Management and Quality Services

The vast majority of organisations that supply goods and services believe that they provide a very good or an excellent service. If they use criteria, measures and indicators that are generated totally within their own organisation, they will gauge themselves against those standards. If you want to gauge your own level of customer service against a benchmark of excellence, send for our FREE "Excellence in Customer Care - Internal Survey" via the Sample Questionnaires. However, without direct customer or client input to those measures, they can be falsely reassured. This is why, when the customers of those organisations (who rate themselves so highly) actually rate these suppliers' customer service levels, they give an appreciably lower rating. This leads to the most important rule of customer service:


Customer service is good (or very good, or excellent) only when your customers actually say it is.

The implication of this is that every organisation that wants to establish its true level of customer service needs to ask its customers what they think. Organisations who are serious about customer service do this already - some quite regularly. Those who don't care what their customers think (whatever the reasons) don't bother to ask.

Imagine a situation where customers receive goods and services from a range of suppliers and these fall into two broad groups - those who ask what they think and those who don't. What is the difference in impression created by the two groups and do you believe it matters?

For many years Carshaw has been involved in measuring customer satisfaction levels in various ways. These include surveys and audits (in any combination):

* Telephone surveys
* Postal surveys
* Fax surveys
* e-mail surveys
* Face-to-face interviews

All of these are customised to match the individual client's requirements. You can decide what you want to ask (and in what ways) and how many responses you would like at whatever frequency. If you are not sure what to ask, we can use our experience in this area to help you.

Organisations that carry out regular customer satisfaction surveys gain incredibly valuable feedback that they can use to adapt and improve their levels of service. Those that don't keep wondering why they have constant battles to maintain or improve their customer base. If you have not asked your customers lately what they think of your service, you can send for a very short FREE survey form entitled "Customer Satisfaction Survey" via the Sample Questionnaires. You can adapt and modify this simple form to suit your needs.

If you are not sure how to implement a system for ensuring a high level of customer service, send for our one-page guide "Implementing Customer Care" via the bulletin board.

Customer service is the major means of differentiating an average or mediocre supplier from a good, very good or excellent one. You know what kind of suppliers you prefer to deal with, don't you?


Internal Customer Care

This is the attention given by people in any organisation to how well they provide their service to their own internal customers within the same organisation. Why is it important? Very simply, the people who provide the client-facing or external customer care depend heavily upon the quality of the service and support from others within the organisation. While the quality of external customer service relies upon how well the client-facing staff perform, they cannot perform consistently to their peak if there are regular failures in the internal systems or procedures that they rely upon.

Carshaw understands that good internal customer care depends upon:

a) co-operation and teamwork
b) customer focused attitudes of management and staff
c) having appropriate systems and procedures
d) relevant training

We have the experience of diagnosing just where the problems may lie when internal customer service is not as good as it needs to be. Having pinpointed the problem areas, we also provide structured solutions that have an enduring impact.

These solutions can take the form of :

* Selling the benefits of internal customer care
* Leading an internal customer care project
* Identifying the internal customer-supplier relationships
* Setting standards for improved internal customer care
* Improving teamwork and co-operation
* Negotiating internal service level agreements
* Establishing commitment to the internal customer care contract
* Resolving internal problems and conflicts
* Maintaining momentum in the improvement process

These solutions can be applied separately but they are more likely to have an enduring effect when used in an appropriate combination as part of an improvement programme.

  More FREE information


Page Index
Carshaw Management & Quality Ltd 4 Hutchinson Close, Rugeley, Staffs WS15 2RG
England
Tel: 0044 (0)1889 584147 - Fax: 0044 (0)1889 585416

Top of Page

This Page address: http://www.ldb.co.uk/carshaw/cservice.htm
Published by:   Lichfield Web Design