FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Tom Ellis
November 10, 2004 Ellis Communications, Inc.
Phone: (417) 881-5635
Email: tom@elliscomm.com
PHOENIX, Ariz. – Remember elementary school field trips and how
special it felt to do something out of the norm? Telecoms serious about quality
customer service should organize field trips within their company to give
employees a special opportunity to help spot service barriers.
“Do you want to identify all the customer-loyalty barriers in your telecom,
create solutions to removing those barriers and find ways for employees take
ownership of the service they provide?” asks David Saxby, president of
Phoenix-based Measure-X, a company that specializes in helping telephone
companies improve their customer service and sales. “Try organizing quarterly
internal field trips that involve various departments so employees can go
through your company as if they were customers.”
Saxby suggests field trip
teams of up to 10 employees. Ask them to determine a variety of scenarios in
advance that they could pose so they experience different parts of the company.
“Key in on barriers to
customer loyalty,” Saxby says. “Give each member of the team a worksheet so
they can write down every customer-service barrier they see. Encourage them to
be creative and look beyond the obvious barriers.”
Saxby says team members should
watch for the following trouble spots:
-- Is there signage? Do the
signs look professional? Are they customer friendly?
-- Long lines. Are there
better ways to resolve long lines? What do customers do while waiting?
-- Business hours that are
inconvenient for customers.
-- Gossiping employees,
particularly when they are visible to customers.
-- Unclean restrooms or
drinking fountains.
-- Litter on the floor or
overflowing wastebaskets both inside and outside the building.
-- Unsmiling employees.
-- Poor lighting.
-- Outdated magazines in the
waiting room.
-- Unsafe or inconvenient
parking.
“One the barriers have been
identified, schedule team brainstorming sessions in which employees discuss all
the possible solutions for each of the barriers,” Saxby suggests. “Then have
the team vote on the solutions that make the most sense.”
Service barriers cause
telecoms to lose customers, according to Saxby. “When you remove the obstacles,
your customer loyalty goes up,” he says. “It’s that simple.”
Saxby says
other field trip themes could include ways to make customers feel welcome,
customer-loyalty builders, ways to thank customers, opportunities to go the
extra mile and ways to make customers feel valued.
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Measure-X is a measurement, training and recognition company that specializes
in customer service and sales skills. For more information on Measure-X,
call 888-644-5499 or visit its Web site at www.measure-x.com.
