The before, during and after of customer service

There are three major stages to achieving excellence in customer service.  They are quite simply -

1. What happens before someone buys from you?
2. What happens during the transaction?
3. What happens after the transaction has taken place (including what happens when things go wrong)?

Only those organisations who pay equal attention to each of the above three stages will have a hope of achieving excellence in customer service.

The most common sin is neglecting stage 3.  How many times have you dealt with an organisation who has been to coin a phrase “all over you” until they have banked you money and then they go missing?

I liken this to the early stages of dating.  Keen to impress, one naturally goes above and beyond to market themselves and give a good impression.  The world is littered with people who have woken up one morning next to someone and thought to themselves “what the hell happened to the person I met 5 years ago?”

If you do go missing once a transaction has taken place then you better make sure that you have an constant stream of new customer to deal with because your repeat business will be at an absolute minimum.  You are also taking a major gamble on people not talking to one another.

Although it is common for organisations to disappear in some way after the money has been banked it always surprises me how many people fail on stage one as well.

As an example we are currently looking for a new web developer to work with us on our site and do some back end changes to make things easier to use for our customers.  I have had nothing but trouble with this.  The web development industry is notoriously bad for its customer service but the people I have contacted made a huge virtue of their accessibility, customer care and general client handling.

Three whole weeks after my first inquiries to three different organisations I am no further forward with even getting a quotation for the work.  We would very quickly go out of business if we adopted this approach too.

As it has taken so long to even get a quote I have decided not to use any of the organisations in question.  This is quite simply because if they fail to look after me correctly when they are trying to sell something (or are in the early dating stage to use the analogy above) then how will they look after me during the transaction i.e. when the work is being done and after the transaction i.e. if something doesn’t work properly?

Perhaps the killer stage of the three stage cycle however is during the transaction.  This is the so called moment of truth, where success is defined and future relationships are developed.

Now this stage can be as short as a 5 minute phone call to order something small for delivery or it can last for ages such as the building of a house or even a new website.  I am always surprised at how many companies do a great job of selling to me up front but then let themselves down as I am actually buying.  These organisations often don’t have the luxury of getting to after-sales.  In fact their after-sales may be second-to-none but if they are letting you down during the transaction then they may never get the chance to demonstrate their after-sales care.

It is a major bugbear of sales people that they often put in all the effort to win an order and they are then sometimes let down by those involved in processing and delivery.

In order to make sure you are giving yourself a chance of achieving excellent customer service and therefore having an opportunity to develop long term relationships, you must make sure that every one of the three stages above is as good as it can be.  It is quite literally impossible to provide excellent customer service if one or more of the above three stages is neglected.

GA Training provide consultancy and customer service training to help you ensure that you get the most out of your staff and keep your customers happy over the long term.