Inspired employees mean good customer service

Organizations that have excited and passionate people are more likely to create a service-focused culture that delivers great customer service.

That's the conclusion of a new study by California-based consulting firm, The Ken Blanchard Companies, which also concludes that employees are in fact an organization's most critical customer service asset - one that requires focused development and nurturing.

Research found that most organizations agree that customer loyalty is a powerful driver of organizational success and one that ties directly to the bottom line. Blanchard survey data shows that 74 percent of respondents declared that their organizations were highly focused on customer service improvement.

But only 44 percent indicated that their organization had a formal process for achieving these desired service improvements, and only 48 percent said that their customer-facing employees are truly empowered to take action to resolve a negative customer experience.

The survey indicates that the most critical service improvement skills to address include:

1. Developing systems and processes that make it easy to do business with the organisation.
2. Improving the skills of customer-facing employees to diagnose the customer issue.
3. Improving problem solving skills.
4. Empowering people to utilise their scope of authority.

This article first appeared on our sister site, MyCustomer.com