How Leaders Can Help Develop Customer Service Strategies

A customer focused business, whether B2C or B2B (we all have customers), is more profitable and has greater longevity. Period. Research has proven that businesses that aim to be more customer-centric have a 24% higher net profit, and have a higher profit per employee than ‘the other guys’ (those that aren’t customer focused).

Let’s not concentrate on this however. Let’s assume you’ve already decided, as you should, that you’d like to be more customer-centric. How do I do this? You might ask yourself. Well, that’s where we’ll begin. To become a successful customer focused business, your leadership must develop a holistic strategy that impacts every department, and revolutionizes the way you do business.

Leadership is the driving force of strategy. It’s generals that craft military tactics, so it must be your executives that develop a business strategy. It’s only your business leaders that possess the unique interdepartmental knowledge that is needed to make a unified pan-department approach.

It’s your leaders who best understand your business’ culture and values, and whether or not they must be changed to accommodate the new customer-centric tactics.

And it’s your leadership who is in the best position to see the course of the strategy from above, to analyze the results, and to let the strategy evolve as is necessary. It’s not enough to just craft a strategy, it must be seen through until the end, analyzed, documented, and hopefully systemized. This will make it easier to scale your customer service process, and to increase your profitability.

Here are a few tips in developing a customer service strategy from the top down:

1. Find out what your customer wants
The first step in creating an interdepartmental customer service strategy is to find out what your customers wants, what they’ve been asking for, and what they’ve been talking about.

The easiest and arguably the best way of doing this is to conduct interviews with your customers. If possible, have a specialist or an executive do this as they will be in a better position detect and understand patterns in your customer’s comments.

Another way is to make it easier for customers to complain and comment. Complaints are a window into your customer’s mind, so make it easy for them by setting up phone lines and an active social media that can respond. Once you have your information, find patterns and analyze the best course of action.

2. Set realistic goals
From there set measurable, realistic goals that will help you track your strategy’s process. You should have a goal to mark each milestone in your strategy.

Goals can take the form of reduced customer complaints, increased monthly revenue, or just better customer interactions.

3. Create an appetite for dynamism
To turn a short-term strategy into a long term, successful system, you’ll have to affect your team culturally. Reanalyze and possibly redefine your company values, your mission, and your approach.

Is your company dynamic? Does it have an appetite for change? Can it roll with the punches while keeping profits and systems strong? If not, your team’s culture has to be reworked.

To ensure this works, make sure that your executives and team management are not only part of the change, but act as the motivational leaders, paving the way through example and confidence building.

4. Document your process
When results begin to pour in, map out the process. This will create a template for every new strategy, and will outline what has been working and what hasn’t been. The documentation should be an ongoing priority, and is never complete until the strategy has been seen through and analyzed.

5. Analyze your results
This is the most important step. Without analyzing the successes and failures of your customer service strategy, the entire process will be wasted! Go through your results to find the strongest feature and the weakest feature in your strategic process, after identifying the criteria through which to judge. Then refine your focus using this insight.

Improve on failures, or narrow your focus and just expand on your successes. If you find you are presented with too many failures, you should revisit the above steps and reinvent your strategy.

6. Develop a CRM strategy
A CRM is a somewhat tricky piece of technology. Use it inappropriately and it will simply be just a costly risk, but use it right and it can improve your customer service management monumentally. This in turn will benefit your bottom line.

A CRM without strategy and leadership will do you little good, so make sure its management isn’t left entirely to your IT department. Your CRM should span departments, and will hopefully unite them better in your customer service values. That is why it is key that leadership oversees the CRM process. Only they have the bird’s eye view of the operations.

Finally, ensure your CRM strategy is a branch of your overall customer service strategy, that it is a tool in your arsenal and not the entire arsenal itself.

Remember to keep your long-term goals in mind. Leadership is about looking at the present while thinking about the future. Always be strategic with your thinking! Your customers will thank you, your employees will thank you, and you’ll end up giving yourself a pat on the back.

Adrian Davis is a business strategist, keynote speaker and trusted advisor to business owners and chief executives. He is the President and CEO of the management consulting firm Whetstone Inc. Adrian is often called upon to address executive management teams and sales groups to discuss corporate strategies, competitive advantages and sales excellence.

He’s currently running a one-question survey to learn more the biggest challenges businesses face today. Survey participants will obtain both an ebook detailing the results of his study, as well as actionable steps to develop your leadership strategy. To participate in his survey, visit his website at http://adriandavis.com/greatest-business-challenges.

9 comments on “How Leaders Can Help Develop Customer Service Strategies

  1. Great post… great service starts with committed people! But not just committed customer service representatives. The entire company has to share the belief that serving customers is fundamental to their success.

    1. Absolutely, Andy, which is why I wanted Adrian to share his insights on this in terms of the role leaders play in ensuring that it's not seen as being a departmental issue, but one that the whole organization should be involved in.

      Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this piece.

  2. Nice post. I completely agree that the whole organization should be involved in making important decisions. Also the types of customers one is serving has to be kept in mind so that the services are designed according to them. This will help not only in short term but also the long term.

  3. Without leadership any process will become a chaos without time limits, strategy, force. The progress is impossible without leaders.

  4. Hi Adrian,

    How true it was when call centres came to the fore to serve the customers. Customer service need not be a dedication but should be a commitment. Regardless of the kind of customers you come across, the service should be rendered.

    Thanks a lot,
    Sanjib Saha

    1. Hey Sanjib,

      A great observation! Businesses need to realize how important real customer service is. This should be in the back of every leader's mind.

      Thanks for your comment,
      Adrian

  5. I definitely agree with this sentence "Leadership is the driving force of strategy. It’s generals that craft military tactics, so it must be your executives that develop a business strategy." because it is true and very effective. Leaders possesses the attitude that gave them the chance to achieve the success they want and need for their websites and online businesses.

    1. Hey Gary,

      Couldn't agree more! The attitude of a leader is a make or break when it comes to motivating staff and developing great strategies.

      Best,
      Adrian Davis

  6. Your thoughts seem to reflect the view that businesses need to empower their frontline staff to be able to provide the most appropriate service and experience.

    It's a very interesting area, and one that we've covered from a variety of angles this year – whether that be the role that LEADERS play in empowering their staff (see my recent overview of leadership and customer service); the role that CULTURE plays in empowerment (which Stephen Covey recently discussed); or the role that STRUCTURE plays (see Leon Benjamin's excellent article on connectivity).

    The customer strategy itself is of course also critically important – as Stephanie highlights.

    But I'd also add to the mix that the frontline staff themselves have to have the right mettle. Part of this means that the recruitment process must ensure the right candidates are picked – but training must also play an important role…

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