more secure about the future.

For whatever reason, you have decided to work through this material on customer care. It will come as no surprise therefore that the answer to the question is...

.....the most important reason your organisation exists is to identify and
meet the needs of its customers.

Identifying and meeting customer requirements should be the primary focus of all activity and concern within any organisation. The most significant reason why customer care is not widely seen is that customers rank low on the list of priorities in almost all organisations.

Perhaps now would be a good time for you to pause and reflect on where customers fit into the scheme of things in your organisation.

Who are customers?

Customers are the people who receive what you and your organisation produce. Recently, you might have made a large purchase like a car or a house, or something smaller like clothes or food. These are all things you can see or feel or touch.

As a customer, you will sometimes buy information or help - for instance, you might dial the speaking clock to check the time, or you might buy the services of an expert to value something for insurance purposes. These are examples of buying services rather than products.

No matter what they decide to buy, all customers have something in common - they have a need.

What are the customer’s needs?

This seems too simple a question - surely the needs of a customer are obvious - they need a house or a car, they need a new coat or something to eat. Do not be deceived! The psychology of what motivates people has fascinated psychologists for decades and is still only partly understood.  Customer needs are complicated, and again, one of the main reasons why customer care is not evident is that people simply do not realise how complicated these needs can be. Perhaps you are not convinced. Let us take, as an example, somebody buying a car.

You would think that all they want to do is to be able to get from A to B as quickly and as cheaply as possible. So, as a car salesperson, you recommend a second-hand Mini. You cannot understand the look on their face! Unfortunately, you don’t get a second chance to suggest something else as they have left in disgust. We have failed to realise that various requirements make up this seemingly simple need for a car; status, keeping up with the neighbours, transport for a family of six children plus Granny, ability to tow a twenty foot long caravan, etc.

The list of requirements could go on ad infinitum. Some needs will be more important than others; some will be aspirations rather than needs. Some needs will be less to do with what they want, and more to do with how they want to be treated.

Perhaps we are beginning to get the idea that caring for customers is not as simple as we had originally thought. Well some of us at least may be comforted with the fact that we do not have to deal with the general public. Many of us deal with customers who are perhaps large industrial corporations, or local government, or at the very least businesses rather than individuals.

Thank goodness that it is only necessary to deal with the factual needs of such customers.  We can forget the seemingly strong, sometimes irrational, emotional needs of people. Wrong. Sorry, even worse than that - dead wrong!

Organisations do not do business with each other - it’s the people within the organisation that do business with the people in another organisation. These people are more concerned with how they are treated personally, than they are with the facts of the matter.

This concept is at the very foundations of effective customer care. Treat customers as real people, identifying and meeting their personal needs as much as you are concerned to get the right product to them. We shall come back to this concept later  on in the workbook.

What happens if we fail to identify and meet customer needs?

Without customers everything stops. It may take some time, but eventually everything stops.  Without customers there is no business, no organisation even.

Why is it that customers change their loyalty to a particular supplier?
It’s really quite simple. If we don’t get it right for our customers they go elsewhere. They begin to look around, and before too long, in this competitive world of ours, they find someone who is prepared to listen to them, someone who seems willing and able to identify and meet their needs better than you.

So they leave, taking their business elsewhere.

And they don’t come back.

Ever!

The exception to this rule occurs in a monopoly situation, where one has no choice but to go to a single supplier in a particular market. Such situations are becoming more and more rare all over the world. Wherever you look, and seemingly in every area of activity, people are exercising their ability and right to choose.  Governments are actively encouraging competition.  We will look at this in more detail in chapter 3.

Why then is customer care not common to all organisations?

For the reasons that we have already identified, it seems like simple common sense to look after customers. Common sense yes, but not common practice. Why, if it is so very obvious, are customers needs so often overlooked?

The answer is simple.

Wrong priorities.

Let’s go back to our very first question - why do organisations exist? We said that it was to meet customer needs. This is the right answer, but that is not what is seen in so very many organisations.  Can you think of any examples?

We have seen that organisations are made up of people, and that it is these people who either give good or bad customer service. What are the priorities of most people?

They could be:
       - Paying the mortgage
       - Getting promotion
       - Keeping their head down
       - Exercising power and control
       - Saving for a holiday
       - Getting the report finished for the boss.
       - .................. etc.

In short, customers don’t stand a chance - the staff are far too busy!

The priorities of senior management teams have, often, in the past, also worked against customer care. It seems that far more attention is paid to “the bottom line”, to profits, to controlling costs, or to meeting the needs of the senior management team, rather than to customer needs. Yet, if we could only realise it, if we really did look after customers in the way that we should (the way we ourselves like to be treated), it would make life much better and our jobs more satisfying, with less hassle (and businesses would be more profitable).

The consequences of getting it right

To pick out just a few of the many benefits of getting customer care right:

  more business   =   more income for organisation =   more job security;

  fewer mistakes  =   less hassle =   happier people;

  higher quality   =   higher profits  =   a bigger cake to share;

  more profits = more wealth for society = better care for people;

  the opportunity to be a part of a winning team.

By the time you finish this material, you will be able to build up a picture of what it would look like if customer care was really working in your organisation, and will be able to expand on this list. These are the prizes for which you are now competing.

Definition of customer care

Before we proceed to examine the essential elements which make up good customer care, we should define the concept.  How should this essential constituent of good business be defined? Is it just learning to smile and say “Have a nice day”? No.  It is much more fundamental than that, and needs to run through the whole organisation from top to bottom and back up again. The definition that we shall use throughout this workbook is that...

CUSTOMER CARE MEANS GETTING BETTER AT IDENTIFYING AND MEETING CUSTOMER NEEDS EFFECTIVELY

YOUR CUSTOMERS AND THEIR NEEDS

Your customers and the auto-pilot

Having learnt what customer care is, we now need to get down to the practicalities of how you can improve the care you give to your customers. First things first; who are your customers and what do they get from your organisation?

It really is extremely important to take time to consider who our customers are, and what they receive, otherwise we find it all too easy to overlook them.

Imagine an employee on a production line in a car factory. Their job, all day every day, is to put the wheels on cars as they pass in front of them. This may or may not be your idea of an ideal job, but for some, it’s exactly what they want to do. Back to the job of the wheel fitter. How long does it take for the task of putting on the wheels to become an automatic response for the person doing it? A couple of weeks at the very most. This kind of repetitive job takes little conscious thought. While this person works, they can hold a conversation with others on the line. They can dream of their holidays, or other social events.  Because of familiarity with the job, they don’t need to think about it any more. They are on auto-pilot.

Now think about a supermarket checkout operator. All the time spent at work doing the same thing - lift the can of peas, pass it across the bar code reader, put it down; pick up the washing liquid, pass it across the bar code reader, put it down; pick up the....

How much attention is given to the customer?

Very little - frequently none.

You see, this checkout operator doesn’t have to think to do the job - it has become automatic, just like in the car production line. They are on auto-pilot!

How do you think the customer going through the checkout feels?

You might say the checkout operator is just doing their job. The customer gets to know how much to pay don’t they?

Yes, but how do they feel?

Do they feel valued as a customer? Do they feel respected as an individual? Do they feel as if they are dealing with a checkout operator as a person, or as a machine? Will they come back? Or will they look elsewhere until they find somewhere where they feel their custom is really valued?  They will probably go back until someone somewhere gives them the service they would really like, without increasing prices. How long do you suppose the average bank would keep their customers if there really was a viable alternative.  It says something that most prefer to draw their cash from machines in the cold and wet, rather than face the average friendly bank officer. Of course, some banks recognise what an unfriendly face they present to their customers and are working to improve the situation.

Unless we all constantly give active thought to who our customers are, and what their needs are, we are in danger of switching into auto-pilot. The result of this is poor customer care, not as a result of our being deliberately unpleasant, but simply by not attending carefully to identifying and meeting our customers’ needs.

Two key questions therefore emerge:

1.  Who are my customers?

2.  What are their needs?

1. Who are my customers?

Having seen the need to give active thought to customers, let us do that now in your organisation. What do you supply, and to whom? Do you supply products or services? Do you supply many small customers or one big one. Before you carry on, make a note of some examples of what you supply, and to whom it is supplied.

           Customer                          What you Supply

Some people have a problem at this stage because they have little contact with customers outside the organisation. It’s easy, they say, for somebody in constant contact with customers to talk about customer care, but what about me, what can I do?

We all have customers - it’s just that some of them are outside our organisation, and some are part of our own organisation, they are internal customers.

Introducing internal customers
Anybody who receives anything from us can usefully be thought of as a customer. For instance, if we work in accounts, our customers might include other people in other offices who need the information we provide. Somebody in charge of stores could think of the people they supplied as customers. The person responsible for running the organisation’s computer system could view all the users of that system as customers.

An interesting part of this idea is that everyone gets the chance to be both internal customers and suppliers. The secretary has to supply typing and filing to their boss (the customer), but equally, the secretary is a customer for computing services supplied by the computer manager.

There are three key reasons for using this idea of internal customers:

1.   It makes people focus on what they do for other people - meeting other    people’s needs.

2.   It should prompt everyone to seek to better identify their internal customer’s     needs.

3.   If a company constantly improves the manner in which the needs of internal     customers are met, it is inevitable that the quality of goods and services      
    going to external (real) customers will also rise.

Throughout this customer service training material we will refer to both internal and external customers. Before you carry on, make sure you fully understand the idea of internal customers. The best way to do this is to think of the people within your organisation to whom you supply a product or a service, e.g. a piece of information or perhaps something more tangible. These are your internal customers.

2. What are my customer’s needs?

Another seemingly simple question - surely we can make a good guess as to what our internal or external customer’s needs are, particularly if we have been supplying them for any length of time?

Yes, and this is the problem. Everywhere you look you can see people who assume they already know what their customer’s needs are, and as a result do not bother to find out whether or not they are getting it right.

Later in this material you will examine in some detail how to identify specific needs, and how to make sure you are getting things right for your customers. For now, let us consider what sorts of needs arise.

Customers have all sorts of needs, for example:

  Technical:   Specifically what do they want? Which particular product?  Which options do they need?

  Commercial:   How much money do they have available? There is always a limit, and no matter how much they want “the best”, a compromise must be made.

  Personal:    Does this purchase fit a person’s “image”? Will it enhance their standing with peers? Will it expose them to risk of failure?

Generally speaking, technical and commercial needs i.e. what colour, by when, supplied to where, are easier to relate to than personal needs. They are more defined, with perhaps less chance of misunderstanding. Personal needs, the needs of the individual with whom you are dealing, are generally more difficult to ascertain and check.

As was previously mentioned, effective customer care means identifying and meeting ALL needs, and this includes customer’s personal needs.

Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking we are just dealing with a particular company or office. Customers are always people, not organisations or departments.

Typical personal needs include:

    The need to be valued as a customer;

    The need to be re-assured you are making the right decision;

    The need to believe it was your choice;

    The need to feel secure with your supplier.

The range of needs, whether technical, commercial or personal is vast. We do not need to know all the possibilities, but we clearly do need to know what are the needs of our particular customers.

Example 2.1

Scenario: The car salesperson sees the prospective customer walk into the showroom.  He has just been grilled by the boss because sales are down.  The boss has threatened to give the salesperson the sack if no cars are sold in the next week.  The salesperson desperately tries to convince the prospective customer that they cannot afford not to buy a new car.  He goes on at length about how fuel-efficient, and comfortable the car is.  He extols the reliability, the low depreciation rate, interest free credit etc.

The prospective customer makes his excuses and leaves.  The salesperson seems pre-occupied in talking about his cars rather than finding out what the customer might need.

Example 2.2

Scenario: The estate agent asks questions in a pleasant manner, really trying to understand the needs of an elderly couple who wish to buy some property.  They have spoken of the need for a smaller place, perhaps a bungalow. The estate agent gradually builds up a more complete picture of what the couple require.  She is concerned not just with facts, such as how many bedrooms are required, but also wants to know how they feel about the prospect of moving house.

Having established as complete a picture as possible, the agent finally begins to show them details of the properties that seem to match their requirements.

The couple feel increasingly secure and not only buy the property from the agent, but also introduce a number of their friends to the agent.  Some of these friends subsequently use the estate agent.

TRENDS IN CUSTOMER CARE

Why has customer care suddenly risen to prominence in recent years?

Thousands of years ago, when people first began to trade together, it was self-evident that a supplier needed to be careful to look after customers. With little protection from local or national Governments and with relatively little separation of the sincere from the charlatan, the consequences of failing to meet customers' needs were literally matters of life and death. 

If it was then so self evident that meeting customers' needs should be of primary importance, why is such care no longer widely evident?

Three key factors have led to losing sight of customers’ needs:

1.  The rise of very large and complex industrial and social organisations, in which many individuals had little or no contact with colleagues, let alone customers. In these environments, it became all to easy to lose sight of the real reason for the company’s existence. The real reason, (as stated in chapter one) is to always meet customers’ needs.

2.  A mistaken belief as to why the organisation exists.  For instance, it has been widely held that organisations exist to create employment. Governments and economists often foster this view of commercial and other organisational activity.  Why bother to identify and meet customer needs if all you are there for is to create jobs?

3.  People are fundamentally self-centred. This is seen particularly in young children, who have to be trained to consider other people. Older people often opt out and take the attitude that they no longer need to worry about what others think.  They may take less care in masking their self-centredness. Focusing on other people’s needs does not come naturally to most of us.

In recent years, it has been increasingly realised that training was essential to counter the prevailing attitudes as outlined above, and give people the specific interpersonal skills which now come under the heading of “Customer Care” or to use a current phrase T.Q.M. (Total Quality Management, in which proper attitudes to and service for the customer are recurring themes).

The result has been a world-wide trend of training to restore the centrality of meeting customer needs.

The difference between needs and expectations

Customer needs can be defined as that which the customer must have. Customer expectations are very different. Expectations are concerned with how the customer expects to be treated. As time passes, needs may not change at all, expectations, however, are always on the move.

Your customer’s expectations are determined by all sorts of factors, for instance:

    How they have been treated as a customer in the past?

    What happened when last they came to you as a customer?

    Who have they been talking to who has also been a customer?

    What have they read, or seen on the television about customer service?

The reason for drawing attention to what seems to be simply a semantic difference is of crucial importance to delivering effective customer care.

Currently, customer expectations are changing and increasing at a phenomenal rate.

To draw attention to this fundamental point, let us look at some examples:

Product or Service   Example of Rising Expectations

Cars            Cars are required to be quieter, faster, more economical, more environmentally friendly, etc.

Health Care       People expect to wait less time, for better quality care, in nicer settings, which will help them to live longer and longer!
   
Food           A wider and wider range of food is considered “normal”,  and should be available now, regardless of season, or where in the world it comes from.

Why are customer expectations rising, and at what rate?

The reason that expectations are rising is simply that it is getting easier to communicate with other people, and learn from their experience rather than having to learn from our own.

This ease of communication can be attributed to a large number of factors:

Wider literacy and numeracy, enabling many people to significantly broaden their knowledge and experience;

Increasing mobility, leading to more and more contact between consumers of products and services;

Broadcast technology, in particular television and radio - bringing experts in every  field of human endeavour and knowledge into millions of homes for hours on end  every day.

This rising trend in customer expectations is clearly of major importance if we are to have a thorough grasp of customer care. The most significant implication is that we are trying to hit a moving target. The fact that we get customer care right today is absolutely no guarantee that we will get it right tomorrow.

It is increasingly recognised that customer expectations are rising exponentially.

Implications of exponential growth in customer expectations

The reason you are working through these notes is that you presumably have recognised the need to improve your customer care skills. This realisation is likely to have come as a result of failure to meet customer needs. If you are currently failing to meet your customers' needs, without attention to improving the skills of customer care, the gap between what you provide and what your customers expect will widen. This is the nature of exponential growth.

With more and more suppliers of every conceivable product or service entering every market-place, customers have the potential to move quickly between suppliers. This applies equally to internal and external customers. Many executives, thinking themselves secure, have been replaced by contracted external “consultants”, because they failed to meet internal customers’ needs.

The down-side of getting customer care wrong is self-evident. Equally, the benefits of getting it right are many.

The benefits of getting customer care right

The benefits to the organisation of getting customer care right include:

   Loyal, satisfied customers who will stick with you;

   Better quality business, higher margins with fewer problems;

   Ultimately lower unit costs because of time not spent fire-fighting;

   Good standing in your chosen market-place bringing security.

The benefits to you of getting customer care right include:

   The satisfaction that comes from getting things right for others;

    Greater career opportunities - organisations will increasingly prize
         customer care skills           

   Job security and enhanced rewards.

Customer care opportunities

Perhaps the largest business opportunity facing companies and individuals in the developed world relates to customer care. 

People are increasingly hungry to find suppliers in whom they can place their trust; suppliers who make life easier for their customers by delivering what they are expected to deliver on time.

When customers are enjoying the benefits of being at the very centre of all that you and your organisation undertakes, price becomes very much a secondary issue.

People will pay a premium to be looked after as customers. This premium will obviously be helpful in paying for the level of training, staff quality and all the other factors required to implement and maintain really effective customer care.

However, not all the additional profit created from customer care will be required to insure this improved care. Far from it. It seems that significant financial rewards are available to those individuals and companies who seize the opportunities that result from this exponential rise in customer expectations.

ATTITUDE-A KEY TO EFFECTIVE CUSTOMER CARE

Your attitude towards customers

How someone feels personally about giving customer care is absolutely crucial. In the past, many customer care programmes have failed because they did not get through to people’s “hearts and minds”. Such an approach is typified by a bored, sullen, uncommunicative shop assistant advising you to have a nice day.

Another example is of the “trained” receptionist whose opening lines go something like this:

"Good morning, this is MegaProducts UK Ltd, Tracy speaking, thank you for calling, how may I help you?"

What was designed as a pleasant, courteous greeting has turned into a mantra, spoken without thought or feeling. Tracy probably doesn’t even know how dreadful it sounds, because she doesn’t engage her brain until the caller asks for something out of the ordinary.

Even those people who do give thought to what they are doing sometimes feel unhappy at the prospect of being in the apparently subservient position of supplier.

Most holiday-makers returning from the USA comment on the quality of service they are given everywhere they go. It seems that our American counterparts do not have such a problem with the idea of giving service, although exceptions exist.

It is very striking that, regardless of the words used, most of us can determine very quickly whether the person with whom we are dealing has an attitude of being genuinely interested in helping us, or if it is merely pretence. We shall find out why in the next chapter.

The attitude of the organisation - company culture
Regardless of whether or not a particular individual has an attitude of looking after customers, perhaps of greater importance is whether the company has this attitude.

We have already seen that until relatively recently, many large organisations, both in the private and public sector, lost sight of why they existed. They became self-serving and focused all their attention on their own needs rather than the need of the customers for whom they existed.

The needs that were pre-eminent were therefore:

Making profit; Paying shareholders; Building empires of power for senior individuals and the company.

One of the major changes affecting organisations in recent years has been that senior management teams have been forced to ask the key question “Why does this organisation exist?” This has resulted in an enormous quantity of “Mission Statements” being written, ostensibly setting out the answer to the key question.

And yet, customers hardly ever seem to appear in such documents. Organisations, run by the people that have run them for years, still focus on who they are and what they are going to become in the future.

Absolutely fundamental to organisations’ success (or possibly simply survival), is the need for organisations to effectively turn themselves inside out, to start again perhaps, with their customers firmly at the very centre of all that is undertaken.

This is in marked contrast to many situations, where customers are simply seen as a constant source of grief and problems.

How to change attitude and maintain constant improvement

Some key questions:

Regardless of your seniority within your organisation, ask yourself what your attitude is towards your customers. Do you really care about what their needs are, and about your ability to meet these needs, or do you simply use customers as a means of achieving your own ambitions?

Ask the same question of your office, department or division.

Similarly, ask this question about your organisation. Is your company concerned with identifying and meeting the needs of its customers, or is it simply using customers to get the bottom line return it is seeking?

These questions are examples of self evaluation. This is a key life skill, but has particular relevance to customer service training. It is far better that you realise for yourself that change is required, rather than for anyone else to spell it out for you. The added benefit is that you are uniquely placed to comment usefully on your situation!

Some people feel uncomfortable with the idea of looking at themselves with a view to improvement. There is a positive side to this, for at least it implies that they realise things could change!

Organisations and individuals that succeed in implementing really good customer care have developed this key skill of self evaluation, which enables them to continually monitor the way they identify and meet customer needs.

Attitude and Behaviour

Before we leave the subject of attitude, it is worth drawing attention to the difference between attitude and behaviour.

Question

Whenever we have contact with customers, we react to them and they to us. Do they react to our attitude or to our behaviour?

Answer

They must always react to our behaviour, because they cannot see our attitude.  Think about it - does attitude show through in behaviour?

Most of the time, as has already been pointed out, “what you see is what you get”. This is because there is an unbroken link between attitude and behaviour for most people. However, behaviour is a learned skill, and can, therefore, be unlearned or changed.

It might be suggested that the implication is that what is important is behaviour, not attitude. This is only partly right. In the past, customer service training has sought to change behaviour without successfully tackling the need to change attitude.

What is important for customer care success is that both attitude and behaviour change.

As a result of working through this customer service training material you may well be developing a positive attitude towards customers, but if you do not also work at behaviour change, it is all too easy to slip into the behaviour you have learned in your current or past employment.

Seek to identify what behaviour would be appropriate for you to
use with your customers - and use it.

LISTENING TO CUSTOMERS

Listen to customers - common sense maybe - but not common practise

We have already spent a good deal of time looking at your organisation and its customers, both internal and external, and the needs of these customers. We have defined customer care as getting better at identifying and meeting customer needs effectively.

It is surely self-evident that listening to the customers is fundamental to providing a high level of customer care.

Self-evident it may be, but surprisingly few organisations and individuals possess and use good listening skills.

It could be argued that perhaps the biggest single problem in the world is that nations and their people do not listen to each other!

People are all so very different. We come from such a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures.  We all have different ways of thinking and differing priorities - so much opportunity for misunderstanding.

Often, nobody even tries to listen to customers. Even when it seems that someone is listening, it usually means that they are busy thinking of what to say next.

The problems of not listening to customers

All manner of problems emerge if we don’t listen to customers:

- Customers don’t get what they thought they had ordered;
- Assumptions are made, often leading to enormous problems;
- We fail to pick up a particular customer’s unique needs.

Perhaps you could take a few minutes to think back to an occasion recently when you were a customer, and nobody really listened to you. Make some comments on the blank sheet opposite about how you felt, and what subsequently happened?

If you are brave enough, you might like to do the same for the last time you didn’t listen to your customers. Go on we won't tell - what happened? What should have happened?

What are the key skills of listening to customers?

Concentration

Unless we concentrate on what the customer is saying, we are not listening effectively. We will miss important clues about what the customer is really trying to say to us. It is all too easy to let one's mind wander, and not give our full attention to what is being said.

What do we concentrate on? Just the words, or perhaps the facts? Do we find ourselves paying attention to mannerisms or accent?

Concentrate on what the person is trying to communicate and don’t simply pay
undue attention to the words they choose, and how they use them.

Some customers may not have the vocabulary or confidence to eloquently state their needs. But if you concentrate, you will be able to hear what they are really trying to say.

Questioning and encouraging customers to talk

Asking questions is good for all sorts of reasons. Firstly, it gets the customer talking, which is useful in itself. Secondly, the last person to ask a question is always in control - useful to keep conversations on track.

There are two main types of question; often referred to as open and closed questions. The difference is that closed questions can only be answered “yes” or “no”, whereas open questions cannot be answered “yes” or “no”.

Examples of closed questions are:

  “Do you want delivery tomorrow?”

  “Do you currently use our company’s products?”

  “Can I help you, Madam?”

Examples of open questions are:

  “When do you want delivery?”

  “Which company’s products do you currently use?”

  “What sort are you looking for?”

Open questions almost always use the words; who, which, where, when, how or what. Open questions are used to get and keep the customer talking. Closed questions are used for getting specific queries cleared up with no misunderstanding. Most people dealing with customers would benefit from practice in asking open questions.

There are all sorts of other ways of getting customers to talk, for instance, simply looking as if we want to hear more. The most important by far, however, is being able to stay quiet. Nature, we are told, abhors a vacuum, and few people are comfortable in a protracted silence. This is why somebody jumps in to fill that silence. Being aware of this point, perhaps you could develop your own ability to stay quiet, and listen.

Empathy

Empathy, in this context, means being able to share and participate in the feelings and emotions of your customer. Developing this skill enables you to see things from their point of view, and clearly leads to a better understanding of their needs.

Confirming Understanding

As we have seen, many things can distort communication. Perhaps nothing aids really effective two-way communication as much as if you take time to check and confirm that what you think you have heard is what your customer thinks they said.

Have you ever played the party game where a number of people are in a line, and have to whisper a message to each other one at a time. The point is that no-one is allowed to check understanding, so surprise, surprise, the end result is totally different to how it started.

Understanding the importance of verbal and non-verbal communication

Research into face to face communication has consistently demonstrated that of all that is communicated, very large proportions are attributable to non-verbal communication. It has been found that of everything that is communicated.

7%  is attributable to the words we speak
38%  is attributable to the way the words are spoken (tone of voice, inflection, etc.)
55%  is attributable to non-verbal communication - typically referred to as body language

The implications of these figures are surprising, indicating that what we say is far less important than how we say it. Moreover, that far and away the most important aspect of effective communication is how we come across as a person in all of our non-verbal communication.

As a result of years of unconscious training, we are all very good at reading body language - if we concentrate. Those who make a study of this fascinating area can, as we saw in the last chapter, change their behaviour (i.e. their body language) to increase their communication skills.

Particular problems listening on the telephone

Having identified now that non-verbal communication accounts for over half of all communication, it is immediately apparent why the telephone presents us with such large problems in customer care.

We should try to make up all that is missing (as a result of not being able to see our customer) by developing particularly good verbal skills. This means developing vocabulary, pacing speech effectively, enunciating our words clearly and so on.

It is as a result of not being able to see what is happening, that so many problems of customer care occur with the telephone. If it is not answered promptly, the impression is given of a sloppy, unprofessional organisation that could not care less about its’ customers.

While on the subject of the telephone in relation to customer care, please become totally proficient in using your telephone system. It seems bizarre that people do not bother to spend a few minutes of their time becoming acquainted with their telephone, enabling them to transfer, re-route and so on. Particularly when this will save them time later and avoid giving the impression of being unconcerned for their customers.

WHY PEOPLE BUY

Why are products and services bought?

Products and services are bought for what they will do for the customer, and not for what they are.

Although this seems to be stating the obvious, by now you are realising that really effective customer care begins when we return to basics and make sure we are getting them right.

The reason that your attention is drawn to the fact that customers are more interested in what the product or service will do for them, than for what it is, is that most suppliers dealing with customers are more interested in what they are selling than in the customer’s needs.

This applies as much to suppliers supplying internal customers as it does to those dealing with external customers. Some examples are probably called for.

Example 1

A customer goes into a shop selling electrical goods. She has gone to the shop because her video recorder has finally decided that enough is enough, and the repair man has agreed, suggesting that more money spent on it would be a waste.

A keen young shop assistant asks her what she wants, and she replies that her video recorder needs replacing.

The keen young shop assistant then spends fifteen minutes confusing the customer with details of all manner of exotic things that video recorders can do these days. After much talk of picture in picture, and stereo surround sound, and SCART sockets, and 3D holographic image capability and, and, and........

….the woman leaves the shop without a video recorder.

….the keen young shop assistant is pleased that he had the opportunity to explain all the wonderful things his machines could do....

The keen young shop assistant failed to ask what the woman wanted - simply an easy to use video recorder to record programmes for the open university degree she was taking. She leaves wondering whether she is likely to ever get an easy-to-use recorder.

Example 2

An office manager wants to gain access to the company’s computerised stock levels via the personal computer on his desk. He approaches the computer services manager.

The computer services manager rubs his hands, reaches for some catalogues and begins to explain the advantages and disadvantages of each of the 17 different ways in which the job could be done.

The office manager mumbles his apologies and makes an early retreat.
In our two examples, the first with an external customer, the second with an internal customer, the suppliers are far more interested in what their product or service is, than what it will do for the customer.

In both cases, the suppliers should have begun asking open questions to determine what the customer wanted - the customer’s commercial, technical and personal needs.

Having once determined what was actually being sought, the suppliers could then have begun to try to meet the need. It is interesting that we speak of “trying to meet the need”. This is really what selling is all about, and one of the first things taught to professional salespeople is the need to sell benefits, not features. Let us look together at what this means, and then apply it to customer care.

Features and benefits

A feature of a product or service relates to what it is. The benefit of a feature relates to what it will do for the customer.

     Feature   =   What it is

     Benefit   =   What it will do for the customer

       Feature                                                Benefit

The computer can be connected via          No additional expense - can do it
via telephone lines                                      within existing budgets

Practical implications for customer care

What are the practical implications of features and benefits to effective customer care?

Assuming we have identified real needs, having listened effectively, the practical working out of this important point is that we should now talk to our customers primarily about what our product or service will do for them - not simply what it is.

This takes much more effort than simply relating what the product or service is - perhaps using the same words that have been used time and time again with other customers. It is a very real aid to communication to use the same words as the customer.

By referring to what the product or service will do for the customer, in this particular situation, we demonstrate the quality of our understanding of their needs. It is often the case that at this stage the customer will say something like;

“that’s almost what I want, perhaps if it could just.....”

With dialogue like this, you and the customer move closer and closer together, until there is as close a match as is possible between what is available, and what is sought.

It is at this stage that we can truly say we have fulfilled the definition of customer care, which as you recall, was that

CUSTOMER CARE MEANS GETTING BETTER AND BETTER AT IDENTIFYING AND MEETING CUSTOMER NEEDS EFFECTIVELY.

ORGANISATION, ADMINISTRATION AND EFFECTIVE CUSTOMER CARE

No excuses - customers expect effective organisation and administration

So far, we have looked at the centrality of customers, and have seen that by identifying and meeting the needs of both internal and external customers we can ensure that standards of customer care are always rising.

We have seen that customer expectations are currently rising exponentially, and this leads to the subject of this section.

Customers are increasingly unwilling to accept ineffective organisation and administration.

In days gone by, when relatively little changed year on year, it was perhaps reasonable to say to a customer that nothing could be done to change things. “That’s the way things are done here”, and “change the system? - that’s more than my job’s worth!”

More and more customers are now aware that this is not good. Things can always change for the better. If your customer does not feel you are making sufficient effort to get things right, they will increasingly choose to leave, and become somebody else’s customer.

Structured to deliver effective customer care

We read previously that it is crucial for the senior management teams of organisations to ask the fundamental question “Why does this organisation exist?” The answer to this question should be related in some way to meeting customers' needs. Every organisation has customers.

If the organisation is only just getting around to asking this fundamental question, it is likely that its structure will be inappropriate for delivering effective customer care.

Generally speaking, whatever a customer wants, it is required immediately. Whilst the customer, for any number of legitimate reasons may have to wait, ideally, the product or service is required now.

And yet, many organisations have not given sufficient authority to the people actually dealing with customers for them to react immediately to customers' needs.

How can a customer’s needs be really identified and met satisfactorily, if every time the customer says anything, the person with whom they are dealing has to refer back to their supervisor or manager for permission to take the matter further?  For example, restaurants where your credit card has to be double checked by a supervisor, or a simple decision to replace some low cost piece of defective merchandise.

Organisations around the world are removing whole layers of management, and traditional company hierarchies are disappearing.  The reasons for this phenomenon are partly communication improvements, partly empowering staff to act with authority, coupled with cost cutting and efficiency improvement.

However, re-structuring alone is not sufficient by itself. It is particularly important to ensure that those dealing with customers take upon themselves personal responsibility for meeting the internal and external customers' needs.

The largest single reason why this is sometimes such a difficult task is that managers used to exercising control, and knowing just what is going on, are having to let go, and thereby (they feel) lose some authority. An apt analogy is that of parents having to increasingly release control over their children, with the aim of the child becoming totally independent.  It has to be done but we all know about teenage stress.

This means that we can predict with some certainty that organisations will be made up of more and more independent individuals, tasked not with simply doing a job, but taking responsibility for identifying and meeting the needs of customers (whether internal or external).

Administration for customer care

For whose benefit is your organisation’s administration run? Most will admit that the administration of their organisation is for the benefit of "management"; to provide information, control data, add to task efficiency etc. Clearly, administration is for the benefit of your organisation, and it is this that is typically at the heart of the problems associated with administration and customer care.

It is not at all unusual for an organisation’s administrative systems to give its customers major problems. The main question to ask is whether your organisation’s administration is helping or hindering your efforts to increase the quality of your customer care.

In particular, and leading on from the points made in the last section, does your system of administration enable you meet your customers' needs for information straight away, or is some form of delay typical?

Personal management and customer care

Effective customer care will only be seen when the people responsible for delivering it are effectively managing themselves. This boils down to being good managers of their time, using the time on the job to concentrate on the primary issues. In turn, good time management can be summed up as, getting the priorities right.

It is not at all untypical that people react negatively when customer care programmes are introduced into an organisation.  Often they make the comment that they simply have not got the time to do what they are expected to do already, never mind anything new, like more service for customers!

And so, even when it is self evident that effective customer care should be at the very centre of everything that is done, nothing changes.

It is very unlikely that anyone is going to give you any more time! Your only response, therefore, will come from a very limited range of options;

      - Discontinue low priority tasks

      - Become more efficient at what you do

      - Delegate more to other people

Of these, the first is probably the most important. If you believe that you have no time to spend identifying and meeting your customers' needs, stop now, and re-consider your priorities.

Computers and customer care
Computers have quickly become established as a key element in most organisation’s administrative systems. In a relatively short time, they have replaced armies of clerks, typists and office workers. Computers bring a major problem.

Computers can be very inflexible - the very quality we are seeking to eradicate as we increase our care of customers.

Whilst there are no simplistic answers to this problem, three key points can be made:

*   Computers are programmed by people. These people must have an awareness   of the need of their systems to increase, not decrease, the organisations ability   to respond quickly and effectively to its customers' needs.

*   As computer technology advances, increased capability needs to be harnessed   to making them more responsive to customers, rather than meeting the needs of the providers of computing facilities.  There really is no excuse for invoices so complex that customers cannot understand them.

*   Making the same point as was made about telephone systems, computer users must have sufficient skill, so that the computer becomes just one more tool enabling better customer care.

Business writing skills

The purpose of this customer service training material is to give you the foundations of customer care.  We cannot teach business writing skills in this material. However, it is valuable to point out that as more and more people within your organisation are given more and more freedom to identify and meet customer needs effectively, they will need to develop their business writing skills.

Often, a telephone call will suffice to let a customer know what is happening. A letter, however, can often bring much more peace of mind and security, because it can be "used in evidence".  Hopefully, it will not need to be so used but people do tend to believe what is written more strongly than what is spoken.

Perhaps as a result of this, business letters tend to be written in too formal a style which customers find both intimidating and boring.

It is quite a skill to construct letters that look easy to read, are interesting and yet still convey everything of importance.  Should you be doing something to improve your (or your employees') skills in this area?

WHEN THINGS GO WRONG

Always an opportunity

Even when you aim for perfection - it is inevitable that some things will go wrong.

With the best intentions, mistakes are still made. Promises may be broken because priorities change with time. As we have already seen, communication between two people can be extremely difficult. It is little wonder then that problems arise.

Realistically, no customer expects everything to run faultlessly at all times, no matter what they might say in the heat of the moment when things have gone wrong.

Indeed, it could be argued that it is only when things go wrong that your customer has the chance of really seeing “what you are made of”.

It is for this reason that when things go wrong, it should always be viewed as an opportunity to build the relationship between you and your customer.

Sequence for handling problems and complaints

In order that problems or complaints always have a happy ending, it is useful to systematically work through the following sequence of events. This sequence could be of particular benefit to relatively inexperienced members of the organisation.

1. Face up to the problem

Whilst it may not be prudent to immediately tell everybody about everything, do not expect the problem to go away if you look the other way!

If it seems very likely that you are about to let down a customer, for whatever reason, it is far better to let them know so that they have more time to react, and perhaps make alternative plans.

It would be a good idea to have all available facts at your fingertips to answer the inevitable questions.

2. Listen

Having let the customer know there’s a problem, or perhaps hearing about a problem for the first time - LISTEN.

If the customer is particularly worked up about the situation, give them the opportunity to tell you exactly how they feel! Notice that it is important that they get the chance to express emotion. As ever, the facts of the matter will take second  place to the customer’s perception of what is going on. We will look at this in more detail in the next section

Whatever you do, do not start arguing as to who is to blame for the situation. Whilst it is not the case that the customer is always right, they are the customer, and without them, your organisation’s very existence is threatened.

Because of our ancestry over millions of years, when we come under perceived attack, our animal instinct is to become defensive, or even worse, to attack back. This is not an appropriate response!

3. Show you understand

It is particularly important in situations like this that the customer believes that they have been successful in communicating with you. It is your job to show you understand, for instance, by repeating back to them what they have just said, but in your own words.

It is possible to empathise without apologising. Empathy shows you understand how they feel, but until you investigate the situation, it is too early to apologise. Problems with customers frequently arise because of mistakes they, the customer, have made.  Apologies should be saved until things are clearer.

4. Take personal responsibility for the problem

Once the customer has made you aware of the problem it should become your personal problem, until or unless one of your colleagues, with the agreement of the customer, takes it over.

This approach will prevent situations developing in which the customer has to explain to someone else in your organisation for a second, third or even fourth time. If this ever occurs, serious damage has been done to your organisation’s credibility in the eyes of the customer.

5. Agree an action plan

Ask the customer what they want to happen next - they may well be able to comment usefully, and it will help you determine the customer’s priorities.

Negotiate a plan of what is going to happen, and when. Pay particular attention to who is going to do what, and the time scales involved.

Ensure that you obtain your customers agreement to the plan, that it meets their needs.

6. Make sure the plan works!

Get on with it - it is probably the highest priority task you currently have. Everything else can wait.

If you involve other people, effectively delegating tasks to them, you retain the responsibility for making sure the task is carried out.

Keep the customer informed. It is very reassuring for the customer when you make the effort to let them know what is going on.

When it is all sorted, make a point of asking the customer whether they are totally satisfied.

7. Undertake a review to ensure it cannot or will not happen again It is inevitable           that mistakes happen, but it is altogether different when the same mistake happens twice.

As soon as the problem is resolved, perhaps even before it is resolved, take all appropriate steps to ensure that this particular problem will not re-occur.

It will be seen that if problems and complaints were handled in this way, it would inevitably build the relationship between your organisation and the customer. The customer gets the chance to see your customer care in action.

This sequence is equally applicable to internal and external customers.

MEASURING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

How do you know when you ‘get there’?

You might be forgiven for thinking that the quality of customer care about which we have been talking is simply not possible. You may be tempted to conclude that it would all be very well if only it were possible but things cannot change round here. Above all you might be wondering whether you and your organisation will ever “get there”.

Effective customer care, however, is not a destination, it is a journey. No sooner will you have established what you think to be the very best service in your organisation’s area of activity, than somebody else will be doing better, threatening or even succeeding in taking away your customers.

Relatively little mention has been made specifically of quality so far in these notes. This seems an omission, in that real customer care only comes when the customer consistently receives quality in all their dealings with you.

The problem with the word ‘quality’, as it is currently used, is that it implies that you can arrive at a place where quality is “right”. This makes the same mistake as above, implying you have reached your destination.

Perhaps this is the biggest problem with various quality awards currently much in vogue - implying as they do, that once awarded, quality is good enough.

Measuring customer satisfaction

Having suggested that problems exist with some quality awards, it remains a fact that if the management of an organisation want to bring about change, one of the best ways is to introduce measurement.

Measurement brings objectivity in place of subjectivity; analysis of data rather than formless and possibly prejudiced discussion based on different people’s particular preferences and backgrounds.

Subjective judgements can all too easily result in misleading conclusions.

If appropriate measures could be established, surely it would be possible to fulfil the need in your organisation to constantly know how you are doing in relation to customer care.

Selecting appropriate measures of customer satisfaction

When faced with the need to monitor customer satisfaction, many companies make the fundamental mistake of monitoring customer dissatisfaction.

They measure for instance how many complaints they have received, ignoring the fact that complaints actually received is only the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps only one in ten dissatisfied customers make the effort to complain.

Such a company might measure the number of product returns, or the value of credits raised, even the number of staff employed in the customer complaints department. As we have already pointed out - measuring customer dissatisfaction.

It is to be anticipated that as organisations implement customer care programmes fully, and make all the changes outlined elsewhere in these notes such complaints should disappear altogether. Now what do you measure?

Here we have a problem, because whilst we can easily monitor the number of complaints, what we are now seeking to measure is the customer’s perception of you and your organisation.

Monitoring customer perception of your organisation

What do we mean “Perception” - what’s that got to do with facts?

What is really important in customer care is not the facts about how long it takes to do this, or that, but what the customer’s perception is of the organisation.

The internal and external customers' feelings about dealing with you as a supplier are far more important, for instance, than how many complaints are coming through.

Many ways of monitoring such customer perception are currently being developed, and this seems to be very much at the leading edge of customer care practice. Computers are increasingly being used to pull together a large number of apparently small clues about how customers are feeling.

Specialist staff are tasked with regularly interviewing customers and prospective customers, trying to build up an accurate picture of customer perception of organisations. This picture will obviously change with time, and as trends emerge, organisations can move far faster and more accurately than competitors who are not undertaking such measurement.

One of the key elements when undertaking such evaluation is a very genuine interest in how customers feel. As has been mentioned earlier, it is very easy to become defensive of the organisation. Such defensiveness will quickly prevent effective evaluation, as customers realise that their views are not really being sought.  It may not always be what you want to hear, but "warts and all" at least gives you something to target. And if your business is successful with some "warts" - hallelujah!

A CALL TO ACTION - DEVELOPING A PERSONAL  VISION OF EXCELLENT CUSTOMER CARE

The need for a vision

As you have worked through this book, it is to be hoped that you have been challenged to make significant changes to the way you work. Using these notes as a consultancy checklist should have stimulated an action programme for yourself and your company.  It has been our deliberate aim to make you aware of the enormous implications of getting customer care right.

Effective customer care, as you now realise, is far more than the froth of telling people to smile and say “Have a nice day”.

We have established the need to effect major changes in the way that most companies and most employees think and act. This implies the need to clearly identify where you and your organisation find themselves currently, and to establish clearly where you are going, by when, and how you are going to get there.

It is to be hoped that you already have a clear idea now of where you are. What might still be lacking is a clear idea of where you are going.

A great deal of benefit comes from determining as clearly as possible where you would like to be. If such a target or destination can be established (clearly visualised), surely it will guide you and your organisation towards the key decisions needed to ensure that you get to where you choose, rather than simply finding yourself where you end up.

In short, do you have a vision of where you are going in relation to customer care?

Complacency - the enemy of customer care

If our goal is constant innovation constantly focused on customers and their needs, the biggest threat we face is complacency.
Complacency is what suggests to us that:

  “It’s not that bad. It could certainly be worse”

  “We’re better than our competitors.”

  "Business is good - we do not need to do anything."

  "Business is too bad to be able to do anything right now."

  “We’ll start on the customer care programme next quarter.”

What is the answer to complacency, and the procrastination seen in the examples given above?

The best way to combat complacency is to always be dissatisfied with your standards of customer care. I call it, constructive dissatisfaction.  No matter how good you get, you can always do better.

What can you do immediately to improve your customer care?
So, in conclusion, what can you do immediately to improve the care you give to your customers? Have you now identified who your internal and external customers are? Have you begun to ask them yet what they think about you as a supplier?

Having asked all these questions of yourself, what can your organisation do? How far away is it from fully implementing all the ideas outlined?

Are you in a position to do anything about it?

This section is specifically geared towards managers who are in a position of authority to do something about customer care; but what if you are not in this position?

It is certainly the case that if the senior management of an organisation is fully supportive of customer care initiatives, there is much more chance of success. However, a great deal can be done without any reference to other people. Just get on with it!  Your success and initiative will be noticed, enthusiastic success is catching, you could infect the whole organisation.

A typical customer care implementation programme:-

1. Review of customer care leading to conclusion that action is required (Initial review).

2. Establish specific, measurable, attainable objectives with agreed time scales (Set objectives).

3. Initial workshop meetings, allowing sufficient time for all involved to realise the importance of customers and the implications of getting customer care right or wrong (Workshops).

4. Training programmes in the key skill areas identified in this workbook (Training). (In particular, concentrating on training managers and supervisors in coaching skills which will maintain momentum.)

5. Establishment of customer perception monitoring systems which will provide data on next target areas (Customer feedback).

MANAGING CUSTOMER CARE

Obtaining customer care through your team

This section is designed primarily for managers - those people with the opportunity and authority to implement the ideas outlined.

Essentially, a manager’s job is to obtain their results through other people. Many people in management positions make the fundamental mistake of seeking to be an example to members of their team, always aiming to do more than team members.

We will take then as a starting point that your main job as a manager is to enable your team to achieve its results. This means that having worked through these notes, you will want to implement these ideas in your team. Where should you start?

Starting a customer care programme

Should you adopt a softly, softly evolutionary approach to bring about the culture change required to fully implement all the ideas outlined? Or should you aim to tackle the issues in a revolutionary time scale?

Most trainers and management consultants would suggest that whilst one can clearly try to go too far, too fast, it is generally better to try to bring about change relatively quickly. This is because sufficient momentum has to be established quickly to carry the changes over the inevitable problems.

A suggested programme of training for change would follow the order used in these notes. Through a series of team meetings that you could almost certainly run yourself, you could start, as these notes started, with the key question “Why does the organisation exist?”

Moving on through the centrality of customers, you would review customer needs, the rising expectations of customers, the importance of attitude and so on.

It is inevitable that some scepticism will be seen, but the sceptics should beware; enthusiasm for looking after customers is catching!

Alternatively you could use the notes as the catalyst - obtain copies for your key staff have them work through it and then discuss the issues raised.  You will get varied points of view.  You might then decide to go it alone, or you might need outside help.

Keeping your team focused on customer care

A larger problem by far than starting a programme of customer care is keeping it going. Many customer care programmes have been started, only to fizzle out when the going got tough. 

The real challenge of managing customer care is how to keep people focused, not on their needs and aspirations, but on the needs and aspirations of their customers.

Customer care and customer service training and constant new ideas will do much to keep the sparkle active. However, there are no pat answers.  All that can be done as a final task is to challenge you at least to start out on this journey, whilst at the same time being realistic about the difficulties that lie ahead.

Can you as a manager accept the need to delegate power and authority to members of your team, enabling them to respond effectively to customers and their needs?  If you can give an honest "yes" then you have (to paraphrase a previous adventurer) taken a small step for management but a giant leap for your customers!

The rewards of getting customer care right, clearly outweigh the problems that are faced in achieving this goal.

All that remains is for you to put it all into practice and delight your customers - Good Luck.

COPYRIGHT SPEARHEAD TRAINING LIMITED

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