Who Are You In the Eyes of Your Customer?
Who Are You In the Eyes of Your Customer?
As a business interacts with its customers, perceptions about that business are formed. You experience this every day in your business too. Think about it. You have some favorite vendors that you deal with and then others that, due to a product or material exclusivity, you have to deal with but they are not your favorites. You have formed perceptions about each of them through your interactions. So we all understand customers form perceptions about our businesses and the importance of having those perceptions be positive ones is obvious. How do great businesses accomplish that? the answer is found in managing customer contacts. Looking at your business through your customers' eyes and fashioning your customer interactions to create those positive perceptions is managing customer contacts. Now, think about this. What single job position in your laboratory has the most face-to-face interaction with your customers? That's right, your pick-up and delivery people. Let's talk about your outside people for a moment. What do you call them? Pick-up and delivery people? Drivers? Runners? Do they live up to those titles?
What would it be like if their title was customer service representatives? Would their training be a little different? Would your expectations of them be a bit higher? I think so. Your customer service representatives are the daily ambassadors of your business to your customers. Their appearance, what they say and how they handle themselves will reflect directly on the perceptions your customers will form about your laboratory.
So what things would be different if your drivers were to become customer service representatives? Would they have customer service training? Some technical understanding? Some training and authority to handle situations without having to call the boss? How about another important customer service person, your phone receptionist? Has he or she been trained in customer service? Have they been trained on how to shape those customers' perceptions using their phone presence?
Review every major customer interaction such as: picking up or delivering a case, making or receiving a phone call from a customer, technical communications, scheduling, handling an upset customer, asking for more time, late delivery or a case screw up.
Now take each of those customer interactions listed, plus others you may have added, and create a strategy that will cause that interaction to shape positive customer perceptions. In other words, create responses that you want to happen. Work with your customer service representatives and your management team and train them in the 'if then' scenarios (i.e. if this happens, then we respond this way). Have your customer service representatives keep a log of important customer interactions that occur that aren't on your above list and review them once a week to see if a new strategy for that interaction needs to be created.
