The customer rules. If your entire team doesn’t excel in every aspect of the customer experience, customers will take their buying power elsewhere. Focused teamwork is essential.
Every single encounter that the customer has with your organization must be undeniably more superior to that provided by any of your competitors. If you can achieve this goal, your result will be a reputation for World-Class Customer Service and the highest levels of customer loyalty. You will also have the ability to obtain higher levels of customer advocacy, obtain more referrals, your company will benefit from advocates’ powerful word of mouth advertising, and you will see results where it counts…in your bottom line.
Start on the Inside
To get you where you want to go, start on the inside. You simply can’t deliver superior service to customers if employees don’t provide it to each other. Take these five steps to align your team for business growth and profitability.
1. Communicate and involve. Instruct every manager to gather their entire teams and express appreciation for their hard work. Then, communicate that your delivery of service must be far superior to your competitors, and continuous improvement is key. Explain that you will begin by improving how you serve each other, and that their involvement and teamwork will be required.
2. Create service excellence teams. Establish small service excellence teams with people from different departments to come forth with ideas to improve in these areas: teamwork, productivity, communication, internal customer service and employee morale throughout your company. Let each team select their own leader and have that person communicate with other branches to identify best practices they have in each area.
3. Break down barriers to true teamwork. Does territorial exist between your departments and branches? Do the branches operate as business silos? Is there conflict between individuals, teams, or managers that has not been resolved? Do you have unproductive or negative employees who pull down the rest of the team? Do your employees feel undervalued? Do you display favoritism? Do you have a boss who talks down to employees? All of these are barriers to teamwork. Break them down. No dealer owner or manager can afford any of these situations.
4. Empower? Enable First! So much has been said about empowering employees to solve problems. But you can’t empower them until they are enabled. The way to enable your team is to invest in training. You simply can’t assume people know how to make a connection with new customers, handle difficult customers and situations, and provide great service to own teams unless they are trained.
5. Ditch the term “employee.” Many companies no longer refer to staff as “employees.” They are referred to as “colleagues,” “team members,” or “associates.” The one I liked the best was discovered when I delivered a presentation for management at Verizon. They refer to each other as “my partner.” All of these infer a level of respect for the individual. Another term you may want to ditch is “customer satisfaction.” Satisfaction isn’t enough. Strive for customer loyalty.
The delivery of superior customer service involves teamwork and a great deal more. For now, take these five steps.
Photo Courtesy of (rama_miguel) – Flickr
About Christine Corelli
