Along with the advancement of new technologies, customers are becoming more sophisticated, more informed and self-reliant. This puts an additional strain on the companies involved in the service industry as it requires them to become sharper and more effective. Any mistakes and inefficiencies can eventually affect customer satisfaction. The good news is that mistakes can be corrected. See if you’re making any of these and what you can do about them.
Mistake 1: Cutting Costs by Offshoring
In this day and age, many companies choose to offshore a portion of the work that they perform, such as customer service, as a means of reducing costs. While in certain cases offshoring can be an extremely effective way of acquiring talent that would otherwise not be available, doing it solely for the purpose of cutting costs can actually hurt your business.
Offshoring often creates disconnection both within the team and in the business-customer relationship. When customers reach out to the companies, they expect a certain kind of service and may be disappointed if what they receive if not what they were looking for.
Solution: Optimizing Existing Employee Productivity
Since the main argument for offshoring is cutting costs, the same can be achieved by training employees how to optimize their productivity and “eliminate the waste” in their work process. Some of the ways in which it can be done are the following:
- Teaching how to manage time more efficiently
- Instructing how to set goals and plan in advance
- Teaching how to prioritize tasks
- Discovering additional skills and talents that employees have and offering ways to use them in the workplace
- Providing clean and comfortable working environment that motivates the employees
Mistake 2: Following Outdated Business Processes
When performing different business processes either with your team or by yourself, you follow a set of steps that makes a task easier and more efficient. Frequently, those used by the company are considered to be set in stone and are rarely if ever changed. Given that everything around us constantly changes and evolves, business processes may become outdated. This may not only decrease the quality of service and make your customers trust you less, but can also demotivate the employees.
Here are some signs that indicate that you may need to update your existing business processes:
- Dissatisfied customers
- Increase in negative feedback or reviews from customers
- Demotivated colleagues and/or employees
- Missed deadlines
- Increased expenses
Solution: Regularly Redesigning business Processes
In order to avoid or solve this mistake, business processes need to be continuously revised and updated. And that should be done with the help and input of the employees, because they are the ones who know what and why does not work as intended.
In order to streamline business processes, you can follow the steps below:
- Create a schematic of your current process.
- Identify the existing weak links. In order to do so you can pay attention to your customers’ feedback. What frustrated or dissatisfies them? What do they complain about? Don’t forget to also pay attention to your colleagues, subordinates, and employees. What frustrates and deflates them? What take them too much time to complete and causes them to miss their deadlines? What requires additional funding?
- Redesign your existing processes to eliminate the weak links. Make sure you find a way of involving your team in the process as they may have unique ideas of how these problems can be approached.
- Take the actions necessary to implement the changes. Take into consideration the potential expenses that may be required, e.g., additional software or other resources.
- Monitor the changes implemented and whether they have brought the desired result.
Keep in mind that changes won’t always equal to immediately improved results. Sometimes, you may be required to adjust the process multiple times. That is not only normal, but natural.
Mistake 3: Lack of People Skills
Some of the greatest mistakes that are made in the service sector are often caused by lack of people skills such as the ability to listen and deal with conflicts and criticism. Because of this, those directly working with customers may not listen to them properly, argue with them, and leave customers feeling like they are being treated like numbers rather than people.
Most standard workplace trainings cover the technicalities of the job, familiarize workers with company policies and standards. However, very rarely they cover essential skills.
Solution: Training Staff for Intrapersonal Skills
Some of the most required interpersonal skills in the service sector are:
- Active listening: paying attention to what someone else is saying and responding accordingly
- Empathy: understanding how someone feels and being able to “put yourself in someone else’s shoes”
- Criticism: how to offer constructive criticism without offending and how to receive constructive criticism without taking offense
- Disagreeing: how to respectfully disagree during an argument
- Communication: the ability to correctly convey ideas verbally and non-verbally
- Negotiation: coming to an agreement with someone who has a conflicting opinion
- Problem-solving: effectively solving personal and team problems
- Teamwork: ability to effectively complete tasks as a part of a team
These are not only effective in improving employee-customer relationships, but also those between employees, both of which are important for any business involved in the service industry.
There are multiple ways in which interpersonal skills can be improved, such as taking an online class, attending an interpersonal skills class, or hiring a consultant.
Are you making any of these mistakes? What are your approaches to solving them? Don’t hesitate to share your opinion with us.
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