Build Customer Loyalty: Empower Your Customer Service Team

Customer service at many companies is on life support, and management is ignoring the miracle cure: the customer service team.  When an empowered customer service representative helps a customer, he does more than solve a problem: he helps build a relationship. 

Yet, customer service channels and staffers are too often the losers when company executives play a round of “balance sheet bingo.”  Customer service is the first to be cut and the last department to be respected.  It’s a huge mistake: those companies that treat service seriously and make it a priority are positioning themselves as industry leaders.

Empowered Employees Increase Customer Satisfaction & Loyalty

How important is customer service?  It’s critical to repeat business, a Forrester Research study found:

Eighty-one percent of respondents who said a company’s problem resolution experience far exceeded their expectations also said that they’re very likely to do business with that company again. Only 5% of those who said problem resolution experiences fell far below expectations said that they’re very likely to do business with the same company again.

This is important:  customers aren’t automatically upset when they have a problem, but they get very upset if their issue isn’t resolved quickly, easily, and courteously.

To “empower” employees really means to trust them to make decisions.  This Harvard Business School blog post offers four tips to move toward empowered employees:

1. Give power:  When staffers prove they can handle a level of responsibility, give them more.
2. Create a favorable environment:  Encourage people to gain new skills.
3. Don’t second-guess: Unless the staffer has made a huge error – or is about to – stay out of the way.  People often learn more from mistakes than from successes.
4. Give people discretion and autonomy:  Give them a job and let them do it.

Successful companies hire carefully and look first for employees with the right attitude.  Virgin Atlantic hires about 1% of applicants and screens them for the “Virgin attitude,” says CEO David Cash.  The airline seeks people who are positive, friendly, and see life as a “glass-half-full.”  Attitude is critical for all businesses:

“Fill your business with upbeat employees who are willing to go the extra mile when providing customer service. When hiring keep in mind that attitude trumps aptitude. It is easier to increase technical skills than modify undesirable attitudes.”

No matter how great your employees or how upbeat their attitudes, they’re always constrained by your corporate culture.  If company executives truly value their customers and place a priority on service, then that attitude will pervade the whole organization.

Unhappy Employees = Unhappy Customers

Now, every company will say that employees and their customer relationships are their “most important assets.”  But talk is cheap, and the pursuit of short-term profit can cause long-term harm to a company’s relationship with employees, its reputation with customers, and its bottom line.

For example, the Wall Street Journal reported that clumsily-handled, deep staff cuts at JC Penny further wounded the struggling company:  “…employees were brought to the Plano auditorium to be fired in groups of a few dozen to more than 100.”

Meanwhile – with a few exceptions – airlines are the poster children for bad customer service.  How could it be otherwise, with some airline personnel taking this novel approach to complaint resolution: threatening to have complaining customers arrested.  Spirit Airlines recently eliminated its toll-free customer service line.  In 2007, USA Today discussed bad airline service and noted that prospects for change weren’t great:

Tony Polito, an associate professor of marketing and supply chain management at East Carolina University, says carriers have focused so much on cutting costs that they no longer seem to have the human or technical resources necessary to improve customer service.

“I’m not just talking about delays,” he says. “The seating isn’t comfortable. The food, if available, isn’t good. Employees aren’t happy, and that filters through to the customer.”

Businesses think they’re being pennywise, but a strategy that creates dispirited employees and disgruntled customers is just plain foolish.

Provide Excellent Service Via All Channels

Of course, many customers would just be grateful to talk with an actual human – no matter how surly. But that isn’t always possible.  Orlando, FL’s Utility Commission, for instance, is “improving” customer service by automating it and eliminating customer support staff.

Compare that strategy to the one used by Angie’s List, where company founder Angie Hicks believes that “nothing can replace the human interaction” aspect of customer service.   Angie’s List stands out among other Internet-based businesses in that it continues to provide phone support:

Most of the subscribers to Angie’s List go online to access the company’s services, “but it is a competitive advantage to have people to talk to,” Hicks said during a morning keynote. Live operators handle “such a small part of our business, but it’s an important part of our business.”

It’s not enough to have operators in a call center to take customer calls, Hicks advised. Managers need to hire the right people and empower them to resolve customer issues on the spot, she said.

Few service situations are as frustrating as being routed from person to person to person, asked to tell the same story each time and then hear that a “supervisor” needs to be consulted.

Customers also dislike having to wait on hold for service.  A 2013 study in the UK found that, during the past year, 92% of respondents moved their business to a different merchant after receiving poor service. Companies may not even realize they’re losing out:

Half of those respondents also said that being kept on hold or waiting in a queue put them off calling a business, which means that they have switched their businesses without consulting with their supplier about the problem first.

Even a knowledgeable and empowered customer service staff may not be enough if other aspects of your service are inadequate. Long waits for service, a poor phone system, and inadequate on hold messaging may send customers away before they ever get to talk with a human.

Customers may not tell you why they’re leaving, but they’ll spread the word to others.  The Forrester Research study found that 71% of unhappy customers said they share their dissatisfaction with friends in person, on social media, and other ways.

The solution is simple: trust your employees, and treat both employees and customers with respect.

“Always do right.  This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”  Mark Twain thought he was making a joke, but that aphorism should be a guide for all businesses.  In a business environment where a majority of customers accept bad customer service as normal, “doing right” by providing excellent service builds both employee and customer loyalty.  You’ll “gratify” your customers and “astonish” your competitors with your success.