Employees who are in contact with customers from the very first contact with your company play a vital role in developing customer relations.
It’s essential to recruit, train and evaluate these service employees to ensure quality of service and customer retention. One false step and your customer leaves for the competitor, not to mention telling his or her network.
Generations Z and Millennials are very demanding and do not tolerate any imperfections in the treatment they receive. Companies are walking on eggshells, and must ensure that they respond to this clientele at every moment of truth.
Customer service employees are often overlooked, and experience major difficulties. It’s important to realize that their role is key to the company’s success. A lost customer is very costly. And the price is even higher with the speed of the Internet and social networks, which allow people to express themselves to a
listening audience. The word-of-mouth effect is no longer the same as in previous years.
- 4% of customers openly communicate their dissatisfaction.
- 96% of dissatisfied customers leave the organization without saying a word.
- 91% of these will never return.
- A dissatisfied customer expresses his dissatisfaction to an average of 8 to 10 people.
- One dissatisfied customer in 5 tells 20 people.
Your employees influence customers’ perceptions of the quality of the services your company provides. Knowing the quality of the service you offer is necessary to protect your most valuable asset, your customers and your employees.
It’s no more pleasant for an employee to be in conflict or to be treated badly by a customer who is disappointed or frustrated by poor service. This causes fatigue, discouragement and burnout among your employees. The vicious circle begins as you lose manpower, have to recruit new people with no experience, and once again reduce the quality of the customer service you offer. And it’s not the employee’s fault; it’s your responsibility to train, support and evaluate them, to help them progress and achieve their full potential.
So you have to ask yourself, are my customer service employees well equipped to perform and ensure a good first impression at all times?
In many cases, service staff have an outdated computer with a small screen and a non-ergonomic position. Not to mention an e-mail box full of junk mail, an uncomfortable plastic phone that’s probably analog, and so on.
It’s time to update your employees’ toolbox:
- high-performance computer
- A minimum 26-inch screen or two 23-inch screens.
- Ergonomic keyboard and mouse
- Unified communications software (integrated calls, e-mails and text messages)
- A high-quality ergonomic task chair
Why not check the ergonomics of your workstation with an occupational therapist. This will reassure your employees of your concern for their health and comfort. It’s hard to ask people to perform if you don’t make an effort to equip them properly.
