In an effort to improve the efficiency, effectiveness and excellence of public services, the Government has a scheme for Customer Service Excellence. It was designed to provide a “practical tool” for delivering customer centric service to a high standard.

The Customer Service Excellence Standard focus on areas which research has indentified as most important in the customer’s experience; staff attitude, information, professionalism, delivery and timeliness. It also encourages a greater understanding of the customer’s experience, and effective measurement of their satisfaction.

The scheme focuses on three key elements:

1. As a driver of continuous improvement
2. As a skills development tool
3. As an independent validation of achievement

Organisations are encouraged to undertake the scheme’s self-assessment tool, to measure current levels of customer service offered, and identify areas (and methods) for improvement.

The scheme wishes to support and encourage the skills development of teams and individuals to improve their customer focus, enabling them to build on their experience and deliver better results.

As a method of celebrating their success, and having a benchmark for excellence, organisations are encouraged to seek formal accreditation to the Customer Service Excellence Standard.

The scheme is not limited to the public sector, and any UK based organisation whether in the public, private or voluntary sectors are offered the opportunity to participate.

Organisations that have invested in management training courses to improve their customer service levels could benefit from participating in a government backed scheme.

In a previous article (see What’s your ideal Customer Profile?) we looked at the power of profiling your client base. Many businesses haven’t even got that far, since they don’t have a clear idea of who their best customers are.

The 80/20 rule or Pareto’s Principle can be applied to a lot of aspects of commerce. Often eighty percent of your company’s sales will come from twenty percent of your customers. Do you know who they are?

You need to indentify this rich stream, and spend more time on them, and less on the other eighty percent, because it’s often these poorer relations that will squeeze your resources.

As many who’ve attend a management training course or sales training course will attest, it’s the customers who bring in repeat business with a decent gross profit, and who are loyal, that cost you the least to look after, and they should be identified.

They are many different ways of calculating best customers, from simple comparison of total revenue divided by frequency of orders, to more sophisticated formula to work out a customer’s ‘lifetime value’

That’s why many businesses are investing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to identify, monitor and track their vast range of clients.

However, it’s not good enough to simply identify your best customers; you need to develop strategies to keep them as well.

Any professional training course, whether it is sales training, soft skills training or management training, will spend a considerable amount of time teaching its students how to better handle customers.

It can never be underestimated how an organisation deals with its customers on an interpersonal level has a direct impact on the bottom line. A lot of time is spent on winning new business, but often, not enough time and resources are put into customer retention.

Depending on your type of organisation, it’s typically cheaper to retain your customer than to go out and find a new one. Therefore, in this economic climate, you can’t afford to lose a customer.

The most important goal for anyone dealing with an unhappy customer is to aim for a ‘win-win’ situation. If the customer knows you will take their complaint seriously, and make a real effort to resolve it, their bond with your organisation is likely to grow.

Therefore the best customer service teams approach client difficulties with empathy. Anecdotal evidence suggests that customer loyalty is maintained not just by avoiding problems, but actually dealing with them well.

Even if a customer has had problems with your organisation, if you deal with them well at this sensitive stage, they are likely to continue giving you their business. Better the devil you know….

We’ve all heard the expression ‘the customer is always right’. In today’s competitive age, and in the climate of an economic crisis, customer retention has never been so important.

The manager of a customer service team cannot invest enough in the personal development and soft skills training of their team to maximise the ‘feel good factor’ that a customer should experience.

However, as anyone who has been a customer service representative will tell you, it’s not always possible for one hundred percent of customers to be satisfied, and occasionally a dissatisfied customer will wish to vent their spleen.

The failure that most inexperienced customer service representatives make is to defend the company and its policies or systems from the beginning. If the client senses that there is going to be an adversarial conflict, they are not likely to be open to change or any suggestions you may make.

A clever customer service representative will appear to be impartial. They should act as a detective for the client, and take steps to investigate the problem, and come up with solutions.

If the angry customer and the organisation can work together to agree a solution, then business will not be lost, and profitable productivity can continue, to everyone’s benefit.