Customer Service Week: Good service is magical

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It is Customer Service Week in October and if you are  all out of ideas, do not despair, here are some awesome themes and activities. 
Customer Service Week is both an international and a national celebration and it brings out the importance of customer service and of the people who serve and support customers on a daily basis. National Customer Service Week is celebrated during the first full week of October, and this year it falls on October 7-11th. Each year, thousands of companies across the world celebrate Customer Service Week. They represent leading financial, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, retailing, hospitality, communications, not-for-profit, and educational organisations, as well as government agencies and others.
The theme recognizes that good service is magical. It can turn an unhappy customer into a satisfied long term customer. It can turn an occasional customer into a repeat customer. The best companies recognize that the celebration is actually focused on the employees. After all, they are the ones delivering the exceptional service, to both their internal and their external customers. They are the ones who impact the customers’ experience.

  1. Start the Week with Breakfast – Have a kickoff breakfast when everyone comes to work. If you want to get the C-suite involved, have the executives serve all the employees. According to Gessert, “There’s no better way to say, ‘You’re important to us.’”
  2. Dress Up Day – Set one of the days of National Customer Week aside to let people do something different clothing-wise. Maybe it’s a casual day – or let employees come up with a theme that includes colors or uniforms. Maybe they dress in the attire of their favorite sports teams. The key is to have fun with it.
  3. Internal Recognition and Rewards – It’s always motivational for employees to be recognized for their accomplishments. Consider a town hall meeting and use it as an opportunity to celebrate the success of the organization.
  4. External Recognition – Consider taking the celebration outside of the company. Let your customers know about some of the people “behind the scenes” who deliver the service and support they need.
  5. The Power of the Pen – Executives and managers can take time to pen handwritten notes to employees. Many employees keep these notes. This type of recognition is personal, meaningful and gives the employees a sense of pride about who they work for. Provide a blank thank-you card to every employee and ask each of them to write a note to another fellow employee. This is peer-to-peer recognition and appreciation.
  6. Have a Charitable Fundraiser – Doing something special during the customer service week as part of your “Giving Back” program is always a fun and meaningful activity. It’s a rallying point for employees and makes the statement, “Yes, our business is important, but life is more important.”
  7. Bring in an Outside Speaker – Many of you reading this article will know of a professional keynote speaker on customer service,  We are suggesting  you bring in a customer service speaker  to talk to the employees about the great work they are doing.  and ask if they would join you and deliver a few words at the kickoff breakfast or another time throughout the week.
  8. Recognize Your Customers – Even though we want to focus on employees, it’s still okay to shine the spotlight on your customers too. After all, it is called National Customer Service Week!

Reasons why You May Not Be Getting your dream Job

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Can you remember how many job vacancies you have applied for?

Have you imagined why you have applied for several jobs and attended countless job interviews and you have still not been able to get a job?

Applying for jobs and landing those jobs are two different ball games, you know why? It is how you apply for a job that determines if you would ultimately land the job or not. Yeah, this may sound shocking because you have felt like you are close to getting a job, after sending out hundreds of your CV and probably landed job interviews that impressed you, but at the end no job!

We understand that putting in all your effort to search for a job and getting no result at the end could be exhausting because it sure takes courage to keep trying after failing many times.

Regardless of how many times you have tried to get a job and failed, one thing you should know is that job search is an intentional process, and you must be intentional about the right things you should do if you want to get results.

Landing the job of your dreams has little or nothing to do with how many applications you send out, but it has everything to do with the quality of the applications that you send out. You must learn how to apply for fewer jobs and land more interviews that will ultimately get you the job you want. So let’s take a look at some reasons why you are not getting hired:

1. Not Knowing your Career Path

Knowing your career path is the first step you need to take even before you start searching for a job, you know why? It is simply because you need to know the kind of job that best fits your education, skills and even your personality. The truth is that most job seekers think that they can do any job, but that is not true because they cannot do any job. Nobody can do every and any job, there are different jobs for different people.

Discovering your career path is key to finding a job. Employers find it annoying when you apply for a job that you are not even qualified for. Discovering your career path will help you apply for jobs that you are most suited for.

2. Lack of Experience

As it is the dream of every job seeker to land a job, it is also the dream of every employer to get an employee that will get the job done.

Your prospective employer has not worked with you before and does not know what you can or cannot do. The only way an employer is convinced that a candidate can do the job is from the candidate’s experience. An experienced candidate is a better choice for an employer because a least the employer is sure that the candidate has done the job before, and the employer can ride on the candidate’s residual knowledge.

When you lack the experience needed to do a particular job, you would likely not be given the job. Most job vacancies come with stipulated years of experience needed to do the job (some 2 years, 5 years, etc.), and if you apply for that kind of job with no experience there is a higher probability that you would not get the job. However, not having a job experience is not a write off for you. You can still get a job even without any experience, you know how?

3. Poorly Written CV

Do you know that recruiters spend an average of 6 seconds reading your CV? This simply means that you have 6 seconds to convince the recruiter that you are the best person for the job, but how can you do that with a poorly written CV? Gone are the days when you take someone else CV and just duplicate the content without caring if it corresponds or not. If you are still doing that, then you are probably the reason why you not gotten a job offer yet.

Your CV is regarded as your marketing tool, and as a marketing tool, you should use it to sell yourself to your prospective employer. If your CV is poorly written, then it will not fulfill its purpose as a marketing tool. To land the job that you have been waiting for, you have to make sure that your CV is properly written. If you find it challenging to write a good CV, then this CV writing tips is what you need to create an amazing CV.

4. Not Preparation for Interview

A job interview is an opportunity for you to physically meet with your prospective employer to convince him that you are the best person for the position and to also find out if that organization is the best place for you. Many job seekers have the mindset that they are going for an interview to answer questions that the recruiter will ask them, but that is not the essence of an interview.

The reason for an interview is for the organisation to meet with you and determine if you are the best person for the job, and for you to also meet with the organization to discover if that company is the best place for you or not. Since you now know the reason for a job interview, then it is important that you do not go for a job interview unprepared.

Getting to the stage of getting an interview invite in your job search means that you are a few steps away to landing the job of your dreams. You should not thwart all the effort you have put in so far to create a CV, cover letter, and even applying for the job by not preparing for your interview. Not preparing for an interview is not preparing to get a job. 

List of Customer Service Terms You Need to Know

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Customer service has its own lingo including dozens of distinct customer service terms.

The more of those customer service terms you know, the easier it’ll be to communicate clearly about the challenges your team faces. Together, you can strive toward improvement.

So let’s look at some of the top customer service terms you should know.

First Call Resolution (FCR)

First call resolution (usually expressed as a percentage or ratio) is when a customer’s question or complain is successfully dealt with the first time he or she makes contact. FCR is considered a vital sign of good customer service. It demonstrates that reps have the knowledge they need.

First Reply Time

First Reply Time is the time that elapses – hopefully in minutes or seconds – between the point when a support ticket is created and the point when an agent responds. A low first reply time makes a strong early impression with a customer who might already be frustrated.

Knowledge Base

A knowledge base is an online database of information support agents can look up to find ready resources for solving particular problems. That can include complete answers for troubleshooting technical issues. You can also develop customer-facing knowledge bases.

Business Rules

Business rules are the specific automation rules an enterprise uses to manage various functions. For example, your email marketing campaigns all have business rules. Business rules can also apply to how a customer service call is routed, responded to, and resolved.

Call Center

A call center is a type of contact center that focuses on handling a high volume of phone calls. On the other hand, a contact center may be devoted to all kinds of omni-channel customer service. Call centers can be inbound service departments or outbound sales departments.

Churn

Customer churn happens when an existing customer ceases doing business with a company. Your churn rate is a measure of the percentage of customers your business loses this way over a certain period of time. Poor customer service is a major contributor to churn.

Coaching

Coaching is where the rubber meets the road on your talent development program for agents. Coaching can take the form of feedback, one-on-one meetings, and contextual lessons delivered within the call management system itself. Good coaching is a predictor of performance gains.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)

CSAT is one of the most basic metrics customer service teams need to track and grow. It is the average score customers give to a specific interaction with your brand.

Customer Experience

Customer experience has a lot of competing definitions, but you can think of it as the sum of feelings, beliefs, and expectations a customer develops about your brand at a point of contact or during his or her interactions with your company. Each individual can be said to have a different customer experience based on which aspects of the enterprise they’ve interacted with and how well those performed.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

LTV is the revenue impact of a single customer over their entire history (and projected future) interactions with the brand. Customer service teams support higher LTV by making sure product glitches don’t end a customer relationship. They can also do cross-selling and up-selling.

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How to write an effective complaint letter

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Customer complain

Having a problem with a product or service can be frustrating. When you’re trying to resolve a problem with a company, the first step should be to discuss your concerns with a representative of the business. If a phone call or email doesn’t resolve the problem, consider writing a complaint letter.

A letter is important. It puts your complaint on record with the company, helps preserve any legal rights you may have in the situation, and lets the company know you’re serious about pursuing the complaint.How to write an effective complaint letter

  1. Be clear and concise. …
  2. State exactly what you want done and how long you’re willing to wait for a response. …
  3. Don’t write an angry, sarcastic, or threatening letter. …
  4. Include copies of relevant documents, like receipts, work orders, and warranties. …
  5. Include your name and contact information.
  • Be clear and concise. Describe the item or service you bought and the problem. Include serial or model numbers, and the name and location of the seller. If you’re following up on a conversation, be sure to say who you spoke with and confirm the details of your discussion.
  • State exactly what you want done and how long you’re willing to wait for a response. Be reasonable.
  • Don’t write an angry, sarcastic, or threatening letter. The person reading your letter probably isn’t responsible for the problem, but may be very helpful in resolving it.
  • Include copies of relevant documents, like receipts, work orders, and warranties. You also may want to send copies of emails and notes from conversations you’ve had with the seller about the problem. Keep your originals.
  • Include your name and contact information. If an account is involved, be sure to include the account number.

You may want to send your letter by certified mail and request a return receipt. That way, you’ll have proof that the company got your letter and who signed for it. Was this helpful? 

How do you end a conversation with a customer?

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It’s a lesson all live chat support agents need to learn–how you end a chat truly matters.     1. Make Sure All Their Needs Are Met. …
      Before you end a chat, always throw in an extra offer like “Is there anything else I can help you with today?” for good measure
    2. Last Moments Matter. Last moments can colour a whole memory. 
Now imagine exercising your excellent customer service skills on a chat, only to have a customer feel it was awful because of your closing statements in the last few minutes. Can you imagine how terrible that would be? Don’t let that be the case–deliver quality customer service up until the very last closing spiel
3.Avoid Being Abrupt. …

The first rule is more about what NOT to do, but it’s the important first step. Never blurt out a curt “goodbye”. Even if you mean it with the best intentions, it’s hard to convey tone over the Internet. It can come off as rude and like you trying to get the customer out of your hair so you can move onto the next problem on your list. When you end a chat like that, you make customers feel like just that–a problem.Give your customer the same attention you gave her when she first came to you. She is just as important now as she was then. Think about it, you don’t want a customer to think she is less valuable to you after she makes a purchase–because the reality is, she is now more valuable. Positivity goes a long way in turning site visitors and one-time patrons into loyal customers.4. Thank the Customer. …
Thanking a customer for their business is thanking her for the relationship she chose to have with you. Thanking your customer is absolutely crucial to ending your live chat session. This let the customer know that the interaction is more than just about the money.  

5. Give a Goodbye That Means “Talk to You Soon” 

When you are getting ready to end your chat, remember that this is hopefully not the last time this customer will be using your company or buying your product. Avoiding negativity is a huge part of it, but that’s not enough. Remind the customer that you are there for her, and invite her to speak to you again in the future.Try lines like: we appreciate you for choosing us and hope to hear from you soon!

Social media customer service: Things you need to know

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Social media customer service is exactly what it sounds like. You use social media tools to provide online customer service and support.

In today’s digital world, people use social media channels to connect with businesses. And they expect businesses to be available on social media to provide help when they need it.

You likely already have a solid strategy for social media marketing and a great customer service team. But do you have a strategy for how your brand will use social media customer service solutions?

Using social media for customer support is different from using the same tools for social marketing. Social media customer service can help improve relationships and protect your brand’s reputation.

1. Make social customer service a priority

You have to view social media customer service as a business priority, not an afterthought. At Bumble, customer service is the “backbone of the entire business.”

2. Set up a dedicated social handle for customer service and support

Brands often use a separate handle to manage social customer support. This helps filter out support and service issues from your primary channel.

3. Create social media guidelines

Social customer support has different challenges and opportunities than social marketing. It is important to have social media guidelines in place for customer support. These should align with your company values and with the social media marketing team.

Your social media guidelines for social customer support should cover some of the following:

 1)Tone of voice

2)Response time for each channel

3)Answer to frequently asked questions

4) Protocol on escalations or other customer issues


Measuring Customer Satisfaction Without Surveys

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Measuring customer satisfaction doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive.

In fact, it’s fairly simple to incorporate customer satisfaction measurement into your current customer success strategy. Besides the use of surveys, brands can measure customer satisfaction by monitoring and analyzing other metrics such as social media sentiment (to see what customers are saying about the brand), frequency of complaints or enquiries, level response to loyalty promos (coupons or seasonal sales) and frequency of repeat purchases by the customers. 

Have you ever been upset about an interaction you’ve had with a company? It probably happens with more frequency than many of us would like to admit, and it could be in your personal life or with your business. What did you do about it?

Many people, of course, just chalk it up to how things are and don’t think much about it. There are others, however, who want to flex their level of displeasure and want to let others know that what happened isn’t right — and that it wasn’t fixed, either.Thanks to social media and the internet, you can now share what you feel and hopefully persuade others to avoid that same situation.

But therein lies the problem and the peril with social media. If you don’t manage your customer service interactions or you have a call centre that’s less than dedicated to doing a good job, your brand could very easily find itself with a negative situation that goes viral.

Many call centres haven’t really figured out how to adequately measure all the different forms of customer feedback and their level of satisfaction. They’re relying on old-school methods and measurements. But then all of a sudden, one person’s experience that went poorly becomes an experience that everyone is keen to avoid. It goes viral.This makes it important to understand how your customer service department is doing and how you can improve it. You must measure various pieces of the customer satisfaction puzzle. The specific solution isn’t necessarily the important part here.

The important part is stepping back and saying, “If we see that a segment of our customers is unsatisfied, what will we do about it?” Feel free to share and drop your comments on the comment segment below.

How to Understand Your Customers’ Journey

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Your Customers’ Journey Determines A lot

The customer journey can be defined as the total sum of experiences that the customer goes through when interacting with your brand; from the moment he/she becomes aware of your brand, to their post-purchase experience, and ultimately advocacy (or detraction).

All customers will go through a series of steps and have varying experiences at each step before they make the decision to use your product or service. The customers’ experience during this journey determines whether or not the customer buys from a particular brand or its competitor.

To improve customer experience significantly, your customer journey must be well understood by the entire organization. If this isn’t happening already, then you’re missing out on opportunities you can leverage on to increase loyalty and profit.

A lot of businesses still believe the customer journey ends at the point where he/she buys a product (or service). This is completely wrong – A customer buying your product is only at one step of a long journey, made possible by all the moments leading up to the purchase.

The customer journey continues well after the point of purchase, and a negative experience at any stage could lead to a lost customer. This makes it important to pay attention to how customers experience your brand every step of the way. 

One of the most popular and effective tools for understanding the customer journey is the Customer Journey Map. A Customer journey map is a strategic tool that follows the journey customers have with an organization and describes all the experiences they have at every touch-point. 

Here are the key steps for creating journey maps that unlock valuable insights on your customers journey with your brand. 

#1. Profile Your Personas

Knowing your ideal customer is important, hence the need to build personas of your key customer segments. Customer personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers.

The best customer personas are born from market research (surveys and interviews of your target audience) and insights from actual customers. Some examples of good questions to ask during such research include:

  • How did you first hear about us?
  • What are the goals you want to achieve with us?
  • What was the deciding factor that made you make your first purchase with us? 

#2. Identify Potential Obstacles

After you have identified the various touch-points, try to identify what roadblocks could prevent customers from achieving their desired goal.

You might be surprised to discover seemingly trivial things like a lack of detailed product information, slow website, return policy or car park space are pushing your customers and prospects to competition.

Knowing what these obstacles are, is the first step toward eliminating them or mitigating their impact on the customers’ experience during their journey with your brand.

#3. Put Yourself in the Customer’s Shoes

Put yourself on the customer’s journey, go through it and consider all the touch-points at each stage; from viewing ads to searching online, to filling out registration forms.

Compliment your findings with feedback from customers, ask them to walk you through their experience with your brand to ensure the scenario you’re building aligns with customers’ actual experiences.

Walking yourself through the customer’s journey stage-by-stage will give you a new perspective and help you see areas where you can improve the customer’s experience at the various touch-points. 

#4. Visualize The Customer Journey

The customer journey map should capture all the insights you gathered from your customer research – the steps customers take, their emotional states at each touch-point and areas where you identify opportunities to improve the experience. 

#5. Implement Changes

By now you have uncovered a lot of insights and opportunities to improve the customer experience during the course of your typical customer journey.

Now is the time to take action and implement any changes (no matter how big or small) that would make the customer journey faster, easier or more pleasant.

Understanding your customer journey helps you identify those areas where you can make improvements that ensure your business is offering customers the best possible experience at each stage of their relationship with your brand.

Kelechi Okeke

Reasons your business needs to hear the Voice of Customer

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What are your customers actually telling you and how do you analyze this information to get to meaningful insights? Then, how do you use VOC data to drive change in your organization? There’s no denying that the focus on delivering great customer experiences (CX) has increased globally over the past few years. Whichever kind of service you provide, the voice of your customer is very essential because, It helps you to grow in providing service.

Listening to the voice of the customer helps to capture customer experience insights and it comes with many practical benefits.

* It takes something vague like customer experience, and turns it into quantifiable metrics.

* It identifies clearly the key drivers of customer satisfaction that are unique to your business and your customer base.

* It shows you the trends, progress, and declines of your business over time, allowing you to adapt to changes as you go.

* It plays an informative role in employee training, performance review, and shaping the internal culture of your business. 
Even though all these reasons are worthwhile, to the customer, they’re just corporate jargon that has little to do with the reality of their lives and their relationships with your business.

Looking at the notion of customer experience from their perspective, Voice of the Customer isn’t just a setting, it’s a promise.By listening actively to customers, you are promising to value their opinions as much as you value the opinions of the shareholders or owners who are profiting from their business.

When you guarantee to put your customers at the front and center of your business, it can inspire confidence, especially if they see enough action which proves your words are not empty. It also gives them an invitation to voice their opinions and participate, knowing that their voices won’t fall on deaf ears.

Are you delivering on your promises? CSM is passionate about improving the customer experience, and can show you how you measure up against your customers’ expectations. Contact us today to find out more

Could Distraction Be Costing Your Company Dearly?

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Little distraction could cost your company a lot of money.
Focus and concentration are hot commodities these days, with social media, open office layouts and short attention spans running rampant in workplaces. The bank’s customer service rep was distracted. He was responding to emails in between phone calls. The problem was he’d get halfway into an email and then the next call would come in. It took a second for him to shift his focus to the caller.

At the end of the call, he’d hurry back to the email. He’d skim the email as best as he could and then hurriedly type his response in hopes of finishing it before the next call came in.

One particular email was from a customer inquiring about his loan balance. The rep looked it up and saw the balance was $15,000. In his haste, he left off a zero. 

His email informed the customer that the loan balance was just $1,500

Team distracted by mobile phone

Distracted By Design

Customer service reps everywhere are chronically distracted.

They’re balancing multiple priorities. They often work in noisy office environments. The typical contact center rep must juggle five to seven different software programs on two or more computer monitors just to serve a customer. And they’re barraged by messages on email, chat, and even their personal devices in between.

To top it off, many contact center reps work like the bank employee in the story above. They are asked to respond to email or another written channel in between handling phone calls in an effort to eke out every last drop of productivity.

It’s thought to be efficient, but it isn’t. Customer service reps working in this setup are often less productive and are prone to costly mistakes. For example, the bank ultimately had to honor the erroneous loan balance and write off the $13,500 error.

The High Cost of Distraction

Distraction can cost a company far more than the few dollars saved by cramming in some extra work in between calls.

Another customer service leader told me about the cost of distraction at his company at the same time I heard about the $13,500 bank error. This one was even worse.

A telecom customer had emailed to ask if he had won a promotional contest. He had not won, so the customer service rep started typing an email to politely tell the customer he didn’t win.

But the customer service rep was answering emails in between calls. And the rep was distracted. So the rep’s actual email read, “You did win.”

There was a kerfuffle. The company tried to claim it was an honest mistake. The customer sued, and the company eventually agreed to a six-figure Settlement.

You might be tempted to maximize productivity by having your agents juggle multiple assignments all day. Before you do, think about the potential costs:

  • Expensive errors caused by distraction.
  • Decreased productivity caused by constantly shifting attention.
  • Decreased service quality caused by a lack of customer focus.

 Jeff Toister, CXService360