Today we’re sharing insight from guest blogger Barbara Khozam, internationally recognized customer service speaker and trainer. We hope you enjoy Barbara’s wisdom and perspective.
A touchpoint is every single opportunity that customers and clients have of connecting with your business. And every touchpoint has the opportunity to turn great service into a BAD experience.
Real World Story: At a restaurant, touchpoints can include the hostess, cashier, waiters, busboys, and even the chef. At an insurance company, touchpoints can include the company website, call service agents, and even claims adjusters. At a hotel, touchpoints can include reservation emails, parking and garage attendants, bellboys, reception agents, and even the facilities manager.
So, do you know ALL your customer touchpoints? More importantly, do you know how well or badly each touchpoint meets your standards of delivering exceptional service?
Strategies That Turn It Around:
- Make a list. To get a clear picture of your entire customer service delivery program, first make a list of every touchpoint available to your customers. These include direct contact and indirect contact like your janitorial service. For example, if you run a business that gives bathroom access to customers, then remember that a messy and unclean bathroom speaks badly of your service to customers.
- With a complete list of touchpoints in hand, you then should test each and every touchpoint. You should test on a personal and historical basis. Personally, you can engage with each and every touchpoint to see firsthand where problems exist. Historically, you can use past service surveys and complaints on file to see patterns of where problems may lie. Both a personal and historical perspective can give you a good idea of your strengths and weaknesses—what is working and what needs fixing.
- Fix, strengthen, or eliminate. Fix problem areas immediately. Strengthen areas that work but need improvement. Eliminate touchpoints that are no longer necessary, especially those that offer no benefits to customers.
- Evaluate periodically. Look at all your touchpoints on a regular basis—this may be based on a quarterly or semi-annual time frame, depending on the nature of your business and on the standards you have created for delivering great service. You may discover that some touchpoints are no longer relevant or are simply out of date with your technology or best practices.
What’s The Risk?
You can have transactions that are 98% flawless, but that one less-than-flawless touch-point can ruin your customers’ experiences—whether it’s your parking attendant or your company president. Maintaining excellent customer service—and especially when wanting to elevate it—means you have to know every touchpoint your business makes available to customers. After all, great customer service means looking at everything from A to Z.
What do YOU do to ensure that ALL your customer touchpoints in your customer service delivery program meet or exceed your standards?
This content was written and shared by guest blogger, Barbara Khozam.
Barbara Khozam is known around the world for her impactful, high-energy delivery, outrageous wit, and ability to connect with her audience.
Barbara has spoken more than 1,100 times to more than 35,000 people in 9 countries about customer service, leadership, motivation, and communication. And from the millions of people who have been through Toastmasters programs, she is one of just 67 (the 14th woman) who has been awarded with the Elite Accredited Speaker Designation for Outstanding Platform Professional Speaking. She is also the recipient of 27 awards for Sales Achievement & Outstanding Trainer Ratings.
Her wit, energy, and jaw-dropping insight, reveal practical principles necessary for success in today’s cynical marketplace. Barbara will show your audience how to create win-win scenarios in all of their professional relationships and how to create rapport with clients, propelling your business into a category of one.
Barbara’s highly acclaimed book, How Organizations Deliver BAD Customer Service (and Strategies that Turn it Around) has become a staple on the bookshelves of people who excel at creating great customer relationships. She also co-authored Executive Etiquette Power and was featured in The Power of the Platform, along with Jack Canfield, Brian Tracy, and Les Brown. These books have sold in excess of 25,000 copies worldwide.
Barbara is a former professional beach volleyball player and can still be found spiking balls on a court when she is not lobbing insightful and practical advice to groups like Kaiser, Xerox, Symantec, Verizon, FEMA, the FBI, and hundreds of other multinational corporations, and government agencies.
Connect with Barbara via her website, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
