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Features

Published September 2007

Improving Customer Service Through Learning

  

  David Austin

Most of us can cite examples of a positive customer service experience that left us with the satisfaction and knowledge that we had made the right purchase decision, that the company understood us, and perhaps as a result of the experience, we had an even greater affinity with the product or service we purchased.

All of us can cite examples of poor customer service that left us gasping for air, exasperated by the arrogance and ignorance of the company with which we were dealing, left wondering, “How can they do business that way?” Many of us probably took the step to tell a family member or friend about the negative experience, and in today’s environment of real-time information flow, where the Web can serve as a force multiplier for bad news, we might have sent an e-mail to the company or even blogged about it.

When clients need support or assistance, an organization’s ability to address and resolve those matters consistently, in a quality manner, is a key component in the total value delivered and to the retention of an increasingly fickle client base. Whether your clients are consumers or businesses or both, your brand and the value behind it highly depend not only on what you deliver but also on the post-sales experience.

Customer issues should be viewed and treated as opportunities. Although customer service organizations are frequently treated as cost centers, increased investment in the customer service function can help them become areas for opportunity. One way to gain improvement is through increased investment in learning and decision support, with chief learning officers taking the lead.

Simply put, well-executed learning provides the basis to make a positive impact on many key benefits that come with good customer service. The key benefits of improved training include:

• Improved customer retention. It is well-documented that the cost of acquiring a customer far exceeds the cost of retaining one (in some cases, as much as five times the cost). It is also clear that there is an explicit connection between a positive customer service experience and customer loyalty.
• Reduced employee churn. By their very nature, customer service positions, whether contact center-based or in the field, have high churn. Depending on how you choose to calculate churn’s cost, it can run anywhere from 20 percent to 50 percent of an employee’s base salary. Employee retention typically is driven by several factors, including compensation, perception of management, opportunity for growth and satisfaction with one’s job and contribution to the business. Investments in learning demonstrate a genuine commitment by the organization to the individual, and the corresponding positive impact on customer service metrics promotes greater pride with your customer service employees. This, in turn, has a significant influence on their desire to stay with the organization.
• Improved client intelligence. The customer service function is effectively an extension of marketing — it’s the front line in the battle to retain clients. And from marketing’s perspective, there is no greater opportunity to learn than when you have direct access to a broad base of clients and their explicit permission to engage in a dialogue, and when the conversation takes place one on one, with another human being who can adjust, record and analyze that interaction.
• Increased revenue and margin impact. Repeat purchases of your products and services by existing customers have a lower transaction cost and are therefore more profitable. The reality is that well-executed customer service not only leads to better customer retention in the form of repeat business, but it also should manifest itself in up-sell and cross-sell opportunities as part of the issue-resolution path.

Emerging Opportunities
Traditional customer service learning programs limit their focus to quickly onboarding employees and providing them with product, service and response-handling training. This is often accomplished through a combination of classroom training, observation and a study program.