John Tschohl of the Service Quality Institute discusses what it takes to write a ‘relentless’ customer service plan.
One of the major weaknesses of most organisations is top management’s lack of a service strategy. They fail to realise the strategic opportunity on how to use superior service as a vehicle to build market share and market dominance.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and Executive Chair, is one of the world’s richest people as of October 2022 with a net worth of $138.6 billon. He built his company to become the most trusted and well-liked brand. Bezos is responsible for creating over 352,000 new full -time jobs since 2020 for the American economy and is on schedule to create more.
Use these guidelines in making decisions about the features of your service culture plan:
1. Under-promise and over-deliver. Don’t make a promise you can’t keep.
2. Only the customer knows what he or she wants. Make it easy to do business with your company. Remember that customers want speed of service; customers want to talk to a live person; return phone calls immediately; and always deliver on your promises.
3. Communicate. Be like Amazon and have a ‘relentless’ focus on customer service through regular communication.
4. Continue to drive the plan strategically. According to Bezos, ‘Focus on the things that don’t change.’ Bezos built Amazon around things he knew would be stable over time. If you want to grow and succeed long-term, you have got to be a service leader. To do that, you’ve got to be relentless. Also essential is a chief executive who is just as committed to customer satisfaction as he/she is to stockholder satisfaction, just look at Amazon, Costco and Home Depot.
SERVICE QUALITY INSTITUTE
www.customer-service.com
