How To Improve Customer Service By Spending Far Less Time

(Photo by Sleestak66)

The customers are demanding attention. You address them the best you can, but there are so many that you can’t keep up with them all.

The bigger your business grows, the more customers are asking questions and complaining about more and more issues. You want to treat your customers well, but you just can’t stretch any more . . .

Believe me, this will happen sooner or later when you become an entrepreneur and your business takes off. Even when you offer outstanding service or products, there will be inquiries and also complaints about perceived problems. What do you do?

It seems the majority of business owners choose one or both of the following two options:

1. Work longer hours
2. Get other people’s help (ie, their time), starting with your family members and then hiring others

Both approaches above are based on linear thinking.

You are addressing each problem one by one, and each problem solving takes certain amount of time, so the total time needed to solve all problems is the sum of time each individual problem solving takes. Obviously, you need more time to solve more problems this way. So you either work longer hours yourself or, realizing your human physical limitations, you get other people’s time. The quality of your personal life, your health, your relationship with family, and the bottom line of your business suffer when you approach problem solving this way. You started your business with passion and lots of wonderful dreams, yet you find yourself dreading . . .

It doesn’t have to be this way.

There is another approach that radically shortens the time needed to address customer service problems while keeping the level of your service high, even higher than before. And you can learn and use this approach right away even if you are currently an employee. In fact, I strongly recommend we all practice using this approach as it is so effective that it will change your work life.

It is to learn systematic thinking and implement effective system.

Let me explain with real-life examples, one by Christine O’Kelly at Self Made Chick and another my own experience.

In How to Achieve Ridiculous Goals, Christine explains how she, as a new Operation Manager of a start-up company, cleared 80,000 customer email backlogs in 3 weeks. She says it took more than a year for the backlog to build to this level. There weren’t enough number of customer service reps to answer these emails one by one. Just demanding them to work faster didn’t work, either. So what did she do? She says:

I created a system analyzing the most common customer service questions, creating pre-made responses for each of the main types of questions, ran the 80,000 emails through a series of keyword-based filters to identify the topic of the email, separated them each into different “buckets,” and then had the CS team run these through a rigged up process that would send out back the correct auto response to each person. In exactly 3 weeks, the backlog was cleared.

This is the power of system. It leverages time and effort. Instead of addressing one problem at a time, you create a system that can address bunch of problems all at once.

Another example . . . I used to work for a large bank (now part of JP Morgan Chase) as International Banking Coordinator. One of my main responsibilities was to take care of Japanese expatriate businessmen, who were not familiar with American banking system. It was in the 90s, and they had never used debit cards, didn’t know the difference between credit card and debit card, not to mention being unfamiliar with various security restrictions used for credit cards. My predecessor’s day was all about answering customer calls. Several months after I took the job, the angry or panicked calls were gone and I could focus on sales calls and learning about other banking services for my own growth.

How did I do it? I figured most problems can be tracked down to certain causes, and addressed them proactively in a systematic manner. As a starter, I added some info on the brochure we were using, educating them about the differences of American banking products and how they can take advantage of them. When I opened accounts for new clients, I took a few minutes explaining them, referring to the brochure, and this system of educating customers pretty much eliminated their confusion and complaints. Further, I would ask my new clients about their function as part of relationship building process, and if they were in sales or senior management, I would ask them if they travel on business to meet their customers. If they said yes, I asked them if I may remove one of the restriction on their credit card that blocks out-of-area usage. My clients loved me for being so attentive and helpful, and I became free from calls like, “ Aaaargh, I am at dinner with the president of my biggest customer and my credit card doesn’t work! What do I do!?”

To sum up, here is the basic procedure to build a good system:

1. Find pattern and categorize the problems
2. Identify the root cause(s)
3. Build system that addresses problems by the categories. Implement and verify the system.

Many people are so used to linear thinking that it will take some conscious learning to understand system. We are conditioned to just jump at the problem and “deal with” them. It takes fundamental change in thinking to sit back first to design and build the system. However, the rewards are huge. As I wrote in 5 Qualities I Find In Successful Entrepreneurs, I think this is one of the most critical skill for entrepreneurs. It is so important that I will write more about this in future posts.

Do you have your story of building your great system?

Thanks to Brad for including this post in Carnival of Sales & Management Success.

If you like this article, you might enjoy my eBook on spiritual entrepreneurship. Click here for free, immediate download

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