Customer Service Fallacies and Facts

By John Tschohl

Customer service across America is going downhill fast. While some of that decline might be attributed to record low unemployment rates, much of it is the result of ignorance on the part of business owners and executives. Many of them realize the importance of customer service and know that it can give them an edge over their competition, but they don't understand what it is and don't know how to go about providing it.

Customer service is doing whatever it takes to satisfy the customer immediately. It's empowering employees to bend and break the rules to take care of the customer. In order to provide exceptional customer service, however, a business must hire the people to provide it.

That brings us to two customer service fallacies that many business owners and executives treat as fact:

Fallacy #1: Customer service means adding more people to the payroll.

You can have hundreds of employees on your payroll and still be horribly deficient when it comes to providing exceptional customer service. In this case, more doesn't necessarily translate to better, especially if those people aren't trained, motivated and empowered to provide the best service possible to your customers.

Professional athletes know the importance of training. Whether they're making $500,000 or $5 million a year, they all go to spring training and work on the basics. Organize training camps for your employees. Give them a minimum of 40 hours of customer service training annually. The goal of any training program is to change attitudes and behaviors and to reinforce basic skills. In order to do that, and keep enthusiasm high, introduce a new training program twice a year.

Once you have trained your employees, empower them. Don't tie their hands with cumbersome policies and procedures and expect them to provide exceptional service. Give employees the authority to solve customer problems, then trust them to make decisions that will satisfy your customers and keep them coming back to you.

When employees are confident in their skills and feel empowered and trusted, they are motivated. Motivated employees are productive employees, and productive employees have a positive impact on your bottom line.

Fallacy #2: You must pay people more in order to improve customer service.

The largest employer in the world has the highest-paid service employees, but its customer service is questionable. The second-largest employer pays most of its employees the lowest wages in every market it's in, but has a reputation as one of the best customer service organizations in the world. One employer is Wal-Mart; the other is the U.S. Postal Service. Can you guess which has the best customer service reputation? (Here's a clue: It's not the U.S. Postal Service.)

If you want employees to stay with you, you must treat them well. That doesn't necessarily translate to high salaries. Wal-Mart, for example, has a very low employee turnover rate. Most people don't leave their jobs in order to make more money. They leave because they haven't been trained to handle the job, and they leave because their supervisors haven't been trained to motivate, coach and nurture them. They leave because they don't feel valued or appreciated.

You must work as hard--if not harder--to keep your employees as you do to hire them. When you train your employees, you are sending the message that you value them. When you give employees the knowledge and tools they need to do their jobs well, you increase their loyalty to the company and create a productive team that works well together.

Studies show that employee turnover is inversely proportional to employee perceptions of the quality of service provided by the employer. When a company's service is perceived as bad, not only do consumers not like to patronize it, employees don't like to work for it.

If you want to provide exceptional customer service, you must do two things for your employees: Train them, and treat them well. By doing so, you will reap the rewards of increased customer--and employee--loyalty.

John Tschohl is an international management consultant and speaker. Described by Time and Entrepreneur magazines as a "customer service guru," he has written several books on customer service, including Achieving Excellence Through Customer Service, The Customer is Boss, and Ca$hing In. As president of the Minneapolis-based Service Quality Institute, he has developed, distributed, and presented more than 26 training programs throughout the world. John can be reached at (800) 548-0538 or by e-mail at quality@servicequality.com