Retirement Traps - Midlands Financial Benefits
Midlands Financial
"We discovered that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between your two; that it was impossible to keep a loyal customer base without a base of loyal employees; understanding that the most effective employees would rather benefit firms that give you the type of superior value that builds customer loyalty... building loyalty has in reality get to be the acid test of leadership." -- Frederick Reichheld, The Loyalty Effect and Loyalty Rules
For most organizations, the purpose of improving customer care levels is surely an item of faith. And so it should be, due to there being a formidable body of research to show that building customer loyalty has a major impact on profitability. In fact, in accordance with one study - based on 46,000 business-to-business surveys - a "totally satisfied" customer contributes 2.6 times the maximum amount of revenue like a "somewhat satisfied" customer.
Clearly, you will find significant benefits to be realized from attempting to improve an organization's service/quality. And that's why managers devote so much money and time to training programs that "instruct" employees around the more knowledge about dealing with customers. What these managers don't understand, however, is the fact that such attempts are largely cosmetic. Real improvements in customer care focus on providing superior service and support to the employees themselves.
Often, this misunderstanding leads to sending staff through "smile training," issuing edicts to become more courteous, or teaching them how to deal with dissatisfied customers. For the time being, processes and systems don't support frontline servers. Irritants and conditions that reduce morale are swept aside as excuses. An airline manager attemptedto address the issue of declining customer satisfaction by issuing a directive urging staff to smile and be nicer to passengers. A flight attendant's response showed how that manager just didn't have it: "We're smiling despite the fact we're doing our job one, several flight attendants short, with equipment that usually doesn't work properly with a product that has deteriorated."
Harvard professor and author Rosabeth Moss Kanter likens this sort of change-effort to putting lipstick over a bulldog. Instead of deal with an ugly and nasty problem (sorry to bulldog owners), the manager makes superficial changes and tries to pass them off as real improvements. The consequence of this cosmetic effort is, as Kanter observes, that "the bulldog's appearance hasn't improved, but now this really is angry."
Taking a company from good to great customer service ultimately depends upon the people who provide that service. It may only happen through the volunteerism - the willingness to look beyond what's merely required - of folks that serve around the front lines. Going from ordinary to extraordinary performance happens with the discretionary efforts of frontline staff choosing to make the 1000s of "moment(s) of truth" (any time a customer interacts with all the company in person, by phone, or electronically), they manage every single day as positively as they can. This enthusiasm, loyalty, or devotion can't be forced on people. It only happens by way of a "culture of commitment," where frontline people reflect out the intense pride and ownership they're experiencing on the inside.
Here are some examples with the research showing the link between bodily and mental service:
• The best predictor of client satisfaction among workplace attributes is what Vanderbilt professor Roland Rust calls service climate: "those attributes of overall workplace climate that characterize how good equipped employees are to provide customer support, including the adequacy of resources and equipment and job skills development."
• For every one percent increase in internal service climate there exists a two percent rise in revenue.
• In cardiac care units where nurses' moods were depressed, patient death rates were 4x greater than in comparable units.
• Cornell's School of Hotel Administration found out that employees' emotional commitment and sense of identity using the company is a key element in providing excellent service.
• A study of call centers conducted from the Radclyffe Group discovered that "satisfied contact center employees lead to satisfied and loyal customers... customers decide whether or not to make future purchasing decisions having a company, in order to recommend its services to others, like a direct results of their experiences using a contact center representative... key indicators of contact center representative satisfaction include relationships with co-workers and management, job challenges, and frequency of development or training opportunities... a feeling of pride with their job and within the overall company."
Midlands Financial
A company's external customer service is just as strong because the company's internal leadership, as well as the culture of commitment this leadership creates. To explain Abraham Lincoln, our service or brand promise can't fool all of our customers constantly. If the service messages are from step with what's ultimately felt by customers, marketing dollars are wasted. And customer dissatisfaction rises right in addition to staff turnover. Scott Cook, founding father of Intuit (creators of Quicken software), puts it by doing this; "Great brands are earned, not bought. Customer experience is where brand is built, not in the marketing budget."
"We discovered that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between your two; that it was impossible to keep a loyal customer base without a base of loyal employees; understanding that the most effective employees would rather benefit firms that give you the type of superior value that builds customer loyalty... building loyalty has in reality get to be the acid test of leadership." -- Frederick Reichheld, The Loyalty Effect and Loyalty Rules
For most organizations, the purpose of improving customer care levels is surely an item of faith. And so it should be, due to there being a formidable body of research to show that building customer loyalty has a major impact on profitability. In fact, in accordance with one study - based on 46,000 business-to-business surveys - a "totally satisfied" customer contributes 2.6 times the maximum amount of revenue like a "somewhat satisfied" customer.
Clearly, you will find significant benefits to be realized from attempting to improve an organization's service/quality. And that's why managers devote so much money and time to training programs that "instruct" employees around the more knowledge about dealing with customers. What these managers don't understand, however, is the fact that such attempts are largely cosmetic. Real improvements in customer care focus on providing superior service and support to the employees themselves.
Often, this misunderstanding leads to sending staff through "smile training," issuing edicts to become more courteous, or teaching them how to deal with dissatisfied customers. For the time being, processes and systems don't support frontline servers. Irritants and conditions that reduce morale are swept aside as excuses. An airline manager attemptedto address the issue of declining customer satisfaction by issuing a directive urging staff to smile and be nicer to passengers. A flight attendant's response showed how that manager just didn't have it: "We're smiling despite the fact we're doing our job one, several flight attendants short, with equipment that usually doesn't work properly with a product that has deteriorated."
Harvard professor and author Rosabeth Moss Kanter likens this sort of change-effort to putting lipstick over a bulldog. Instead of deal with an ugly and nasty problem (sorry to bulldog owners), the manager makes superficial changes and tries to pass them off as real improvements. The consequence of this cosmetic effort is, as Kanter observes, that "the bulldog's appearance hasn't improved, but now this really is angry."
Taking a company from good to great customer service ultimately depends upon the people who provide that service. It may only happen through the volunteerism - the willingness to look beyond what's merely required - of folks that serve around the front lines. Going from ordinary to extraordinary performance happens with the discretionary efforts of frontline staff choosing to make the 1000s of "moment(s) of truth" (any time a customer interacts with all the company in person, by phone, or electronically), they manage every single day as positively as they can. This enthusiasm, loyalty, or devotion can't be forced on people. It only happens by way of a "culture of commitment," where frontline people reflect out the intense pride and ownership they're experiencing on the inside.
Here are some examples with the research showing the link between bodily and mental service:
• The best predictor of client satisfaction among workplace attributes is what Vanderbilt professor Roland Rust calls service climate: "those attributes of overall workplace climate that characterize how good equipped employees are to provide customer support, including the adequacy of resources and equipment and job skills development."
• For every one percent increase in internal service climate there exists a two percent rise in revenue.
• In cardiac care units where nurses' moods were depressed, patient death rates were 4x greater than in comparable units.
• Cornell's School of Hotel Administration found out that employees' emotional commitment and sense of identity using the company is a key element in providing excellent service.
• A study of call centers conducted from the Radclyffe Group discovered that "satisfied contact center employees lead to satisfied and loyal customers... customers decide whether or not to make future purchasing decisions having a company, in order to recommend its services to others, like a direct results of their experiences using a contact center representative... key indicators of contact center representative satisfaction include relationships with co-workers and management, job challenges, and frequency of development or training opportunities... a feeling of pride with their job and within the overall company."
Midlands Financial
A company's external customer service is just as strong because the company's internal leadership, as well as the culture of commitment this leadership creates. To explain Abraham Lincoln, our service or brand promise can't fool all of our customers constantly. If the service messages are from step with what's ultimately felt by customers, marketing dollars are wasted. And customer dissatisfaction rises right in addition to staff turnover. Scott Cook, founding father of Intuit (creators of Quicken software), puts it by doing this; "Great brands are earned, not bought. Customer experience is where brand is built, not in the marketing budget."