Customer service in a tough world

Have you recently thought about how to create good customer service, measure it and use the results to communicate your success and improvements? 

In the ever transparent world of Twitter, Facebook, and other Social Media properties we can no longer be complacent that our business is doing the right thing to achieve excellent customer service. 

We often hear about horror stories appearing on Facebook and Twitter and undisciplined individuals making adverse comments about brands/products which are probably unfounded at times. But how do you keep on top of your customer service knowing someone out there could be an advocate or a critic of your brand and business? One firm has taken steps to measure their performance and to communicate their results.

GreenStones, an award winning Peterborough based accountancy firm has created three customer focused key KPIs (key performance indicators) to measure customer service and aptly use the phrase “if you measure you’ll get treasure”:

• Customer happiness – Achieved a February score of 8.55 out of 10.
• Turnaround times – How fast you get your accounts and tax estimates after you have let us have your records?  The February average was 29 calendar days.  This is from start to finish.
• Proactive calls each month based upon a number of unsolicited meaningful conversations with customers to add value.  Their monthly target is 64 and in February did 75.

It is a great example of how a business can create measured activities that are built upon achieving customer service excellence, in Greenstones case also backed by a 100% money back guarantee! That is clear evidence of their credentials and helps to create brand advocates. The results are also clearly communicated on their website (www.greenstones.co.uk) and in their reception area.

We asked Simon Chaplin, Director at GreenStones about the importance of customer service KPIs and how these numbers have translated into creating excellent customer service.

“These numbers are often the most talked about numbers within the practice. Each month we spend time considering all the KPI’s of the practice and coming up with ways of improving them. The fact the customer service KPIs are so public makes us focus on them even more.”

Communicating your customer success through customer service KPIs is a great way of demonstrating your commitment to delivering the highest standards for your customers and Greenstones have demonstrated how this can be done successfully.

Please give us your views and experiences on good customer service.

Contributed by Raj Rajput and Simon Chaplin (GreenStones)