The next stage is starting to develop certain phrases and actions within communication with clients. Creating unified operating procedures with clients is necessary to provide a model for various situations. You can present both negative and positive standards for communication. Let us study the following example as an illustration:
Phrases and actions unacceptable while interacting with a client:
- Welcoming a client without a sincere smile;
- Eating during the personal or telephone conversation with a client;
- Unpresentable and off-putting appearance of an employee;
- Ignoring the complaints and claims of a client;
- Unfriendly and rude behaviour towards a customer, even in non-standard situations;
- Using phrases such as: “I do not handle it”; “I do not know how to help you”; “That is all we can offer”, etc.
Phrases and actions required for use by staff:
- Wearing of the uniform and identification badges;
- Sincere greeting of every customer;
- Willingness to respond to any question from a client and to help solve his problems;
- Ability to resolve conflicts and unusual situations without any assistance;
- Actively working with a buyer’s objections and readiness to offer an alternative way to solve the problem.
The final step within quality service implementation should be conducting the trainings. Such trainings might include rules of interaction with clients, or they may reflect the main points of your service system. While conducting the trainings, make sure that both the direct sellers and the heads of relevant departments are involved. The involvement of managerial staff favours the effective implementation of the new standards and work plans in various business processes.
Upon completion of the trainings, it is necessary to check the practicality and efficiency of the implemented client quality service standards. Immediate managers should assess, on the spot, with the provided educational material and application of new skills it practical situations. It is necessary to conduct an analysis in order to find out which parts of the service quality rules were easily knowledgeable and which were rather difficult for the staff.
It is important to note that trainings are required not only for workers who come into direct contact with customers, but also for management teams. Regular seminars (1-2 days repeated over the year) may be organized in order to improve the professional skills of heads of departments. At these seminars the following questions should be considered:
- Effective ways of staff motivation;
- Development and implementation of the new patterns of interaction with the client;
- Developing the skills for getting feedback from the staff.
Continuous work and improvement of the professional skills of managers at different levels as well as the top management is the best way to create a good system of qualitative customer service. Moreover, it helps with building an efficient motivational system and selecting competent personnel.
Evaluation of the Results of the Service System Improvement
To obtain an objective assessment, one should recap the staff survey. You can use the characteristics and criteria defined above. In order to be well-informed of what is happening and to foresee the possible failures in the service customer care system, one needs to conduct surveys of the employees regularly (at least once per year).
If you have achieved certain results on client service quality and then stopped further service development of the company, you should strongly consider continuing that development, because everything can change in a matter of days. In light of the high competitive and dynamically developing market, new business technologies require perpetual development and improvement, as those who do not go forward will lag behind in development. Therefore, it is important to maintain a permanent register of complaints and claims from customers, and, when it is necessary, to be responsive to their demands and needs.