What is quality customer service? It is not simply answering the phone promptly, providing the right kind of information, or delivering a product to the right location -- although these are important results. True customer service means building a system that focuses all elements of an organization -- purpose, processes, and people -- toward meeting customer needs.

Providing quality service won’t happen overnight, or all at once. In fact, it can only happen one customer at a time. Do your employees know what to do to provide quality service? Managers at Ritz-Carlton Hotels, known for providing quality customer service, provide each employee with a "gold standard" card listing the company's vision and objectives. Every employee is trained on the standards, and the ideas are constantly reinforced at meetings.

Read these 16 tips and decide if you can improve Customer Service in your organization.

1. Know who your customers are and what they want from your organization.
2. Learn about your organization’s customer service vision and how your work contributes to its success.
3. Be accountable to your customers by meeting their needs and deadlines - not yours.
4. Respond promptly to your customers’ inquiries, concerns, and requests.
5. Continuously strive to improve delivery of services by making and suggesting improvements.
6. Set clear service standards and goals, measure performance, and share results with everyone.
7. Help your employees identify and remove roadblocks to quality customer service.
8. Recognize the impact that your decisions have on the work environment and customer service.
9. Clearly establish and articulate your organization’s customer service mission, vision, and values.
10. Create learning organizations that build upon employee and customer experiences to address customer service issues and opportunities.
11. Define and articulate what is meant by "good customer service" in your organization.
12. Openly share customer feedback and performance results with the workforce on a regular basis.
13. Make it easy to get feedback from customers and employees.
14. Let their concerns drive improvement. Benchmark your organization against the best in business.
15. Then take action to improve.
16. Give the workforce access to the information they need – at their fingertips – to respond to customers.

Credit:

CustomerService.gov
The Federal Government's Customer Service Web Site. Our Goal - To provide customer service equal to the best in business. Our Customers - The American people, who interact with federal agencies to receive services,
benefits, and information. Our Site - Describes why the Federal government is focusing on customer service and what the
government has done and will continue to do to improve the quality of services.

Article found at: http://www.customersurvey.gov/tips.htm

Reprint of this article does not constitute an endorsement by the National Business Association; the article is for informational purposes for our members and viewers of our Web site.