Have you ever thought about the criteria your customers use to evaluate positive service interactions with your organization? According to Zeithaml, Parasuraamn and Berry from their book Delivering Quality Service: Balancing Customer Perceptions and Expectations, there are 5 key areas that customers use to evaluate service:
Reliability- can the customer depend on the organization to accurately and dependably provide service to them?
Assurance- does the service provider convey confidence about their product or service and do the customers trust that service provider?
Tangibles- this deals specifically with the appearance of the service area, the store, the lobby etc., and the appearance of the customer service provider. Is the environment pleasing and appropriate and is the service provider dressed appropriately, smiling, warm and genuinely open? If you are interacting with the customer via the phone obviously your smile, your tone of voice and listening intently will create positive points of connection with your customers.
Empathy- this is the strongest skill that demonstrates that the service provider genuinely cares.
Responsiveness- this involves the ability to provide prompt or timely service and measures the willingness of the service provider to help customers.
Stephen Covey refers to a concept of emotional bank accounts. An emotional bank account works like a financial bank account where there are deposits and withdrawals. Points of connection Points of connection, whether positive or negative, have a direct correlation to the customer’s emotional bank account. If the connection is a positive experience there is a direct deposit. A negative experience leads to an immediate withdrawal from the account. Often times, it takes numerous positive points of connection to create a deposit; however, it often only takes one negative point of connection to deplete an account.
How did you react to the last negative experience you had with a service provider? Was you last stay at a hotel positive or negative? What point of connection formed your decision?
Is every point of connection in you business a positive one? Will your clients be adding to their emotional bank account for your business or are they planning to close the account. How can you know?
Start now to find out! Create a process within your organization that provides the ability to monitor and measure every point of connection in your service cycle. By creating that process you will be focusing on making every customer experience valuable and hopefully positive.
If you want to know more about how to increase you Customer Loyalty contact Hank Sullivan at Strategic Solutions (510) 432-7596
Many managers (owners) have the authority to make decisions and manage their business. They also believe that they have the power. Unfortunately, they are working under a misconception. There is a vast difference between having the authority to manage and having the power to manage.
Authority according to the dictionary is the ability to exercise (administrative) control over others. It is granted to a manager by the company or organization in keeping with the position that position holds.
It is a right to settle disputes, to control operations, to make and implement decisions and to administer or manage.
Power is the measure of your personal effectiveness. It is a skill that you develop in the everyday use of your authority. You earn your power; it is granted to you by those over whom you have exercised your personal ability and capacity to influence their behavior. Power places few limits on your available lines of action and implies a flexibility of behavior suitable to a variety of situations. It is a form of individual freedom to be creative, innovative, and responsive to the needs of others who will assist you in reaching your goals.
Authority, on the other hand, defines limits and action that you have the contractual right to take or use. It is granted to you by the organization as part of the organization’s attempt to control.
Managers who frequently have to resort to using authority diminish their personal power and ultimately their ability to influence and lead others.
They often find themselves having to use coercion to get things done. As a manager, if you possess power, you need only use authority as a last resort to accomplish your ends.
Managers, who create a climate of trust and cooperation, help their subordinates maintain their dignity, pride, and autonomy. Employees working under such conditions have been found to be happier, highly productive, and personally motivated.
Therefore, it should be the goal of an effective manager, to create conditions wherein individuals can set and achieve personal goals while achieving the goals of the organization.
In the words of Dwight David Eisenhower:“Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it.”
For more information on this and other leadership issues contact Hank Sullivan at Strategic Solutions 510-432-7596 or email:hsullivan@stratsolutions.net
