Saturday, March 13, 2010

Customer Service Core Competencies

Creating and promoting a superior customer service team is an art beginning with the right people displaying the necessary soft skill sets to include but not limited to displaying passion, communicative techniques, flexibility, ownership, knowledge, enthusiasm, and dedication. Often times a new customer service team is not created but molded within an existing organization. The customer service team is already in place challenging a transformation of service rather than a creation of service. Superior customer service is determined and defined by the customer. What exactly do your customers expect from you? How do you achieve to meet the expectations?

Transforming a good customer service team into a superior customer service team begins with fostering a culture based on core competencies and a clear understanding of the corporate strategy. Core competencies are the key skills a business encompasses to provide a service to the customer that is not easily reproduced by others. Core competencies provide a direct benefit to the customer that is not considered a tangible service and is not exclusive to one department, but inclusive to all departments. It is a continuous improvement strategy to provide a competitive advantage.

There are five major core competencies every customer service representative should possess as a foundation to achieve superior service. The five major core competencies are:

Close-loop Communication
Empowerment
Knowledge
Ownership
Change Management (People)

Close-Loop Communication
Core competencies begin with the communication process. Every encounter with the customer begins with communication. The ability to send the right message the first time while projecting an enthusiastic attitude, is the differentiation of superior customer service vs. run of the mill customer service. The communication process creates brand image. As technology advances, so does the way we communicate. Communicating electronically is a paradigm shift we will continue to move towards. When communicating by e-mail, the message should project passion on how you service and care for your customers (internal and external). Even the signature section in the e-mail is a valuable section in the communication process. The signature section creates brand image, and should project a positive contact welcoming the customer to provide feedback. The signature section can be used as a powerful tool for providing customers your philosophy and corporate culture. A powerful statement on your signature section outlining expectations you strive to meet creates the ownership of communication. Take pride and believe in your core concepts by stating customer expectations on your signature section. One example is to state "we pride ourselves on proactively meeting and exceeding customer expectations while delivering an exceptional service experience.” What a powerful statement! The next step is to perform to the level of expectations you strive to meet and state.

Communicating over the telephone requires specific skills. The ability to understand, assess the situation, and provide a solution requires knowledge, empathy, personal touch, enthusiasm, and the undivided attention of a customer service representative to effectively manage the call to deliver a superior service experience. Projecting a “can do” attitude up front by comforting the customer will reinforce to him or her they called the correct individual to manage the issue to completion will set the tone of the conversation. One warning – do not promise something you are not able to deliver on and always state what you “can do” not what you “can’t do.”

Empowerment
Having a customer service representative available to take your call or answer your email is the first step to creating a rudimentary approach to service. The ability for the customer service representative to proactively manage the call requires empowerment to make decisions best for the customer while managing a fine line to ensure you are not “giving away the farm.” Make no mistake; superior customer service is codependent of empowerment. Companies often times have difficulty understanding and implementing techniques to empower their staff. True empowerment is the ability to provide your frontline support an approach to make nimble decisions even in contrast of company policies to satisfy a customer’s need. Many service leaders understand the importance of empowerment and the phenomenal results this key initiative has on keeping customers coming back.

Knowledge
Let’s face it; anybody who has worked in a customer service related position knows a customer service representative is one of the most multifaceted employees within a company. Customer service representatives work in different industries, with different customers, products, and internal dynamics of operations. The customer service representative, besides knowing the fundamentals of customer service, must understand the industry, products, corporate systems, customer requirements, departmental structures, and a vast amount of other entities to be successful (Figure 1.). Customer service is very dynamic and abstract in nature. Some customer service representatives may fill their day with answering routine calls where other customer service representatives are providing solutions to unique customer issues. The responsibility of a customer service representative is essentially any issue a customer is requiring assistance with and should not be limited.




Ownership
Ownership is a word overused and underperformed many times within a corporation. True ownership within customer service is the relentless pursuit to drive to completion any issue a customer is currently requesting assistance to help resolve. The customer is truly asking for resolution to an issue. Not for an employee to recite company policy or forward the call to another department. We all understand there is a time and place to advise of company policies and to get the customer the right department for help. However, the ability to seize the opportunity to satisfy a customer request in the quickest way possible is the prize. Creating an environment where customer service representatives are encouraged to take a leadership role will increase the notion of ownership. Employees will respond in a positive way as increased responsibility brings increased personal pride.

Change Management (People)
Where hear the word “flexibility” thrown at us so many times in the workplace. Customer service is sometimes the epitome of flexibility. Changing culture is one of the hardest initiatives to pursue within a corporation. For change to be successful requires the people to be involved in the process. Building a team to be flexible in our culture of change requires buy-in. To achieve buy-in requires a clear vision of the corporate strategy. The corporate strategy is dynamic and employees must be able to adapt to change to meet corporate goals. A clear vision of change must be overly communicated and must not be oversimplified.

Continuous Improvement
Creating core competencies requires customer feedback. Customer feedback is vital so a clear understanding of what your customers expect from you is quantified and achieved. There are several continuous improvement tools available to lead an organization to success. A Cause and Effect Diagrams is a continuous improvement tool developed to correlate an “effect” to all possible “causes.” A Reverse Cause and Effect Diagram is used to identify a future “effect” and all the “causes” that will contribute to move in the direction of the “effect.” A Reverse Cause and Effect Diagram for core competencies begin with the “effect” you are achieving to meet which is to provide a superior customer experience. Once the “effect” is identified, you want to formulate all the “causes” that will contribute to your “effect.” This includes processes, systems, environment, frontline support, and expectations. A sample Reverse Cause and Effect Diagram to create superior customer service exemplifying required core competencies may look like:




Continuous improvement is the driving factor of core competencies. A customer service representative’s ability is a continuum and philosophical evolution that serves one main purpose and that is to satisfy the customer and make them want to come back for more.

It is amazing to witness the support and zeal from a customer service team as a program is created and training completed to build a foundation based on core competencies. The transformation will begin once the need is indentified with the understanding the first step is to equip the frontline support with the knowledge and empowerment so they feel accomplished in their actions. This is the first step in the transformation as you continue to travel on a journey to stay on the frontend of continuously providing exceptional customer service.

3 comments:

  1. Your blog has helped me understand a few concepts of six sigma and lean...thanks...karthik

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  2. this was great, thank you!

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  3. Thank you. This has really helped me complete an assignment for my customer service course. You have managed to summarize what my textbook could not.

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