Are you measuring customer satisfaction? Do you ask your customers (external or internal customers) to rate you on a satisfaction survey index? If you do, then how you react to customer interactions before the survey could define feedback your customers give you, or not give you for that matter.
If you rely only on customer satisfaction survey scores, you might be missing out valuable feedback that customers never give you in the surveys. You get feedback at all times from customers, sometimes direct and sometimes indirect. How you react to it defines how customers perceive your service as. If you don't listen to your customers during regular interactions, they are less likely to give you any feedback in customer surveys. They are more likely to stop giving you feedback. Worst, they will tell others about the bad service instead of telling you about it.
I am sure we work very hard to exceed customer expectations. But let's face is, as service providers (internal or external), sometimes we do get irritated at customers. We believe so much in our own service levels that we forget to see if these are still relevant for the customers. How we react to the inputs when a customer does give us some feedback changes the way we will receive feedback in the future. Sometimes inadvertently while responding to a customer feedback, we may put them off by disbelieving their feedback by telling them the unlikeliness of a service failure because of robust processes and systems. Instead of lauding internal processes, all that is really needed is to acknowledge the experience customer might have had.
So when you receive any feedback from your customers, first respond with a simple acknowledgement and apology of the experience. This is usually enough to turn the customer around. Later when you review the situation and identify the cause of customer experience, you can get back the customer with more details. This could even include things where the customer may have been at fault and things that you want the customer to change.
I was recently asked to share some customer moments. One of
my defining customer moments was during a project we were doing more than 10
years ago. This was a very large elearning project to convert huge amount of
content to elearning in a short period of time. The times were short of the
volume of work and everyone was under severe pressure. This included our client
contact, who was also under pressure from her stakeholders and customers. As happens
in elearning projects, we were expecting to get content from SMEs. Our client
was managing the SMEs and they were to provide the content. There were delays
and we were having a rather tense call about how to ensure that the project
will complete on time. Given the pressures, I also reacted saying the content
has been delayed by SMEs and so we need more time. That’s when the client asked
in a terse voice as to who is project managing the project? “We are paying you
for project management and you now expect me to ensure content is on time?” For
a few moments I wasn’t sure what hit me and how to react. It was quite a
defining moment of how I view the responsibilities of a project that we
undertake.
Lately I have also been working with a lot of government
departments in India. It’s been a different experience from working with mostly
US-based enterprises. The most common challenge is getting signoffs. However
that’s not really my key learning. What I have figured while working with
government clients is primarily two things:
1) Think big. The problems government is trying to solve are
really big problems, be it at country level or at state level.
2) Align yourself with the government official's vision of
the scheme and work towards the success of the scheme, irrespective of the
scope of your project. Always have the bigger picture of what the scheme is
trying to achieve. Remember, if the scheme succeeds, your project succeeds, and
it will result in long term continuing projects. If your project succeeds but
the scheme doesn't, there will be no future projects.
What have your defining customer moments? Do share here.
