Break the Common Communication Barriers

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Instead of gearing your company up to cope with the demand for customer service, challenge why those needs are arising in the first place. Progressively eliminate all situations where there are “dumb contacts,” then go after the cause of “repeat contacts” and make it easier for people to do obvious things.

In most customer service operations, there are three types of contacts that occur with customers:

1. Dumb Contacts: Dumb contacts are service needs that arise because the company has caused confusion, failed to meet promised deadlines or has delivered defective products.

2. Repeat Contacts: Repeat contacts are when customers have to call a second or third time to get their problems addressed. They arise when the company fails to follow through on doing what it promised.

3. Simple Questions: Simple Questions arise when custoners ask straightforward things like: “What is my current balance?” or “When is my next payment due?”

Instead of gearing up to meet these service requirements, companies should more time challenging the demand for why these situations are arising in the first place. Cut off the need for these service contacts to arise at all and not only do you have happier customers,but your operation will also run much more efficiently.

Challenging the demand for service contacts involves four steps:

1. Figure out all the reasons why customers need to contact you today
2. Establish internal closed-loop systems to challenge the demand
3. Work out what to automate, eliminate, simplify or improve to stop demand
4. Teach everyone to eliminate repeats by addressing problems properly

1. Figure out all the reasons why customers need to contact you today: so you understand why they have taken the time and effort to call you, e-mail you or write to you. In practice, there are usually about twenty to thirty reasons why customers feel the urge to contact you. Make it possible for the person taking the call or handling the contact to keep accurate records of the underlying reasons why customers are getting in touch. This will give you a baseline against which you can measure any improvements you ultimately make.

2. Establish internal closed-loop systems to challenge the demand: or in other words connect your customer service department and what they know with the departments that are generating the demand for customer service needs in the first place. This will require five interconnected parts:

Generate clear reports that set out the top ten reasons why customers contact you and the underlying trends that correlate with this data.

Designate owners for each of the top ten reasons and require them to determine the root causes and suggest possible remedies.

Set realistic targets for reducing the number of service conacts generated by each root cause.

Meet weekly to track ongoing results, share progress and plan new solutions for these root causes.

Generate rewards for those who succeed in lowering customer service calls and consequences for those who are unable to move the needle.

3. Work out what to automate, eliminate, simplify or improve to stop demand: which usually works out this way:

For “I was ignored” situations, create new training programs to enhance performance in these areas.

For “I want to buy more,” get the details on what has gone right and make it easy for people to get more.

For “Where’s my stuff” problems, analyze why your company isn’t filling its obligations and come up with fixes.

For “Something missing” problems, make it possible for customers to help themselves in these areas.

4. Teach everyone to eliminate repeats by addressing problems properly: ideally, resolve everything with a single call rather than requiring customers to come back again and again (inevitably talking to new person each time and therefore starting all over). One way to do this is to generate a report each subsequent time customers need to contact the company and analyze that report for the underlying reasons why the matter was not properly resolved the first time around. By following through and working hard to ensure that problems get resolved the first time around, the company benefits and customer satisfaction is enhanced.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

–Albert Einstein