Why are customers leaving?
Why do customers leave?
There are many reasons why customers leave, and usually it isn’t for only one reason.
But have you asked yourself if your customer service is a contributing factor ? Or maybe it’s the lack of customer service …
As a business owner, executive or manager of an organisation, how do you know if the customer experience is contributing to your customer defections ?
Some questions to ask yourself
Here are some basic questions to ask of yourself:
Look in the mirror. Do you see reality or fantasy?
- When is the last time that you spoke directly to a customer ? How often do you do it ?
- How often do you visit with your front line staff ? They are the ones that know your customers and your business.
- Do you listen to your customers and employees ? Get honest feedback by being open, not by defending your company.
- Remember, if they give you negative feedback, it’s because they care about your success. Otherwise, they won’t bother.
- Have you tried being a customer of your company ? Obviously, you need to do it it anonymously. If you can’t, get a trusted friend to do it.
- Does your company do professional customer satisfaction surveys ? Do you see the results and comments ?
- What do you do with the results ? Are any actions taken to improve areas of dissatisfaction ?
- Do you communicate the results to your customers and the actions you’re taking to improve ? Show them you care enough to communicate.
- Do you treat your employees like customers ? Or do you treat them like cattle ? Happy employees will do a much better job serving your customers.
- Finally, have you looked in the mirror ? What do you encourage and ask for of your employees ? Are you only looking at financial numbers for the quarter ? If you never ask about and concentrate on customer service, don’t expect the people in your organisation to think it’s important.
Why should you ask yourself these questions ? Simple, you are responsible. There’s no point in blaming others, you are the leader; you have the responsibility of ensuring the
quality of service in your company, division or department.
When your customers are defecting, you don’t look for a scapegoat. Look at what’s broken and fix it. Blaming people will only destroy morale and make things worse.
Ultimately, you are responsible for customer defections. (I’m certain that this isn’t the message you wanted to hear …) As Spiderman’s uncle said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” You already have the power…
Doing these things won’t solve your issue with customer defections, but they are a good start in the right direction. And, it’s really simple but it’s far from easy. You may not like the results so ask yourself: ”Do you want to live and deal with reality or fantasy?“
Finally, they’ll help you identify the causes but they may have nothing (or everything) to do with the quality of the service your company delivers. You have to decide what is best for your company. No one else will do it for you.
Cheers!
Eric
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photo credit: jcoterhals
Incentives for Customer Service
I recently read the following post: Incentives and Consequences | fastgrowth advisors.
It reminded me of a post I did a year and a half ago titled What is Paid for REALLY Gets Done.
Have you thought about the consequences of the incentives you offer to your staff? Are they really driving the behaviours you want? Or can they be distorted or cheated?
Actually, do you even measure the results?
We often look for the easy way out. Developing the right incentives can be really simple and straightforward or very complex, but doing it right is never easy.
Bruce Temkin recently had a good blog post on using customer feedback to drive compensation (Should Customer Feedback Scores Drive Compensation?) He also has a good basic plan for implementing it.
Who Are the Clients?
Think about who the clients of the incentives are. They are your employees.
Look at the incentives you want to (or already have) implemented from their point of view. Put yourself in their shoes. How would you feel? How would you react?
This isn’t easy, most managers have distanced themselves from the rank and file and most have been disconnected for a long time.
Hopefully, you try to think like a client before launching a product or service…
Shouldn’t you do the same with your internal clients?
You don’t have to do anything. I’m just asking you to think about it…
What do you think?
Cheers!
Eric
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photo credit: Public Domain Photos
I Didn’t Even Have to Ask (on Customer Service)
This a great customer service story at Home Depot!
I Didn’t Even Have to Ask (on Customer Service).
You may remember my post on my horrible customer service experience at another Home Depot location (Home Depot Customer Service). Can the manager in this article be transferred near me? Better yet, he should train others.
It just goes to show that not all Home Depots deliver the same level of service. And, the store manager can change the prevailing corporate culture in their own store.
Cheers!
Eric
Leaders are Responsible for Customer Service
Someone sent this link out via Twitter a few days ago and unfortunately, I don’t remember who. No matter who it was, thank you!
This post is a must read for anyone involved in customer service or experience efforts but even more importantly for the leaders of the organisation.
Doing it wrong. Leaders need to be leading by example, not from above.
Customer Service is a Leaders Responsibility – John Slimp Training & Development.
I’m tempted to quote the whole article (I’ll let you click on the link), instead, I think this paragraph will give you a pretty good idea of the content:
In almost every case, when customers feel they received substandard customer service, they automatically blame the person across the counter or on the other end of the phone. However, the culpability ultimately rests on the leaders of the organization. What happens at the customer point of contact is the responsibility of upper management. If they want to keep customers the Leaders , being the Owners, District Managers or Managers need to have a better handle on what is actually happening on the front lines and they need to lead the efforts to elevate customer service.
Emphasis is by the author.
Leaders Need to Take Responsibility
Customer service advocates, trainers, consultants, “experts”, etc. usually deal with the leaders of an organisation and often discuss the importance of training and hiring the right people. We then talk about how to get front-line staff to be good at customer service. But how often do we remind leaders and managers of their responsibility?
Management needs to lead by example and that includes delivering excellent service internally. They need to personally take action and demonstrate how important customer service is to them.
So, go read John’s article and tell me what you think.
Cheers!
Eric
Follow Up for Excellent Customer Service
As some of you know, I work as a Client Satisfaction Manager for a B2B software company. This means that I spend my days handling complaints/escalations, getting customer issues resolved, fixing broken processes and coaching/training staff.
Before that, I spent well over a decade at different levels of support organisations.
What have I learned about handling complaints?
Follow Up
Once you’ve received the complaint, apologised and determined a course of action, following up is the most important / best thing you can do.
No one likes to be left in the dark, so communicate.
- Call the customer and tell them what you’re doing;
- If you don’t have anything new, call them anyway!
- If it’ll take more than a day or two, decide with the customer on the frequency of updates AND FOLLOW IT;
- Update the members of your team that are involved;
- Keep your management apprised (especially important when resolution is taking a long time)
The Easiest Mistake to Correct
Don't let customers think they've fallen in
Not following up is the mistake that I see most often when dealing with customers. And, it’s the easiest to fix!
I often get the response that if employees don’t have time to do the work, how can they find time to follow up?
Communicating with your customer about any issue allows you to identify the priority and plan your work. In many cases (most), the client will agree with what ever you propose as a time line; he/she simply wants to know that it hasn’t fallen into a black hole and that it’s actually being worked on.
So take 5 minutes and call that customer, reassure them. You might even save yourself some work and stress.
Cheers!
Eric
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photo credit: thebadastronomer