Bringing "CARE" into customer service

I read an article recently titled Outstanding Customer Service Simply Isn't Good Enough written by Nektaria Hamister, Matt O'Bryan and Kent Sexton. They state in their article that there are two main types of customer service employees: those who care, and those who don't. The former go out of their way to service their customers willingly, cheerfully and effectively. They meet and exceed expectations.

Then we get then latter… those who look at customer service as a burdensome obligation and half perform their duties while secretly counting the minutes until the end of their shift. What kind of employees do you have?

They used an example of a hotel where they get all the employees customer focused irrespective of whether or not you deal with customers directly and they empower their room cleaning staff to make contact with their customers. They even try to find out the reason for the customer's visit and often place a card in their room, for example if someone is going for a job interview they place a card saying “Good Luck”.

Employees working within the service industry need to be passionate about service and care about their customers. Customer Care as we know it is going to change significantly in the next five to ten years. Companies are slowly realising that they need to take care of their employees and customers and in doing so will reap the rewards. Research taken from my training shows that in most cases employees know how to service their customers but a combination of poor management practices, a sense of not feeling important or wanted in their own companies, and poor or non-existent quality management practices leads them to deliver poor service.

Care within an organisation starts from top to bottom. Everyone needs to be on the same page and senior management need to drive the process of change. Senior managers are the parents of the organisation and their children being the employees look up to them for support and guidance. Use the CARE model below to create service oriented people.

C - Commitment
A - Attitude
R - Response
E - Emotions

Commitment from staff by means of developing a customer service charter for your organisation that everyone lives by. Develop the right attitude which will create a service culture. Teach employees how to respond to their customers using effective quality skills such as communication, listening and empathy, and take care of your customers using emotions that stimulate interest in your customers. It will bring your rich rewards.

The care model was developed by Howard Badler.