The 5 Tenets of Customer Service: Do You Have Them?

Customer Service is important.  It does, in fact, make a difference and can be the distinction between a loyal customer and one that says “good bye and good riddance.”  Many companies wrongly focus on one aspect of customer service and pride themselves on their mastery of it. For example, they may have quick response times to customer questions and concerns. However, they are left confused when customers are not happy or leave them for a competitor. Why is this? It is because there is more than one tenant of customer service and in order to become a customer service leader, your company must embody ALL of them.

• Speed

If you really want to own and dominate the marketplace, speed is one of the most important ingredients for survival in the customer service focused world. Speed means dramatically reducing the amount of time it takes to complete a task. Speed creates an advantage over your competition.

• Empowerment

Empowerment is giving employees the authority to do whatever it takes to make a very fast decision, on the spot, in favor of the customer. It involves bending the rules to have an over-happy customer. If you have an over-happy customer, you get rich. Money falls from the sky into your bank account. Elated customers are the lifeblood of any business.

• Service Recovery

Service Recovery is making things right when they go wrong. It’s the ability to quickly and easily solve customer problems and turn a bad situation around so that your customer thinks you are the greatest company in the world. Creating service recovery strategies isn’t about saving face. It actually improves your business. That’s because it helps you turn a complaint into a chance for loyalty.

• Social Economy

Customers these days are more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend or family member than to trust an advertisement they see or read.  Word-of-mouth marketing and referrals are important to any business and with the advent of Social Media, the word (good or bad) gets out much quicker and spreads a lot faster. 

• Hiring

This one is fairly self-explanatory, but unfortunately many businesses overlook the importance of this tenet of good customer service skills.  You MUST hire the right people. Make sure you don’t hire people who hate customers.