Superior customer service can differentiate your services or products from competitors and lead to market share gains. But even organizations without real competitors (e.g. government agencies, utilities, and some social service organizations) find real benefits from improved customer service. Satisfied customers will typically tell others about their experience, effectively providing free (and highly effective) marketing. As word about satisfaction with your organization spreads through the community, it can help promote public support for your work. And, satisfied customers are often more compliant with any guidance or instruction provided.

Improving customer service begins with a clear understanding of customer needs and expectations, which are not static, but changing over time. As a result, customer needs must be well researched and updated on an ongoing basis. These needs and expectations are then translated into quality characteristics of the product or service.

In essence, quality characteristics are the basis on which the customer judges the “goodness” of your product or service. With quality characteristics identified a small group of employees with knowledge of the product or service typically works in a team using one of several process improvement methods to understand and improve the process(s) used to produce the product or service, including all customer interaction and support that comprise customer service. During this work, it is critical that the team remain focused on the customer needs. Some teams even include one or more customers as part of the team.

SCS is experienced with a wide range of customer research and process improvement methods, and can help your organization with customer knowledge, process improvement methods training, and improvement team facilitation.

Member Content

---

Login. If you are not a member please click here to register here. After you have received a confirmation email you may return and login above.