Donna
Siegel

Why Your Company Needs Standards For Customer Interactions

Many fine companies instruct their service staff to "do as much as you can to keep the customers happy," but they're not too specific about how to accomplish this. Consistency and top customer service quality are just two reasons  Why Your Company Needs Standards For Customer Interactions.

"Customer satisfaction is our number 1 goal."

"Customer satisfaction guaranteed."

"We build long-term relationships with our customers."

"Customer loyalty is the basis of our success."

They all focus on the customer as the major asset of the company and the foundation of its future success. This focus on the customer has spawned new technologies and approaches to customer information and customer service. Now, the majority of companies are putting in the extra effort to obtain and manage as much information as they can about each customer -- history, purchasing patterns, preferences and relationships, to name just a few categories of information.

Another important effort surrounds the interaction with individual customers. Companies are giving priority to providing customers with high-quality customer service. This ensures that customers get exactly what they need, and at the same time, does so effectively and efficiently.

A tool that is commonly used to measure the effectiveness of customer interactions is referred to as customer service standards.

Why Standards Are Important

Before you can establish what customer service standards a company should adopt, it's important to spend a few minutes talking about why the standards are important in the first place.

Standards help set customer expectations
The most obvious reason for setting standards is to help set expectations for customers. Suppose a woman called your company to ask for product information and left a message on voice-mail, asking for someone to call her back. How do you think she would feel if she didn't receive a response for the next two days? What do you think would go through her mind? How long would it be before she would call your most visible competitor?

There may be very good reasons why your company didn't get back to this customer, but the customer called your company with an expectation of a speedy response. Your company or your industry helped set that expectation in the minds of your customers.

Rather than let customers set their own expectations of your company (increasing the probability that you will fail to meet their expectations), it's much better for you to identify your standards and make them available to your customers. That way, you'll increase their satisfaction with you.

Standards help your customer service staff
Clear standards also make it easier for your customer service staff to be effective. They all know from the start what is expected of them in their interactions with customers. Moreover, standards help create internal collaboration among departments and individuals. In many situations, it takes more than one person to respond to a customer request. In these cases, standards help the people involved set up procedures that allow them to meet the standards.

For example, let's say a customer calls because his or her payment hasn't been recorded. The customer service person takes the call and sees on the customer information screen that, indeed, the customer's payment is not listed. Now, the customer service person doesn't know why and has to contact accounting for further information. If the company has set a standard of answering the customer's question by the end of the work day, you can be assured that customer service and accounting will work together to figure out how to get the information.

Types Of Standards

Companies typically develop standards for each type of interaction with customers. As newer technologies get introduced and become part of the way customers reach companies, additional standards are set. Today, most companies have standards for:

• Face-to-face interactions
• Inbound phone conversations
• Outbound phone conversations
• Mail
• FedEx and other delivery services
• E-mail
• Fax
• Web

The standards often measure the length of the interaction and the length of time between interactions as well as the customer's degree of satisfaction at the end of the interaction. For example, quantitative standards for inbound telephone calls might include:

• Amount of time on hold
• Number of customer hang-ups
• Length of interaction
• Number of people required to respond to the customer
• Number of calls completed that satisfied the customer

Qualitative standards might include:

• Identifying all of the customer's needs for this interaction
• Accuracy of the information given to the customer
• Outlining for the customer the next steps to complete the request

How To Set Standards

OK, I have you convinced that standards are important for your company. So how do you figure out what standards to use for your company? Here are some guidelines:

1. Determine the different ways your customers interact with people at your company. It's important that your list includes all the methods of interaction. Remember, one of the reasons for standards is to set customer expectations, and you want to set appropriate expectations in all areas.

2. Then measure how well your best people and your average people do to set some starting points for your standards. For example, how long does a phone call actually last?

3. Select as your starting point a measurement between the number achieved by your best people and your average people. Use this as your standard for that measurement.

4. Check the standards used by your competitors. Every industry has standards that work for them. Banks may have call lengths for auto loan inquiries that are different from those of software companies for product inquiries.

5. Explain the standards to your staff.

6. Make the standards visible to your customers.

7. Monitor the actual interactions against the standards to make sure your standards reflect good practices.

8. Modify the standards if necessary.

Customer Status Contact -- An Important Standard

One of the standards often forgotten is the Customer Status Contact standard. Many times, customers have situations or requirements that cannot be resolved quickly. In these cases, it's important to keep customers informed about any progress with frequent contacts. Decide how customers are going to be informed about their status, and set appropriate standards for each channel of communication.

SeaBird Associates Inc
3011 NE 7th Drive
Boca Raton, FL 33431
Phone: 561-750-9233
E-mail: Donna Siegel

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