Customer care excellence : how to create an effective customer focus

Customer loyalty is essential to the long term financial success of your business, but with more choice then ever before, customers today have high expectations of the products and services they use. To continue to meet - and even to exceed - these high expectations, you need a top notch customer services system in place, and Customer Care Excellence will enable you to achieve just that.

In clear, practical language, this book takes you through how you can develop and sustain a customer-service focus within your company. Emphasizing both strategic and practical aspects of customer care, Customer Care Excellence explains how gaining customer commitment and motivating employees to deliver an excellent service at all your company's touch points can ensure successful results and satisfied customers.

This fully revised and updated edition includes new material examining the impact of social networking on customer behaviour and the emotional connection customers have with the brand, explaining how you can create a memorable customer experience. Author Sarah Cook takes you through the practical steps necessary to create a culture of customer focus and, crucially, shows how employee engagement leads to customer engagement.

• Preface p. ix
• Acknowledgements p. x
• 1 An introduction to customer care p. 1
• Service in a competitive environment p. 1
• The changing nature of customer service p. 3
• Changing customer behaviour and expectation p. 3
• Customer retention p. 7
• What is excellent service? p. 17
• Personal versus material service p. 19
• Embracing change p. 21
• Contact centres p. 21
• The internet p. 24
• Social networking p. 26
• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) p. 28
• How to create a customer focus p. 32
• The service/value chain p. 34
• Summary p. 37
• Action checklist p. 38
• 2 How managers need to drive and support a service strategy p. 40
• Start from the top p. 40
• Mission and vision p. 44
• Values p. 48
• Objectives p. 50
• Strategy p. 51
• Summary p. 87
• Action checklist p. 88
• 3 Listening to customers p. 90
• Barriers to listening p. 90
• The monitoring of complaints and compliments p. 92
• The value of listening to customers p. 94
• Monitoring customer satisfaction p. 96
• Where and when to measure p. 118
• Measuring customer loyalty p. 119
• Continuous improvement p. 120
• Involving employees when you measure p. 120
• Recognizing achievement p. 121
• Involving head office departments in the measurement process p. 121
• Canvassing the view of other stakeholders p. 122
• Best practice benchmarking p. 126
• Balanced scorecard p. 129
• Summary p. 129
• Action checklist p. 130
• 4 Implementing a service excellence strategy p. 132
• Continuous improvement p. 132
• Marketing a service strategy p. 135
• Managers lead the way p. 139
• High or low key? p. 140
• Summary p. 143
• Action checklist p. 144
• 5 Empowerment and ownership p. 145
• Valued people value customers p. 145
• Myths about empowerment p. 146
• What should organizations do to encourage empowerment? p. 152
• Service recovery and empowerment p. 156
• Employee engagement p. 159
• Summary p. 160
• Action checklist p. 160
• 6 The internal customer p. 161
• Everyone has a customer p. 161
• Developing understanding of internal customer needs p. 162
• Process improvement p. 164
• Don't forget suppliers, alliances and partners p. 169
• Standards and charters p. 170
• Service-level agreements p. 176
• Suggestion schemes p. 176
• Employee engagement p. 178
• Summary p. 180
• Action checklist p. 181
• 7 Training and development for customer service p. 182
• The growing importance of training and development in customer service p. 182
• Identifying training and development objectives p. 183
• Training and development for managers p. 187
• Managers as facilitators p. 189
• Customer service training for front-line and support staff p. 190
• The learning organization p. 195
• Build customer service into all training and development activities p. 197
• Review and refresh training and development p. 205
• Summary p. 205
• Action checklist p. 206
• 8 Communications p. 208
• Disseminating the message p. 208
• Developing a communications strategy p. 210
• Sell don't tell p. 215
• Reinforcing the message p. 218
• Tips on effective internal communication p. 221
• A communications case study p. 222
• Summary p. 226
• Action checklist p. 226
• 9 Recognition and reward p. 228
• Motivation p. 228
• Performance management p. 232
• Developing a reward and recognition scheme p. 235
• Review and renew p. 244
• Summary p. 245
• Action checklist p. 245
• 10 Sustaining a customer focus p. 247
• Problems in sustaining the focus p. 250
• Developing a maintenance strategy p. 253
• Reviewing progress p. 254
• Reinforcement p. 263
• Summary p. 264
• Additional sources of information p. 265
• References p. 268
• Index p. 269

An introduction to customer care; How managers need to drive and support a service strategy; Listening to customers; Implementing a customer care strategy; Empowerment and ownership; The internal customer; Training and development for customer service; Communications; Recognition and reward; Sustaining a customer focus. Excerpted from Customer Care Excellence: How to Create an Effective Customer Focus by Sarah Cook All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.