ITSM Consulting – Is the customer king in your organisation?

Is the customer king in your organisation?

November 18, 2017|
lana|
Customer service, customer service, EQ, ITIL, ITSM, Leadership, Management, Organisational Change, people, Process, Service Operations, Technology|
Comments Off on Is the customer king in your organisation?

Quote: “What’s happening on the inside of a company is being felt on the outside by the customer. Shep Hyken

Our theme for the week: Customer service, Service Excellence, Service Management. The Customer is king! Recently I moved and my experience with calls centres starting me thinking about how poorly we treat our customers. How we are so micro-focused towards ourselves and or perfecting our processes our technology etc. We completely forget about the one reason why we are there and whom we serve. My experience was customer service tale from:

Meagre customer service
Poor service
Lack of ownership/accountability
Call centres that follow scripts to the letter of the law
Offshore call centres
Still waiting for outcomes 3 weeks later…….

The service providers I dealt with were NAB, Telstra and Foxtel, NBN! All enterprise service providers with years of experience, thousands of customers, call centres, processes and procedures and toolsets galore! All make millions if not billions in profits on selling services and at times delivering services. But the quality of delivery is the issue and how they treat their customers.

All four failed dismally with regards to simple customer service principles:

Service the customer
Communicate with the customer; keep them informed, and update as promised.

Before, during and after purchase my interaction with all of the Service Providers was poor! I would not recommend any of the services to a friend. Personally, I can wait till I get the “how was your experience” email. My feedback will be constructive:

When did you C-Suite executives actually call one of your call centres that are the front door to your business?
Have you experienced the service your call centres deliver?
Have you called your off-shore call centre after 5 pm?
Why are your 1^st line agents not accountable? Empowered?
Why do they not take notes about service issues?

Here are some answers:

Do more with less – quite often this is taken too far you end up with offshored call centre delivering a poor service. Australians lose jobs because the business needs to cut costs, to the detriment of customers. More and more are bringing services back onshore. Offshore models do not work! Why because:
- Offshore call centres are frustrating to deal with quite often a language barrier. Telstra offshore call centre was the worst, I guessed questions I was being asked. My office colleagues also had issues understanding.
- They follow scripts, if you go off script, it goes around in circles. They don’t take notes, it is frustrating.
- CBAs call centres are based in Australia, thank you CBA. Let’s hope more follow!
The first line of support tries to help
- The case is never logged, it generally goes nowhere
- I don’t blame the staff, they do their best
- They have not trained staff adequately, they are not empowered which is an issue. They have to check with managers to see what they can do or can’t do. It takes times it wastes time and money! On both sides.
Complain it’s the only way you’ll receive a reference no:
- It’s not until you complain do you receive a case ID for follow up
- But it may not get you an outcome
- It’s been 3.5 weeks and I finally have LAN line and internet! Now that’s an SLA breach for sure!
Lack of ownership of cases/tickets/issues. Do they not take notes if they do why there are never any updated notes? A lot of sorry “I asked them they didn’t get back to me”. – Simple Communication Foxtel.
- If you promise to call back, please do so.
- If you say you’ll follow up please do so.
Over Promising on service: “Well get an update for you & well call you back …..A week later I’m still waiting for NAB! Foxtel!
- Foxtel was a nightmare and their customer service agent based in Australia was rude, unbelievable and in writing too! So you can imagine the culture there is not pleasant.
- NAB also an SLA breach here certain or epic customer service fail. Still waiting for my replacement card, it’s been 3.5 weeks! NAB you need your processes sorted out, your website updated with bank locations and so much more…..

Imagine what it is like to work for these enterprise organisations and being on the front line!? Often when these call centres mimic what is going on internally within the organisation. It gives you a sneak peek into the organisations culture. Employees that are not engaged, empowered or happy at their workplace reflects on customer service agents. They take calls from customers all day to either buy a service/product or because they wish to get something fixed. It is taxing but if you don’t have the right culture, customer service principles in place, processes and technology and everything else that’s required, then it’s hard for both the employees and customers! If you don’t train them and empower your agents then that is also another epic fail. Customer service and more importantly customer loyalty is what will drive organisations to win customers.

Good customer service means helping customers efficiently and in a friendly manner. You also need to ensure the staff have the knowledge and the right training and attitude. It is important to handle customer issues quickly, efficiently and importantly accurately. If you can’t immediately then be transparent and advise it may take a while but you’re going to help! And then actually help your customers.

Customer service is vital for: