Most people agree that customer service is one of the fundaments of a flourishing business. At least as we step into the shoes of the customer, it becomes clear exactly how frustrating it can be when you don’t have a clue if your problem will be properly cared for or not. Unfortunately, bad experiences happen and sometimes we struggle to evaluate where and why the service simply doesn’t meet the expectations. In this article, we have mapped out three common reasons your internal processes may lead to bad impressions and unresolved issues.
1. Information fails to travel across departments
Although your customer facing teams are experts in professional and friendly response, delivering excellent service in the end often depends on multiple actions and synergies taking place backstage. Let’s say a customer calls in about a broken machine. Your support department answers the call and register the ticket but is not in the position to resolve the issue. For this, they need to create a work order, book a technician and report back to the customer. This may only be the first step in a series of events needed before the ticket could be marked as resolved. Imagine if the case calls for intervention from 5 different departments and a mix of administrative work and fieldwork in a lengthy process. This resembles the game of Chinese Whispers. How do you secure that accurate and necessary information travels with the case as it moves between people and departments? The risk of something getting lost along the way is high, and if so, your customer will most likely suffer in the end. And the ticket must keep looping around. Nightmare!
2. Everyone has their own procedure
Indeed, a certain amount of autonomy is healthy in any organisation. But as you expand the business and your number of customers grows, the more valuable proper routines become. Have you ever come to a new workplace, and during your introduction a senior colleague has shown you how they “usually do it” followed by a motivation that goes something like “I know others don’t, but I find this the most efficient way”? This is a common scenario if the official procedures and tools are inadequate, or just overly complicated to follow. However, risk is your employees and departments end up having a hard time work tandem if they don’t share a framework. Further, poor collaboration will lead to poor delivery and customer experiences at one point or another.
3. Confused ownership in complex cases
One of the challenges of collaborating across departments, is creating a shared sense of ownership. If a case is to be resolved within one team, sense of responsibility is rarely an issue. However, using the case of the broken machine as an example, risk is the ownership gets confused between the customer service and technical department. Even more so per each step in the process. What if the machine needs spare parts and the technician puts the case on hold as they place an order? Your customer will likely call again a few weeks later to get a status update. The question is, who will be able to provide a satisfying answer? We all know the frustrating feeling of being joggled around between people who can’t help us. This is a typical case of departments not having the tools for proper information and process management. Yes, sometimes there are systems, but if your employees need to struggle to enter or access data, likeliness is high they will not bother to. Day to day operations and administration is a constant balance of cost versus gain.
Invest in fail proof tools
Never underestimate the importance of building easy-to-follow, easy to succeed type of procedures. The less effort and intervention needed to get a case moving forward, the more likely your customer is to have a positive experience in the end. There are tools to reduce and eliminate these typical traps listed above, and let your employees focus on world class service in each step.
With Dynamic Checklist, you can create the necessary structure to ensure high quality and consistency in your workflows. Visual steps allow you to quickly get an overview of the status of each case. You can even link certain steps to specific departments or people, and thus make sure that a case is forwarded to the right place with minimal effort.
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