Every business Guru’s oft quoted phrase is that ‘Customer is King’. There is no denying that. The business amounts to nought without the customer and you need no MBA to realize that. So, how do you make sure your service exceeds or at the very least, matches, customer expectations? Quite a few business people are taken by surprise- they think they are delivering wonderfully but customer satisfaction stands at abysmal levels. Why the discord?
It’s a relative game. It would be a good idea to benchmark quality of your services against that of your competitors’. How do they fare in meeting and managing customer expectations? If they do a better job, study their practices and see where you can improvise in your process. How do they keep their customers happy? A business can survive only if you stay afloat in the competition. So, go ahead and identify your competitors and their customers.
More importantly, be careful and accurate about what you promise customers. If you state that you will deliver in two hours, a delay of one hour is going to rub the wrong way. The customer has every right to be upset about your service. Retaining him is not going to be easy and will take some effort from your end. So, have a predefined set of promised service process guidelines. Make sure the customer understands this. There should not be any room for error, in the understanding between you and the customer. Once you commit, make sure you meet your end of the bargain.
If there is a customer grievance call, attend to it with utmost sincerity. Make note of it, get it sorted and if it’s because of an error with your process, work on getting the error out of your system. Your customer care needs to be polite and diplomatic.
The most important aspect in managing customer expectations is to get feedback. A business might be at its helm today but nowhere tomorrow. To make sure that your business does not become history tomorrow, get periodic feedback from everyone involved in the business, end to end. Ask customers to state their grievances, their satisfaction levels with the service that you provide and along with that, ask for any additional measures they expect you to follow. Once you get the feedback, look at what the customer is happy with. Reinforce the practices that ensure satisfaction. Incorporate the best practices in other domains of your business where it might be of help. Most importantly, look at the flaws in service and make sure you resolve issues that cause the flaw. If an internal analysis is not of much help, hire a consultant for expert advice.
