Service Check Up... How Are We Doing?

Best Practice #1

“How are we doing?” needs to become the mantra of your culture. Express and demonstrate a high desire to know what the customer has to say about your business. Seek and create opportunities to ask that question. It’s the groundwork that must be laid to know where you need to improve, it's the lead up to asking for a referral, and it’s the very best way to remind a satisfied customer what they like about doing business with you.

Designate days at the company as “Gotta Know” days. There are two types of “Gotta Know” days – one will be when you collect feedback from customers calling or coming in; the other will be targeted outbound calls to select groups of customers. Circle three days of the month’s calendar that are designated as ask the customer coming in days and three others that are call the customer days.

Prepare a simple survey postcard for incoming customers to complete and mail back or drop in a box before they leave. When a customer calls in, you can ask if they’d be willing to answer a few questions about the quality of the call and complete the survey with the customer on the phone. When you acquire a new customer, let them know there is a strong possibility that they will be contacted or asked from time-to-time to offer feedback; explain the “How Are We Doing?” program.

All Customer Contact personnel including the Call Center employees need to be trained to follow guidelines when requesting feedback from the customer. Make it a priority that everyone understands the importance of not leading the customer to say what we want or expect them to say.

“How are we doing?” You must find your way of finding out the answer from your customers. One time I had a client tell me, “Not sure I want to know, we’re accustomed to believing our own story. That idea scares me!” I applauded his honesty and told him to get busy and adopt this discipline and he did. As it turned out, reality wasn’t nearly as bleak as he anticipated. He has had great success celebrating the positive feedback and has found out about disappointments and customer issues he knew nothing about. You can’t change anything you can’t see.

Next week I’ll talk about what to do with the feedback and more on customer service best practices.

Want a sample survey? Email me honey@interaction-training.com.