» “We are unhappy with the level of customer service we provide”

In such a competitive world, failure to deliver first class customer service will adversely affect a business’s performance.

Here is are a few questions that businesses need to answer to get better at to providing better service for your customers. We recommend working on each step before moving to the next.

1 “What is the purpose of our business?”

That’s the conventional view (and, on the surface, it’s true). However, a more useful approach to ensuring the business provides a level of customer service which will ensure its success is to consider the purpose of the business is to provide service and the way it does that is to do marketing, or service cars sell shoes online, or whatever.

At emotional intelligence at work, we believe, as do many others, that any purpose which does not make the customer the primary focus of attention cannot be the most useful purpose for a business to have. If your business’s purpose is to do marketing, for example, you are making you, the service provider, more important than your client. This is bound to be less well received by the client than if you make them the focus.

This is the view of Tony Hseih of Zappos, and it illustrates that it is always necessary to be clear about the purpose and outcomes of the business before you get onto anything else.

Failing to do this is one of the reasons for:

damage to the business’s reputation
stress and disillusionment setting into the workplace
gradual loss of competitive advantage.

2 “How well are we serving each other in the business?”

No business can offer a greater level of service to its customers than the people in it deliver to each other.

Any business will benefit from some attention to how the people in the business work with each other. Indeed this is the one, fundamental, task to work on if any business wishes to be more effective.

Related material:
> Seven ways for better teamwork

3 “How well is the boss serving the staff?”

Another area that needs to be addressed is the consequences of asking the staff to serve each other better. This places the responsibility of ensuring a high level of customer service on internal management, and ultimately the boss.

Conclusion

As the piece, Golfing for beginners, emphasises, the easiest way to achieve an outcome is to focus on those things which, if you do them well, are most likely to bring about your desired outcome.

So, focus on 1, 2 and 3 above, rather than fretting on how you do customer service and the behaviours associated with it.

Related material:
> case study: An emotionally intelligent approach to sales
> case study: Retailer

Further material:
> How does emotional intelligence at work work?