Small Tweaks = Big Peaks
If you’re a team leader who wants your team to be number one, it’s important to focus on customer experience (CX). Equally, if you’re a small business owner who desires to grow into a new level of success read on for some business changing tips!
Improving customer experience doesn’t always involve lots of hard work, measurements and projects. There are some really easy and simple steps you can take today to get started.
By focussing on a few small changes, you’ll see amazing results and an overall improvement in service delivery.
The Morning Meeting
We’ve all been there; it’s Monday and your boss calls the usual morning meeting. Nobody really wants to be there, but out of compulsion and manners you turn up. Your manager recites the performance figures from last week and reminds you of boring policy and the annual leave procedure.
You leave the meeting needing an extra shot in your coffee and push through your Monday.
Here’s the thing, morning meetings don’t have to be this way. When executed correctly they can be a tool to improve your team’s performance in the area of CX. Here are some key features and elements to build into your team’s morning meetings.
- When: A morning team meeting should happen on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The best time is around 30 minutes after the whole team has been in the office or virtual office. 9:30am is always a winner.
- Duration: The meeting should be around 15 minutes as this is long enough to keep your team’s attention and to fit everything in.
- Structure: During the meeting include examples of when team members demonstrated outstanding customer service. Explain the positive impact each person can have by providing great service. Include any customer feedback or customer stories that will motivate your team.
- Tone: The tone of the meeting should be upbeat and motivational. Encourage your team to do their best by highlighting their efforts from the previous week. Explain how awesome they are at providing great customer experiences.
Reward Good Customer Service
What does good customer service look like in your team? It’s important to define this before thinking about rewards. What do you expect from everyone and what do you perceive as going the extra mile? When I worked at the U.K’s Financial Ombudsman Service, going the extra mile would often involve putting in extra time to serve vulnerable customers.
Once you’ve created your definition, think about some rewards you can give to hardworking employees.
Here are some examples that will motivate your team into going the extra mile:
- Friday afternoon off from work
- A free lunch
- Coffee and cake
- Artisan chocolates
- Cinema tickets
- Theatre tickets
Your team are hard workers and deserve to be rewarded. I’d advice rewarding one person a month who has really worked hard for your customers.
Review Customer Service Performance
If you want to lead a winning team you’ve got to start measuring your team’s customer service performance. We all want to know how productive our team are being and how many sales they’ve made. That’s all great and necessary, but without measuring customer service you’re missing a big piece of the puzzle.
A simple way to measure customer service is to set up a feedback survey which you can send to your customers via email every month. Use JotForm to send the survey as it’s a simple and effective platform for creating effortless surveys. The survey should simply ask how satisfied customers are with the service they last received from your company.
From the responses you can analyse how satisfied customers are each month. You can then communicate the performance with your team and think of ways to improve the score.
Speak With a Smile
Have you ever been on the phone with a company and the agent sounded bored, uninterested and as dry as a piece burnt toast? We’ve all had these experiences and the problem is simple – the agent just can’t be bothered anymore.
To stop your team from speaking to your customers or clients in this way, I have a very simple strategy.
Train your team to smile when speaking with customers over the phone.
This may sound a bit weird but bear with me. Consciously speaking with a smile makes a dramatic difference in the tone and vibe of a person’s voice. Smiley speakers sound friendly, approachable and engaged. That sounds like a better option than dry toast…….
You can thank me later.
Complaint Handling Training
Complaints and dissatisfied customers are a part of the service industry. It’s super important that all your team a fully equipped and confident to deal with complaints effectively.
To achieve this, you should train all staff on how to practically deal with complaints.
All customer facing staff and managers should be confident in the following:
- The process for dealing with complaints
- How to handle serious complaints
- How to respond to a complaint
- How and when to give compensation to a customer
Your complaint handling procedure doesn’t have to be over complicated. Simplify things by creating a complaint handling process document and ask all employees to read it. Follow this up with a training session which will solidify the information in the manual.
Create An Operations Manual
To stand out as a team with great service levels, your staff need to be fully competent in their positions. By creating an operations manual you’ll be providing a helpful guide for all staff to use as a reference point.
The manual should be electronic and accessible to everyone. Here are some key elements to include in the content:
- Company vision and mission
- Company structure
- Standard operating procedures
- Common processes
- Important policies
- High spec photos and visual aids like graphs
Keep it simple by creating the manual in a word document which can be easily converted to a glossy PDF.
Encourage Wellbeing
The Golden Goose
Have you ever heard of the golden goose?
A golden goose can produce 1000’s of large golden eggs if it’s well fed, watered and happy. However, if you don’t feed the golden goose and give it a good amount of rest it will stop producing the eggs.
I’m not calling your team a bunch of farm animals….but I am making a specific point. Your workforce should be well looked after so they can produce the golden eggs of excellent service. The best way to do this is by championing well-being.
Here are some simple things you can do to encourage wellbeing:
- Lunch breaks: Insist that all staff take a lunch break for a minimum of 30 minutes. Working through lunch is not wise and can lead to burnout and low productivity.
- Water: Encourage your team to drink lots of water and make fresh water accessible in the office. Often, we mistake being tired with being dehydrated so drink up!
- Outdoors: Arrange for some time outside of the office to boost team moral and brighten up your team’s day. Maybe you could have a team picnic or lunch at an outdoor restaurant.
By implementing a culture of well being your team will flourish and be more inclined to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Over To You
There you have it, 7 simple measures to put in place that will improve customer experience.