For Customer Service, Consider Baby Steps Over Giant Leaps

In days gone by, great customer service meant employing knowledgeable salespeople and friendly cashiers in-store. But as new channels emerge, and consumer expectations for quality of customer service continue to rise, providing a top-shelf experience can seem like a daunting task.

When looking to make a change, some business owners immediately look to the end goal as opposed to the steps that need to be taken to make an impact. For instance, a contact center manager might hastily decide to completely re-write a call script. Or, a social media marketer might create company accounts on five platforms in a single afternoon.

Oftentimes, the most prudent way to begin re-shaping your customer service is through smaller, incremental steps. Making 100 percent improvement in a single area is usually unrealistic. Making one percent progress in 100 different aspects of an operation, however, is easier to accomplish. Taking smaller yet more impactful steps is likely to immediately yield better customer service. Here are some small steps you can take now to assure quality of customer service:

• Reduce your supervisor-to-agent ratio
• Provide more extensive training to new hires
• Invest in customer analytics
• Implement quality assurance to ensure that every product is manufactured and delivered with ease
• Stay abreast of developing contact center technology

Some of the recent research released about customer service is jolting. For example, 55 percent of consumers said they switched to a different company for a product after a single negative experience, according to a Zendesk survey. But companies should guard against making sweeping changes as a reaction to these kinds of statistics. In other words, just as you shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, you shouldn’t toss your entire customer service strategy if making tweaks might do the trick.