There’s no time like the present for making sure you are truly customer driven. We asked some of IiE’s customers to guide us on what is important to meeting their customers’ needs and requirements. Here are their top tips:
Role model your commitment to excellent customer relationships
Leading by example seeing Chief Executives, directors, or senior managers listening in to calls at the contact centre, walking the patch, or spending time with maintenance operatives will help instil a culture of customer care throughout your organisation. It’s not a ‘big brother’ exercise, quite the contrary it’s highly supportive.
Appoint staff with the right attitudes and equip them with the right skills to delight customers
Robust recruitment processes will ensure you appoint staff who are committed to excellent customer service from the outset. Recruit for attitude and aptitude – then train for skill. So the process starts well before induction!
Go the extra mile to understand your customers.
Accurate intelligence about your customers is absolutely critical if you are serious about delighting them. More data makes for a more tailored service, getting to know your customers and the local community.
Leverage process management to enhance customer experience
Top-notch process management will improve how customers perceive their interactions with your organisation. Continuous improvement is essential to keep processes performing at their peak. Process mapping helps pinpoint efficiency savings and demonstrate value for money to customers, applying investigative principles are regularly applied to identify failure demand and evolve customer-centric solutions.
Adopt innovative approaches to measure how well you are meeting your customers’ needs and requirements
Highly developed customer insight is integral to delivering what it takes to delight them. In a move away from traditional methods of measuring customer satisfaction many have adopted qualitative management tools, such as the Kano model, customer experience mapping, and customer effort scoring to determine their customers’ needs and requirements (the absolutes) as well as their likes and wants (the aspirational). The important things are the words and emotions of the customer: these are hugely powerful.
Go all out to transform an unhappy customer into a delighted customer
Caring staff who listen very carefully to a customer’s complaint, apologise, take action immediately, and try their very best to resolve matters in accordance with the customer’s desires will demonstrate your dedication to excellent customer care. Putting things right at first contact, if possible, and involve the customer in the solution.
How can you start delighting your customers?
Start by putting in place a customer strategy, essential if you want to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. A good strategy will:
- accurately identify customer needs
- always put the customer first
- ensure every point of customer contact works towards building lasting, loyal relationships
- be known by every member of staff
So what does matter most in terms of your customers? Set about defining it and communicate it clearly so that all the team can focus in on it and align their behaviours and objectives to deliver it.
Independent confirmation, such as the
Investors in Excellence Standard, will highlight you are customer-driven and to your many customers, present and future, is absolutely invaluable.
Get in touch with us today, and start delighting your customers.
