Everyone in your organization must know how vitally important customer
service is in your business. Good customer service starts with good training
of your employees. Here are a few suggestions to help your organization keep
your customers beaming and eager to come back for more.
1. Sell your company to your employees.
If you have brochures explaining your products or services, make sure
everybody in your organization reads them. Print them in as many languages as
necessary to ensure that everyone gets the message.
If you have a mission statement or company philosophy, post it everywhere. Be
creative in communicating what's expected. Consider audio or video tapes
depicting your mission or cartoon strips or photo series illustrating how
employees share in achieving the company's mission. Then be sure that you
really live your mission statement. Lip service only will produce cynical and
hostile employees.
2. Recognize effort.
Regularly salute employees who have gone the extra mile in serving your
customers. Write up the incident for your company newsletter. If you have no
newsletter, post the report in a special place of honor along with a photo of
the employee.
3. Trade places.
Why not give your executive and administrative staff an opportunity for
hands-on experience with customer service? Every few weeks have each of them
spend a day working on the front lines serving your customers.
4. Talk to the front-line troops.
Hold regular meetings for employees who have the most contact with your
customers and ask them, "What questions do our customers ask most often about
our product or service?" "What complaint do you hear most often?" "What do
customers find most beneficial about our product or service?"
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