In my previous column, we discussed timeliness and reliability. This column will continue the discussion of three more customer service mainstays.

You might recall our earlier column linked the team’s search for the characteristics required to ensure customers receive excellent service. Since the team was from a scientific area, we sought to identify quality tools to help ensure success.

Compassion: There were no surprises when the investigation showed that customers expect (demand) services that meet their needs. This is why it’s critical to listen to what your customers are telling you. To do that with any degree of confidence, organizations must clearly identify what customers need/want/expect.

When our team wrestled with how to react to customer feedback, there was much confusion about empathy and sympathy. They certainly don’t mean the same and their application can have a substantial impact on customers.

Sympathy is feeling sorry for someone’s misfortune without sharing their emotions. It is more of a detached form of compassion. Whether or not it’s intended, customers sense that you don’t really care about their situation, which can adversely affect a customer-supplier relationship.

On the other hand, people who work with customers should be trained to display empathy, not sympathy. Empathy involves understanding the feelings of others (i.e., putting yourself in their shoes). In other words, empathy relates “I feel with you” versus sympathy which is more “I feel for you.” A big difference.

To eliminate confusion, the team decided to use compassion as a key characteristic which is a stronger term for empathy.

When training people to visit customer sites, representatives were directed never to argue with customers and to take on the concept that the ‘customer is always right.’ Our representatives were instructed to defuse the situation by saying something like ‘I can certainly see why you feel that way.’ After things calmed down, there was generally room for a win-win resolution.

Ask yourself: Do we know the voice of the customer? Do we follow up after the service? How useful is our service from the customer’s perspective? The answers to these and similar questions can be very insightful about the proper way to support your customers.

Quality tools that the team found helpful were: quality function deployment (QFD), focus groups, voice of the customer system, listening posts, active listening, Kano model, customer site visits, and complaint handling.

Commitment: Customers want to have confidence in the quality of their service provider, so it’s important to do what it takes to build a solid reputation. This can take time, and it includes backing up your actions with data. For instance, an automative supplier’s delivery rate or a doctor explaining the research results of a medical procedure.

Pull quote: Our representatives were instructed to defuse the situation by saying something like ‘I can certainly see why you feel that way.’

A committed supplier is someone who can be counted on, every time, to deliver goods and services as promised. Think of commitment as assurance. Being committed is to give assurance that the job will be done, on time, delivered on the promised date, and for the agreed-on cost. Doing this over time, customers know you are reliable and trustworthy, so there is freedom from doubt.

Ask yourself: What are our credentials? What is our track record? Do we constantly demonstrate trust to our customers? Do we stand by our commitments and make full restitution when we stumble?

Quality tools which might be helpful: track record data, failure analysis tools, risk analysis, root cause failure analysis (RCFA).  

Deliverables: Deliverables must be tangible which means something that can be touched or felt. Customers need to see evidence that the timeliness of your services meets their expectations; your services are reliable; your representatives are compassionate; and you are committed.

Customers want to see physical evidence of good service. This may include providing data, charts and graphs that are easy to understand. The information must be readily available, but it also must be verifiable.

Ask yourself: What evidence exists that we provided the service? Is the physical appearance of our representatives’ professional? Are our documented reports clear and concise? Are our services meaningful and worthwhile?

Possible tools: customer feedback and peer review.

As quality professionals we can help our organizations improve customer service. Data suggests the majority of customers keep doing business with providers due to service quality. So…treating customers is not only the right thing to do, but there is also a huge economic payoff.

The culture of an organization and the treatment of its employees (as internal customers) directly affect external customers. The service profit chain suggests that improved internal customer satisfaction leads directly to higher levels of customer satisfaction, loyalty, goodwill, and profitability.