You are the Customer Advocate for the Company!
A Bean Counters World:
During times of cutbacks it’s an accountant’s world – a bean counters world. Bottom line rules when revenues are shrinking. We all have watched many companies make substantial cuts to the employee count as a means of controlling cost. Controlling costs often comes with a hidden cost. In the effort to head-off serious problems the bean counters demand (even enforce) cuts. A bean counter doesn’t always look at the larger customer picture. That isn’t their perspective. Why? They are not paid to do that. You are.
You are the Customer Advocate for your company!
Your Call Center
The call center has to lead the organization at understanding the relationship between certain financial cutbacks and the impacts on customers. The balance between keeping costs under control and servicing the customer falls in your domain. As we have stated many times, no other part of the organization has the insight on the customer the way your call center operation does. You are perfectly positioned in your organization to be the reasoned voice of balance between financial cuts and servicing the customer.
Avoid Market Damage
The business headlines continue to have a dominant theme about companies cutting their workforce. Too often the cuts are with those who service the customer resulting in longer wait times, more harried than usual customer service reps and decreasing competitiveness. The best thing a call center can do when a company is struggling with revenues is to do more for the customer – not less. How do you do more? Be a customer advocate. The foundation of customer advocacy is “positively representing the customer to the company and the company to the customer”.
Rules for Being a Customer Advocate
- Capture the Voice of the Customer – record the customer’s complaints and ideas and analyze them. Implement solutions based on what the customer is saying. The customer isn’t always right but they have more insight then we always give them credit. Train staff to be advocates for the customer. Reinforce the need for reps to “positively represent the customer to the company and the company to the customer”.
- Use contests and promotions to recognize and reward advocacy in action.
Build in the philosophy of no-excuses. One of the mainstays of customer advocacy is the no-excuses approach to service. When revenues are falling, it’s because there are fewer customers buying. Not rocket science but the Nobel Prize goes to the company that has a strong advocate philosophy backed up with advocacy in action.
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Posted: January 28th, 2007 under Leadership.
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