What customer service means?

In most of the organisations, there is now a customer care department. It is a good news that all have begun to recognise the importance of customer service. But bad news is that many do not yet implemented the true customer care.

For many employees working in these organisation, customer care is mostly handling complaints or following a rigid set of processes. The customer care element is lost the moment a seperate department is created for caring the customer, other departments may feel that customer care is not their responsibility. Instead customer care must be a enterprise wide policy.

What I feel every organisation must simply do is.......

• ....... before beginning action always find out what the customer wants
• ...... always respond to the customer cordially irrespective of the customer issue
• ....... as quickly as possible provide answers to the querries and problems (not to complaints alone)
• ....... make it easy for the customer to do business with
• ....... give personalised service wherever possible
• ....... be honest, responsible and reliable with the customer
• ....... put an effort to deliver more than what is promised

Making a commitment to customer service is a company wide initiative. It begins with the top leadership. Top level executives must not only verbalise the customer care policies but lso must build systems and resources to carry out customer care.

In the long run the company that keeps the customer satisfied has the greatest chance of survival.

The value of business sense

Every employee of a company agrees without fail that they work to bring results. Usually the results are equated with the completion of tasks assigned by the superior. The employee tend to feel that ' complete the assigned task and see to it that the boss is happy'. Completing the assigned tasks is the primary objctive of the job holders. In many organisations this feeling runs length and breadth of the hierarchy. This organisation is in danger: not because it is a bad organisation, but because it is disconnected from the business.

The sense of business must pervade the organisation, then only the organisation can sustain longer and reap benefits. The business sense is a readiness that revolves around customer satisfaction, profit / gain maximisation and innovation for value. Without these no organisation can last longer. Every employee must develop business sense and follow it in their daily activities, else it will end up as wasted efforts. Business sense affects all the activities carried out in the organisation.

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Interest: the key to job involvement

When I make presentations about our Business strategy workshops and the Organisational renewal workshops to the business owners, we ask: what is your major challenge in your organisation? Four out of five owners say that, their people do not take ownership of what they do – they do not take the company as their own. In spite of the reward offers and exposure to opportunities, the people do not give their best. They do not have positive attitude towards the company.

Of course there are many reasons for such lack of involvement of people in business. One of them is lack of interest in the job, the function, the process etc. Usually the hiring managers in business give more importance to the knowledge, skills and abilities of a job candidate than to the interest part. There are intelligent and academically brilliant candidates who can overwhelm the hirers by their sheer scholasticism and articulation. But when it comes to completing the jobs with heart’s touch such candidates may take a back seat. It is because the job holder get things done by their smartness and not by their interest in it.

The term interest is used to indicate a mental disposition towards something real or abstract. The way of interest is the way of the heart. The people hirers must give priority to interest patterns of the candidate than to the skills, abilities and the experience. If the interest is their, the other things can be acquired than vice versa. Interest is a natural energiser and when it is connected to business, there is overall goodness - the ownership blossoms.