Customer
service is the basic building block of any organization’s
structure and its success. In addition to financial strategies, human resource
strategies, marketing strategies, now customer service strategies also hold a
strong position. No doubt customers are considered as heart of any
organization, thus everyone is trying to provide quality services to their
consumers. In this competitive market, the key to success is to shift to
customer centric strategies.
Cherin Kuruvilla CEO
Arcane Consultants says,
“Customer service is the life of any business. You can offer
promotions; you can bring in as many as you can, but if you don’t bring
customers back, then you haven’t done much.”
It seems quite easy to
say, but in actual developing a complete customer centricity rather appears to
be elusive. Unanticipated challenges, external environmental factors, political
situations and other hidden obstacles may put hindrance in transition of an
organization to customer centric structure.
In Accenture’s delivering the Promise Study included 75% executives who
believed their customer service to
be above average. But 59% of customer reported their experience with these
companies to be extremely dissatisfying. The potential road block on path while
developing such a customer service program can be that an organization fails to
determine customer’s need, priorities and their changing demands Companies
basically have two types of customers, one is promoters and second one is
detractors. A company’s score is defined by its difference between promoters
and detractors. In addition to valuing its promoter a company needs to gain
insights into how to convert its detractors. Failure to improve customer experience leads to a poorly
developed customer service program.
Building
Blocks of Customer Centric Strategy
The building blocks of
a good customer centric strategy include:
- Communication
The first and foremost
thing is the way of communication with customers. An organization’s staff needs
to be polite both verbally and behaviorally while dealing.
- · Skilled Staff
The vision of a
customer centric approach must include proficiency in technical and soft
skills. No doubt staff’s proficiency and skills define the success of a customer service program.
- · Accountability
A
constant accountability of how effective a customer service strategy is working
enables improvements based on customer experience. It helps to turn the detractors into promoters.
In short developing a
proper customer centric structure ensures customer loyalty and consequently
increases overall revenue.
