A high level of customer service is something that we all expect in today's society, whether that's in our personal or professional lives. Poor customer service can cloud our perception of a company or organisation, and even lead to an erosion of trust and confidence. Let's face it; it's hard to forget bad customer service.
Unfortunately, the recent Institute of Customer Service (ICS) bi-yearly Customer Satisfaction Index has revealed a further decline in customer satisfaction across both the public and private sector. In fact, customer satisfaction has dropped to its lowest level since 2010.
So how can we reverse this trend? Members of the public are looking for added value from the companies and organisations that serve them. They are demanding greater convenience, speed and personalised services.
Organisations and companies need to be able to keep pace with these demands, ensuring that customer engagement is evolving in line with expectations. Undoubtedly, customer service should be a central strategic objective for organisations and companies.
However, the financial challenges facing organisations are likely to have an impact on the ability to deliver outstanding customer service. Cuts to services and the workforce mean that many public authorities are already stretched to maintain existing service levels. Managing competing priorities within a tight budget can mean that an innovative customer service agenda is of less importance.
So what is excellent customer service and how can it be achieved? Great customer service should leave customers feeling satisfied and confident. It should improve customer outcomes, loyalty and trust whilst also reducing inefficiencies.
As a public sector organisation, fully owned by 13 local government member authorities, we've made it our mission to ensure that excellent customer service is at the heart of what we do.
Achieving excellent customer service requires buy-in from all members of staff, regardless of their role and responsibilities. A programme of proactive employee engagement helps to foster a customer-focused culture, ensuring the entire workforce is working towards the same service aims and objectives.
Organisational-wide training is important to develop service knowledge and skills across the workforce. Training can also help to generate service improvement ideas that contribute to excellent customer service delivery. At YPO, we have implemented an ICS training programme, which has resulted in 192 service improvement ideas proposed and carried out across the business by staff themselves.
Our improvement efforts are achieving some great progress. In the most recent ICS UK Customer Satisfaction Index Business Benchmark Survey 2015 YPO achieved an overall customer satisfaction rating that, when benchmarked against some leading nationwide companies, is comparable to levels achieved by John Lewis and Amazon.
Understanding more about the customer and/or the people being served is also paramount. Gathering and analysing insights about customer needs and requirements ensures organisations are better placed to understand the customer experience and, as a consequence, implement the right changes, which provide maximum benefit for customers. Harnessing information technology is a crucial element of this activity.
The importance of sharing best practice in customer service should also not be underestimated. By spreading examples of good customer engagement we can all learn and improve.
However, it's not just individual organisations that need to focus on customer service. A report from the ICS highlights that to achieve excellent customer service across the public sector also requires high standards from focused and systematic collaboration across inter-connecting agencies and partnerships. The report also states the importance of sharing best practice, benchmarking inside and out the public sector and developing new models of collaboration to deliver better customer service, efficiencies and quality of outcomes. In my role as a Vice-President of the ICS, I regularly meet with leaders of other public and private organisations to share and learn of best practice methodologies, and debate progressive national customer service initiatives.
People working across the public sector are facing considerable pressure to deliver services in challenging circumstances. However, as customers are increasingly demanding better and better customer service, so it is the responsibility of organisations and companies to ensure that service is constantly improving and surpassing expectations.
Good customer service is expected, but great customer service should be the aim for all organisations.
Jo Marshall is commercial director at YPO,
