Roadmaps for Delivering Winning Service

Problem solving, cross selling and quality assurance are identified by a new Forum research as the top three skills customer service representatives must have in order to build customer loyalty, increase sales and lower customer acquisition costs.

Additionally, the report shows that providing customer service has become increasingly complex over the last decade, and identifies the biggest challenges faced by service providers and their managers.

According to Forum, a leader in the field of workplace learning whose clients include more than 130 members of the Fortune 500, the findings reinforce the importance of good service to the bottom line. In a previous research report by Forum, 65 percent of customers surveyed switched providers because they were not treated courteously.

The research study, "Roadmaps for Delivering Winning Service," revealed that companies with the most effective loyalty-inducing customer service equip their representatives with the skills to:

• Resolve problems: Service representatives are often the first to have contact with a dissatisfied customer or to become aware of a situation that might cause a customer to become dissatisfied. The best customer service representatives see complaints as opportunities, since resolving them to the customer's satisfaction is known to enhance customer loyalty.
• Cross sell: Service representatives are in an ideal position to propose that the customer purchase additional services or products based on the customer's need. Doing so helps the customer by addressing his stated need or identifying new ones. It also helps the company by increasing sales.
• Assure quality: Soliciting feedback and following up to ensure that service has been delivered to the customer's satisfaction can have big payoffs in terms of fostering customer loyalty. Doing so can involve both simple and complex behaviours, ranging from routinely asking whether the customer is satisfied to improving delivery processes.

The research study also identifies the recurring challenges facing customer service representatives and their managers.

For customer service representatives, the top six challenges are:

• Managing the customer's experience and the company's internal processes simultaneously.
• Being on the "firing line" and frequently encountering angry customers when things go wrong.
• Managing time by prioritising and planning work despite a fast-paced, sometimes turbulent work environment
• Coordinating work with others in departments and functional areas across the company in order to meet the customer's need.
• Balancing customer needs and company requirements, especially when they conflict.
• Continuously learning about new products, services, company offers, and internal processes despite time constraints and a lack of available training and coaching.

For customer service managers, the top six challenges are:

• Delivering consistent, high-quality service in the face of high turnover, insufficient knowledge and skills, or lack of processes, information systems and tools.
• Maintaining a positive, productive, customer-focused climate in which customer service representatives take accountability for serving customers.
• Managing budget, staffing and turnover to ensure proper staffing levels that contribute to high quality service and high productivity.
• Integrating information systems and customer service by combining technology and people skills.
• Managing across functional lines, since fulfilling customer needs often requires the manager to work collaboratively with colleagues in many different functional areas.
• Training and developing people – both newcomers and existing representatives – in the face of productivity demands, tighter budgets and increasingly complex product offerings.

The study found that the most effective customer service training is designed to help representatives progress from basic skills to mastery over time, suggesting that training must be continuous as representatives grow from novices to experts.