American Express Survey Reinforces Value of Mystery Shopping

The results of a survey by American Express released on May 3 quantify the business benefits of mystery shopping and reveal the effect of customer service on the bottom line. The study shows that a large majority of Americans are willing to spend appreciably more with companies that provide excellent customer service, a finding that suggests investments in customer service can have significant financial returns. Mystery shopping companies are enthusiastic about the study because it reinforces their assertion that measuring and managing the customer experience through mystery shopping has a positive ROI.

Dallas, TX (PRWEB) May 11, 2011

The results of a survey released on May 3 by American Express clearly bode well for companies that conduct mystery shopping programs and act on them. The American Express® Global Customer Service Barometer quantifies the business benefits of good service and the penalties for poor service, providing more evidence in support of the value of implementing mystery shopping programs.

Good service is not just something Americans expect; it is something they are willing to pay for. American Express says seventy percent (70%) indicate they are willing to spend up to 13% more with companies they believe provide excellent customer service, the survey showed.

According to the American Express study, Americans are placing more and more importance on the value of good customer service while, at the same time, they believe the quality of service is slipping. Moreover, says Jim Bush, Executive Vice President of American Express World Service, "Getting service right is more than just a nice to do; it's a must do. American consumers are willing to spend more with companies that provide outstanding service, and they will also tell, on average, twice as many people about bad service than they will about good service. Ultimately, great service can drive sales and customer loyalty."

A key finding from the American Express study reveals that 78% of customers have opted to cancel a transaction or did not complete an intended purchase because of a poor customer experience. Conversely, three in five Americans would try a new brand or company for a better services experience.

Members of the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) are enthusiastic about the release of the American Express study because it demonstrates the requirement that businesses pay close attention to the level of service they deliver to their customers if they are to be successful. "We see the study as providing further support for the value of mystery shopping," says MSPA President Lynn Saladini of ath Power Consulting Corporation. "Mystery shopping enables businesses to measure the extent to which they are delivering on their brand promises through the customer experience and to identify and correct deficiencies. Using the statistics from the study, you can calculate that two otherwise identical businesses would have very different revenue pictures if one had excellent customer service and one did not. If the one lacking in excellent service was a $10 million dollar business, its identical competitor could have revenues of $10.93 million. That $930,000 revenue differential is a compelling argument for using mystery shopping to improve customer service."

About Mystery Shopping and the MSPA
Mystery shopping is a process in which pre-recruited and qualified consumers measure the extent to which a customer's interactions with a business mirror the experiences the business intends. The purposes of this customer experience measurement include evaluating customer service and the degree to which a company's brand promises are being executed in the customer environment.

With more than 300 member companies worldwide, the MSPA has a diverse membership, including marketing research and merchandising companies, private investigation firms, training organizations, and other companies that specialize in providing mystery shopping services. Its goals are to establish professional standards and ethics for the industry, educate providers, clients and shoppers to improve quality of service, improve the image of the industry and promote the membership to other industry associations and prospective clients.

About the Subject Study
Details about the American Express study may be found at:
http://about.americanexpress.com/news/pr/2011/csbar.aspx

Contact

• John Swinburn
  Mystery Shopping Providers Association
  214-389-7018 11

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Don’t Hire Employees Who Don’t Like People

John TschohlCUSTOMER SERVICE

If there is one thing a company can do to help ensure that it will attract and keep customers, it is this: Hire the right people. While that might sound like a rather simple solution, it isn’t. The hiring process is crucial to the success of any organization and should be handled with great care. In the case of employees who will be dealing directly with customers, the hiring process is especially important.

At one time or another, most of us have had contact with employees who clearly do not enjoy dealing with people. They don’t make eye contact, they don’t smile, they aren’t helpful, and they send the message that they wish you would just go away. That’s bad for you, as a customer, and even worse for the company that hires them.

At Commerce Bank, if the applicant doesn’t smile during the first interview, there will be no second. When Commerce, which I consider to be the most customer-focused bank in the country, opened its first four stores in Manhattan, it interviewed 3,400 people and hired only 42 of them. Southwest Airlines also hires very carefully—only one out of every 100 applicants. Other airlines think their airplanes are their most valuable asset; Southwest knows it’s their employees.

I strongly believe that it is more important to hire an employee who has a good attitude and genuinely enjoys working with people than it is to hire one who has good technical skills. Technical skills can be learned; good attitudes cannot. A bad hire could be doing irreparable damage to your business by driving your customers away from you and into the waiting arms of your competitors.

The first step in the hiring process is to develop a job description, one that includes detailed descriptions of the tasks and responsibilities you expect the employee to fulfill. Next, you must prepare for the interview. Let’s face it, someone could walk into your office, feed you a great line, and walk out with a job offer. It happens every day. Those people have prepared for the interview— and you should do likewise.

Develop a list of questions to use during each interview so you get answers that are easy to compare and evaluate among applicants. Ask questions that require more than stock answers, ones that will require the applicant to share real experiences.
James Schrager, President of the Great Lake Group consulting firm in South Bend, Indiana, recommends two questions: What was your biggest failure? Can you describe a situation when you didn’t get along with a co-worker and how you handled it?

Fred K. Foulkes, a Professor of Management Policy at Boston University says you should never hire anyone after just one interview. He also recommends that you involve other people in the interview process, especially if they’re going to be working with the new hire. That does two things: It gives you their input, and it gets their commitment to the success of the person you hire.

Once you have hired a person, it might be a good idea to put her on probation for three to six months. That gives you time to ensure that she is capable of doing the job before making her a permanent member of your workforce. Hiring the right people is the first step in the process. Training them and treating them well is the second. Even when you hire high-performing, customer service-driven employees, you must train them to meet your service standards— and you must do so within their first 30 days on the job.
If you hire the right people, train them, and treat them well, you will reap great rewards in the form of customer loyalty and increased profits. There is no other step you can take that will have a greater impact on your bottom line and the success of your organization.

John Tshcohl -described by Time and Entrepreneur

magazines as a customer service guru, is also

an International strategist and speaker.  He

can be contacted at John@servicequality.com

THE RETAIL OBSERVER JANUARY 2010

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IMPROVE CUSTOMER SERVICE…STEP 2

We are working on our Service Improvement Plan – our SIP in order to make our customer service outshine everyone.  To exceed our customers’ expectations the first time and every time, so they become FANS of our company and rave about us to all their friends and family.

Before we do anything, we are going to make a plan.  We don’t want to throw money at the problem before you know the following:

1.  How does our service quality rate today?

2.  How good should it be?

3.  How do we get from #1 to #2?

We’ve surveyed customers and employees and have that data readily available to analyze.

Step 2:  How good should our service quality rate?

First, let’s analyze the results of the surveys:

• What do we do right?
• What are the top 3 frustrators for your customers?
• What are the top 3 frustrators for your employees—what keeps them from doing a better job with your customers?

List all the things done well first.  They tell us the basic skill level of the staff AND what customers like about doing business here.  These are the building blocks for our plan.  Did we find anything surprising on this list?  Did the things we thought were done well show up…or not?  How we feel about what is perceived as done well?  

Next, let’s really concentrate on the frustrators.  We have two lists:  things that frustrate customers and things that frustrate employees.  The employee list may not seem as important, but it’s really the key list here.  Employees know what they are supposed to do for customers, AND they know what hinders them from doing that well.  Pay attention to their list:  they work with customers and procedures every day.  They are the experts.  Most things on their list will be things that can be fixed.  So let’s highlight those items and put change into motion to streamline procedures, update documents, pricing, equipment where needed.  This gives staff the support needed to show our full, serious commitment to improving customer service.

Now, how about customer frustrators?  As we review the list, we keep in mind that many of these items are perceptions—and maybe things that we first think cannot be fixed.  But we are wrong.  Perceptions can be “fixed”…but maybe not by specifics, but by overall service.


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The Simple Truths of Service by Barbara Glanz

Once in a great while you will see something that will bypass the brain and go straight to the heart. I guarantee that this short, 3-minute movie will be one of those times.



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training, bad customer service sample, good customer service, customer service training

Poor Customer Service?

Here's a cute cartoon of Mr. Bean and a great example of some poor customer service skills.  Enjoy!

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CUSTOMER SERVICE MYTHS

If You Believe Them, You’re in Trouble

By John Tschohl

If I were to ask 100 CEOs to define customer service, I would guess that 97 of them would say this: Customer service is providing the customer with service that is fast, accurate, and courteous. While those are indeed elements of customer service, there is more to it, so much more.

Customer service is a moving target; it is whatever the customer thinks it is. That includes quality products, convenience, competitive prices, timely responses, reliability, a personal touch, and knowledgeable employees. Customer service means doing what you say you will do and doing it when, if not before, you say you will do it. It is operating on the belief that no transaction is complete unless the service customers receive is sufficient enough to motivate them to return.

Most CEOs and other executives don’t fully understand customer service and its huge impact on sales and profits for their organizations. They don’t understand what they should (and shouldn’t) do in order to provide the best possible service to their customers. In fact, many of them have false beliefs when it comes to customer service.

Here are three myths that hamper organizations throughout the world in their efforts to provide exceptional customer service and, in the process, to attract and retain customers:

1. Adding employees improves customer service.

You can add all the people you want, but it won’t improve your organization’s customer service. More doesn’t necessarily equal better. Too many organizations have too many under-performing employees; you need to weed them out. In developing countries, the typical company has at least 25 percent more employees than it needs.

If you have 50 employees and add 50 more, all you’ve done is double your workforce. But, if you have 50 employees who are focused on customer service, who are knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and have positive attitudes, you will have a winning team. If you train those employees in the art of customer service and support that training by giving them the tools they need to take good care of your customers, you will see your sales and profits skyrocket.

2. The more you pay employees, the more committed they will be to customer service.

Increasing employees’ pay will do nothing more than eat into your organization’s profits. I’ve addressed this myth for more than three decades to clients throughout the world, stressing to them that money is not a motivator. It will not change an employee’s behavior. If you doubled every employee’s salary tomorrow, it would not improve customer service, and in 30 days you’d be out of business. If you have employees who do not provide good service, who are not committed to taking care of your customers, what you pay them will not change the way they operate.

So, you’re probably asking, what will motivate my employees to provide better customer service? The answer is this: Recognition. There is no stronger motivator than positive reinforcement and public praise. Think of it this way: If you are a parent trying to teach your young child to put away his toys at the end of the day, what do you think will be the stronger motivator—a dime each time he does so, or constant praise, especially in front of family and friends?

If you recognize the efforts of your employees who go above and beyond to take care of your customers, they will seek continued recognition by improving the service they provide. A $200 bonus would be gone in a day or two, but a word of praise will live on indefinitely. Recognition is the most powerful motivational tool you have—use it.

3. Your employees are empowered.

This is more than a myth; it’s a delusion for most managers and executives. Empowerment means that your employees have the authority to do whatever it takes to immediately solve a customer’s problem—to the satisfaction of the customer, not the organization.

In order to empower your employees, you must train them and give them the skills they need to take such good care of your customers that they wouldn’t think of doing business with anyone but you. Don’t handcuff your employees with cumbersome policies and procedures. Give them the authority to bend and break the rules in order to serve your customers.

It takes a miracle to get employees to make empowered decisions because they think they will get fired if they make a mistake. Let them know that it’s OK to make a mistake in the process of providing exceptional customer service. Without empowered employees, you will never be a service leader.

Don’t underestimate the power of customer service. Exceptional service builds loyalty, which in turn builds profits. 

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IMPROVE CUSTOMER SERVICE…WHERE DO I START?

So…you feel like your company’s service quality could be improved.  But how do you start…Just tell your staff to do better?   One-shot training?  Ask customers how you are doing?  Hire someone to be in charge of customer service, to take the upset customer calls?  Show some motivational books and posters to your staff and hope for the best?

Before you do anything, make a plan.  You don’t want to throw money at the problem before you know the following:

1.  How does our service quality rate today?

2.  How good should it be?

3.  How do we get from #1 to #2?

You need a plan…a SIP:  Service Improvement Plan. 

Many companies jump into a program but have no clear goal or process to actually get improvement.  You’ll find lots of programs to help:  mystery shopping, customer satisfaction surveys, customer complaints, training books, online training, employee rewards, social media, mobile surveys, etc.   All these are great, but only part of the solution.  If you truly want to see results that affect your bottom line, you need to think through the process.

So…how do you start?

First, you need feedback.  What are you doing right?  And what could be done better?  How does your service quality rate today?  You need to know your customer FRUSTRATORS…what is it about doing business with your company that can frustrate…and therefore dissatisfy…your customers?  Is it employee attitude?  Is it a procedure or process?  Is it location or hours or parking?  Just what is it that customers feel could be done better…what would make them happy?

How do you find out the frustrators at your company???  ASK YOUR CUSTOMERS!  You probably know what complaints come in regularly.  But did you know 40% of customers who are unhappy (or frustrated) with you will never tell you on their own?  So, give them an opportunity to tell you…with a customer satisfaction survey.

It doesn’t have to be fancy but it does have to provide measurable results…ratings and/or line items that you can quantify so you know what/where to improve.  And don’t forget to leave room for customers to write in their own words.  Sometimes the best feedback comes from customers’ own words, not just answers to canned questions. 

And don’t forget front-line employees…they work with customers and your process more closely than anyone every day.  They have ideas for how to make things work better to benefit customers…but if you aren’t asking, they won’t tell you.  Survey your employees.           

How do you know what needs to be improved?  Survey customers and employees first.  It’s inexpensive, easy and quick if you do it right…once you have that data, you will know what needs work and what works well already.  Then you’ll be on the way to customers who are not just satisfied, but FANS of your business.  And Fans will promote you to their friends and family!

Follow our blog for more information on step #2 and #3 of a Service Improvement Plan.

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