Jeff Judy
Jeff's Thoughts -May 14, 2008
How Do You Know?
How is your customer service? Great, you say? I am glad to hear it.
How do you compare to your competition? What's that? Your customer service outshines the competition, you're a standout in your market? Wow, that's impressive!
Oh, one more question... how do you know? You see, I'm a little confused. I have never talked to anyone who doesn't offer excellent customer service. And when I talk to all the banks in a particular market, I discover that every one of them offers the best customer service in the area!
Your faith in your work warms my heart, but your customers don't care what you believe about what you do, they just care about what you do. And if you want to win market share and stand out among the competition, you should care more about what your customers think than you do about what you think.
One of the best ways to find out what your customers think is to ask them! And the good news is the almost any information you collect from your customers can help you perform better. You may want to do this formally, getting outside professional help to survey customer opinions about your bank.
But often that is not necessary, and it certainly isn't sufficient. Ask your own questions, your own way, even if you do call in professional help. Brief, informal, rather unscientific questioning of your customers can quickly give you some excellent pointers on improving your customer service. Here are a few tips:
- There are many ways to reach your customers, and you should take advantage of most of them. Online surveys, mailings, phone calls, and, especially, structured conversations in the bank can all bring you information.
- Keep it short. Don't try to find out about every aspect of your bank and the services you offer in a lengthy survey. Ask one or two questions, sharply focused, and follow up on other questions at another time.
- Collect the data objectively. For instance, it doesn't do you much good to have tellers, or personal bankers, ask customer service questions at the end of interactions if you don't get more than general impressions of what they heard. Make the data collection formal.
- Ask some open ended questions, and look for problems, not praise. It takes guts to ask a question like, "What annoys you about dealing with our bank?" But just a few customers can tell you a lot more in the answer to that question than can dozens of them rating your service on a scale from 1 to 5.
- Do not ask customers how you compare to the competition, because most of them don't have experience with a lot of banks. But do ask them how their service compares to other businesses -- are you as responsive as their mechanic, or their dry cleaner?
- Do you really want to know how you're doing? Contact a few customers who have left your bank and find out what happened. You often learn more from failure than from success.
I am sure you are committed to providing the best in customer service. But I'm willing to bet that the bank in your market that truly does the best job of working with their customers is the one that has learned the most from their customers.
It's a little scary, but it's good for you. Ask them.