, , , , , ,

1st Step in Creating Proactive Service® – Focus on Service, Not Selling

Jim Baston service expertIf you are interested in creating a proactive service® focus for your field service technicians, the first step is to focus on the service, not the sale.  This is more than just semantics, it is a mindset that deals with the very heart of what we want our technicians to do.

Technicians who seem naturally gifted at selling their company’s products or services do not see their efforts as selling at all – they recognize their recommendations as the valuable service that they are.  To them it is a service activity. Read more

, , , , , ,

Creating a Proactive Service Culture Throughout Your Service Team

Jim Baston Service Tech trainingCreating a Proactive Service® culture throughout your service team is one of the most effective ways that a service company can grow their business and create a distinctive competitive advantage.  By Proactive Service®, we mean a technical service team that is engaged not only in maintaining and fixing equipment to the highest levels, but in actively looking for ways that their firms can help their customer meet their own business goals.  It is proactive because the technician takes the initiative to identify opportunities to help and proactively addresses these with the customer. Read more

, , , , , ,

Are Your Employees Empowered to Deliver Exceptional Customer Service?

customer service expert CanadaThink that your employees are empowered to deliver an exceptional customer experience?  Don’t bank on it.  Your policies may be letting you down. I learned this lesson recently during a trip to a bank. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was off to the UK on business on an early morning flight on Monday.  To my dismay, I realized that I did not have any British currency.  No problem, I reasoned, I just need to go to the bank.

As it turned out, my branch was closed by the time I arrived.  Fortunately, another bank on the other side of the plaza was open.  By coincidence, I used to have all of my accounts with the open bank until about three years ago and I still had a Visa card with their name on it.

I waited my turn for the lone teller.  When I got to the wicket, I explained that I would like to purchase some pounds sterling.

“Certainly sir, how much would you like?” came the very pleasant reply.

“£200 should do it, thanks.”

“No problem, just put your bank card in the slot.” she directed.

Read more

, , , , , ,

Transform the Service Experience through Responsiveness

customer service expertIn this blog, we will consider what we can do to transform the service experience by demonstrating our responsiveness.  Responsiveness shows our competence and this creates Assurance. Responsiveness shows that we are Reliable and demonstrates that we have Empathy for our customers.

Recall that the name RATER[1] is an acronym with each letter representing the first letter of one of the five key dimensions of service quality.  They are:

R eliability: Our ability to provide what is promised, dependably and accurately

A ssurance: Our knowledge and courtesy, and our ability to convey trust and confidence

T angibles:  Our physical facilities and equipment, and our appearance

E mpathy:    The degree of caring and individual attention we provide to customers

Responsiveness:  Our willingness to help customers and provide prompt service

To demonstrate responsiveness, consider what your team can do to demonstrate responsiveness through every customer touch point.  For example, does everyone on your team know that responsiveness means being accessible?  Do they understand the importance of getting back to the customer in a reasonable amount of time?  Are they aware of what accounts for “reasonable” when getting back to customers, colleagues and suppliers?

Read more

, , , , , ,

Transform the Service Experience through Empathy

customer service expertIn my last post on the five key dimensions of service quality, we considered what we can do to transform the service experience through the tangible aspects of the service we provide. Here we consider what we can do to transform the service experience by clearly communicating to our customers that we care about them.  Our customers will have little regard for us until they know that we have empathy.

Recall that the name RATER is an acronym with each letter representing the first letter of one of the five key dimensions of service quality.  They are:

R eliability: Our ability to provide what is promised, dependably and accurately

A ssurance: Our knowledge and courtesy, and our ability to convey trust and confidence

T angibles:  Our physical facilities and equipment, and our appearance

E mpathy: The degree of caring and individual attention we provide to customers

R esponsiveness: Our willingness to help customers and provide prompt service

Read more

, , , , , ,

Transform the Service Experience through Tangibles

Transforming the service experience with tangiblesIn my previous blog in this series, we discussed how to transform the service experience through ‘assurance’. In this blog post, we will consider what we can do to transform the service experience through the tangible aspects of the service we provide.  Our customers will make judgments about the quality of our work and the competence of our technicians based on tangible clues that they can see.

Recall that the name RATER[1] is an acronym with each letter representing the first letter of one of the five key dimensions of service quality.  They are:

R eliability: Our ability to provide what is promised, dependably and accurately

A ssurance: Our knowledge and courtesy, and our ability to convey trust and confidence

T angibles:  Our physical facilities and equipment, and our appearance

E mpathy:    The degree of caring and individual attention we provide to customers

R esponsiveness:     Our willingness to help customers and provide prompt service

Read more

, , , , , ,

CMCEF Webinar Series – Part 3 Maintaining the Service Experience

CMCEF LOGO The next and final webinar in the CMCEF Webinar Series is called Maintaining the Service Experience and will take place on Tuesday, February 26th, 2013.   On February 12th, 2013, I presented the second webinar in the Transforming the Service Experience series hosted by the Canadian Mechanical Contractors Education Foundation.  The Webinar was called Creating the Service Experience. In the webinar, we considered the five key hurdles to successfully engaging our technicians in activities to transform the service experience resulting in more revenues and higher customer satisfaction and retention.  The hurdles that can prevent our technicians from doing what we would like them to do are:

  1. Knowledge:  We must clearly define our expectations of what we want our technicians to do.  Often we assume that our technicians know what is expected and overlook the importance of this step.
  2. Skills:  We must ensure that our technicians have the skills to act in the manner we ask of them.  Engaging in proactive discussions with customers may be uncomfortable for some of our technicians and they may lack the skills to do so effectively.
  3. Perception:  We must ensure that our technicians understand why we ask them to act as we do.  Speaking to customers about our services and capabilities may be perceived as a sales task by our technicians.  They need to understand that helping our customers operate their facilities more effectively is a service, not a sale.
  4. Tools and processes:  We must make certain that the technicians have the tools and are supported by our processes to do what we want them to.  When our processes do not support our technician’s efforts, they will perceive that what we are asking is not that important and quickly lose heart.
  5. Motivation:  To get our technicians to enthusiastically embrace a proactive service approach, they must want to do it.  Otherwise, at best they will simply go through the motions or, at worst, not act in the manner we would like them to at all.

Read more

, , , , , ,

Transform the Service Experience through Assurance

customer service assurance In the last blog post, we discussed transforming the service experience through reliability. Let us now consider what we can do to transform the service experience by creating the feeling of assurance in our customer’s mind.  That is, helping them, as they reflect on our service, say to themselves “That’s why I do business with you!”

As we know, the name RATER[1] is an acronym with each letter representing the first letter of one of the five key dimensions of service quality.  They are:

Reliability: Our ability to provide what is promised, dependably and accurately

Assurance: Our knowledge and courtesy, and our ability to convey trust and confidence

Tangibles: Our physical facilities and equipment, and our appearance

Empathy: The degree of caring and individual attention we provide to customers

Responsiveness: Our willingness to help customers and provide prompt service

To help our customers experience each of these dimensions when working with us, we need to ensure that our employees act in ways that allow our customers to experience these dimensions.  Today we will look at creating Assurance for the customer.

Read more

, , , ,

Creating the Service Experience Part 2 – CMCEF Webinar Series

CMCEF LOGO I am pleased to share information about the next webinar in the CMCEF Webinar Series  Transforming the Service Experience called Creating the Service Experience which will take place Tuesday, February 12th, 2013.   This webinar will examine the challenges of transforming the service experience and discuss how these challenges can be addressed to ensure success.  At the end of this seminar, participants will understand the challenges they will likely have to confront when transforming their own service experience and can use this information to create a plan to address them within their own firms. I hope you can attend!

This follows the first in the webinar series that took place on Tuesday, January 29th, 2013, where I presented on Defining the Service Experience.  We focused on the five key steps that technicians can take to transform the service experience that you create for your customers.  The five key steps our technicians can take are:

Read more

, , , , , ,

Transform the Service Experience through Reliability

Transforming the Service ExperienceIn a previous blog post, Transforming the Service Experience – 5 Dimensions of Service Quality, we introduced the RATER Model[1] of customer service as a tool to help us transform the service experience into one that is valued by our customers and creates a sustainable competitive advantage.  The model represents the five key dimensions of service quality and provides service providers with a template for defining and creating their unique and valued service experience.  Today we will consider how a service company can define the dimension “Reliability”.

As you may recall, the name RATER is an acronym with each letter representing the first letter of one of the five dimensions.  They are:

R eliability: Our ability to provide what is promised, dependably and accurately,

A ssurance: Our knowledge and courtesy, and our ability to convey trust and confidence,

T angibles:  Our physical facilities and equipment, and our appearance,

E mpathy:  The degree of caring and individual attention we provide to customers,

R esponsiveness:  Our willingness to help customers and provide prompt service.

Read more