Every business organization across the globe has one thing in common and that is, that they all serve a customer. Most organizations would prefer to stay in business, so they are looking for ways to make sure their customer service is exceptional.
Why do you want to create exceptional customer service? If you create great experiences for your customers, they are more likely to stay with you longer, buy more of your product /service, and positively refer others to your organization. And that means more business and more profits for your company! Who doesn’t want that?!
Customer Service Starts on the Inside
The best organizations on the planet know that exceptional customer service, starts on the inside of the organization with the way that they engage and develop their employees. If you treat your employees with respect, authenticity and transparency, they are more likely to understand the expectations of the organization and can deliver what leadership is looking for.
Train and Develop Your Employees to Provide Great Customer Service
Next, comes training and developing those employees to be enabled with the proper skills to effectively serve your customer. You should provide your talent with ongoing learning opportunities, coaching and mentoring.
You can do this with a formal learning program (and even incent their learning with a learn and earn rewards program). You could also provide opportunities for your employees to work on challenging projects that have them problem solve and trouble shoot new situations they haven’t worked on before.
Another effective way to develop your employees is to provide one on one coaching with their managers and leaders. This allows for a very personalized plan to continue their growth in the organization. A great way to integrate one on one coaching, is to make it a step or part of your formal learning program. For example, GES’s learning programs have a focus on action planning, where learners create a plan of action as to how they will implement that learning in real life scenarios. Those plans of action are emailed directly to their supervisors, who can then meet with them and play an important role in the follow up and reinforcement of putting those learning principles into action. If you want to learn more, check out Why Action Planning is the Key for Successful Learning.
Recognize and Reward Your Employees for Providing Great Service
Lastly, if you recognize and reward your employees for going above and beyond with their colleagues and customers, they are more likely to continue that behavior. It also reinforces that behavior within the organization and sets expectations for other employees to know what types of behaviors are being rewarded so they are more likely to mirror them.
And who doesn’t like a little healthy competition sometimes? Recognizing exceptional employees can spark a bit of healthy competition in the talent pool, and further motivate others to reflect those behaviours. For example, you could provide weekly/monthly incentives for top performers to be recognized, or you could simply reinforce a culture of peer to peer and manager to employee recognition where all positive behaviors are acknowledged and rewarded.
For more information on positive recognition and reward incentive programs click here.
I hope this blog gave you some helpful tips on how to engage and develop your team so that they can provide better experiences for your customers to make them stay longer, buy more and positively refer others! If you have any questions or want to start a program in your organization to put these principles into action, contact me and I’d be happy to have a quick chat with you and your team!