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293Chapter 18: Enhancing Customer Service
Benchmarking your customer
service performance
At its best, customer service is a way of business life. It affects every busi-
ness decision and every customer encounter.
Bring your staff together to brainstorm the questions in Table 18-3 and to
make a plan for service enhancements.
Table 18-3 Benchmarking Your Customer Service
1. How is our overall service right now? Give yourself a 1–12 rating
based on the Customer
Service Self-Evaluation in
Table 18-2. Then set a goal for
improvement.
2. How does this compare to how we were Service levels rise on good
doing in the past? morale. Give praise when
praise is due.
3. How does our service compare to that Find a couple of areas where
of our competitors? competitors exceed your serv-
ice and commit to improve-
4. How extensive are any problems being ment by defining specific
experience by our customers? Are they actions you will take.
one-time problems or recurring issues that
point to operational problems? Bring front-line staff into the
discussion because they hear
concerns first-hand. Also ask
some of your best clients and
suppliers for input.
5. How well are we handling customer Analyze some recent specific
concerns? complaints. What was the
issue? How was it handled?
How do you evaluate the out-
come? How do you think the
customer might evaluate the
outcome?
(continued)
