"Giving faithful and quality customer service is the hallmark of the successful small buisness." Diverti Mento
Business is always talking about customer service. So much so, many business people feel that customer service has become the buzzword of their time. With all this talk, what has been the net result?
Delivering consistently good customer service seems as elusive as ever. It had always been presumed the strength of our economy was our commitments to product and customer. True or not, we believed it.
This belief has been severely shaken in the last decade. Why? It seems to us that many businesses spend a great deal of their time looking in the wrong places, and if nowhere else, certainly over their shoulder.
What has changed are not management’s attitudes, but the expectations of the workforce and the community. Unfortunately, management and ownership keep trying to solve the problem with so-called new and improved methods. This is the easy choice. Attitude changes come much harder.
If we are to succeed, owners and managers must create an atmosphere that nurtures creativity and integrity in the workplace. Many good managers are failing because their attitude perceptions are no longer valid. Creative management will have to accept many different methods to bring about successful solutions to the customer service dilemma.
Bringing about this new attitude will challenge long-held concepts regarding the prerogatives of management and ownership. Management must use methods that work within the new value systems that are emerging in a global economy, rather than attempting to overlay methods better suited to other times.
You can study methods of other companies diligently; however, if you don’t translate them into customer service that makes sense to your customers based on their needs and expectations - you will continue to fail.
Management must redefine the workplace as a dynamic reality driven by a delicate balance of necessary relationships that serve the needs of your employees, customers and suppliers as well as the needs of the community at large. The key words here are "delicate balance."
If service is to have meaning, it must be redefined as service to the whole community. You need to be thinking about these concepts – I can assure you your competitors are.
To be continued…
