Reinvigorate Your Customer Service in the Spirit of Spring

Today is the first day of spring, and spring time always feels like a proper time for cleaning – even when it comes down to your customer service!

If you’re like most business owners, you probably assume your client relationships are pretty good. After all, you have enough clients to still be in business. But it’s possible you’re merely surviving instead of thriving because you’ve only scratched the surface of what it means to truly put the customer first. By conducting a  “spring clean” you can identify and purge any bad habits that may be interfering with this crucial area of your business.

Now’s the time to revisit the basics of your business, tune up operations, improve customer relations, and clear out any cobwebs.

Here’s 3 ways BARE International can help your business shape up this season:

1. Checking your processes are seamless.

How easy is it for customers to get responses to their customer service queries across all the channels that you offer? A simple way to check this is to act like a customer with BARE’s mystery shopper research and see what the results are. Our Evaluators provide invaluable information for use by your management team when measuring employee knowledge and performance. Information obtained can be used to successfully trouble-shoot problem areas, improve and revamp training methodologies and to positively reinforce star employees in your organization with reward/incentive programs. Our programs are designed to test your established policies, procedures and training, linking their outcome directly to your bottom line.

      2. Check your metrics.

Now is a good time to take a look at what you are measuring and see if it fits with your customer service, and overall business, objectives. BARE’s Customer Satisfaction Toolkit includes online satisfaction surveys which provide valuable insight into any area of operations and can be especially useful as a marketing tool for new promotional items and concept modifications. Questions can be targeted to meet specific operational needs, and data is presented via easy-to-read graphs and percentages. BARE’s easily accessible, web-based methodology delivers both prompt report turn-around and long term data-collection, allowing you to take immediate action where needed while also developing corporate norms, benchmarks, reviews, and employee incentive systems over time.

3. Ask your employees what is wrong.

You may know your business from one view, but those on the daily firing line are more likely to see things that might becoming tripping points. Make sure that they understand you want to hear bad news and that no messengers will be injured in the process. BARE International’s Employee Commitment Toolkit includes workshops, focus groups and commitment surveys to accurately measure your employees’ satisfaction and training levels with custom designed commitment surveys. The anonymous format and delivery by BARE, a third party evaluator, allows employees to feel comfortable expressing their opinions. Results can be leveraged to improve training methods and reward high-performing staff.

Additionally Face-to-face Interviews are an innovative, cost-effective format to determine employee satisfaction and level of motivation towards your company by using immediate feedback techniques. Talking directly to your employees will provide valuable insight into their opinions.

Spring can feel like a new beginning, so use your energy to clean up your customer service – you’ll feel the benefits for the rest of the year, and hopefully beyond.

Contact us today to receive a complimentary evaluation of your business.