Customer Service Policy Procedure | SL1050

Customer Service Policy Procedure

This Customer Service Policy Procedure outlines the best practices for handling and processing complaints as well as other negative and positive customer feedback, and for compiling and reporting this feedback. The Customer Service Policy Procedure also improves customer satisfaction and improves products and processes by encouraging complaints.

Companies who want to get better (improve their products, improve their processes, improve customer satisfaction) should understand the importance of customer feedback and look for ways to encourage and capture what customers and prospects say. All customer feedback is important, including complaints. So yes, we want to encourage people to complain, as well as encourage positive and neutral feedback.

The Customer Service Policy Procedure applies to all sales and marketing personnel, particularly the Customer Service Representatives, who receive customer complaints and other customer feedback. (14 pages, 2554 words)

Customer Service Responsibilities:

Customer Service Management should provide the resources, customer information, authority, and training for call center employees to resolve and record customer complaints quickly and courteously.

Top Management should provide the resources, training and emphasis on resolving complaints quickly and using customer feedback as a tool for continual improvement. Top Management should complete the SL1050-1 CUSTOMER COMPLAINT-FEEDBACK STRATEGY

Customer Service Representatives (CSR), Sales Staff, and all company employees involved in customer interactions should listen to and record customer feedback (negative and positive) information onto the SL1060-1 CUSTOMER FEEDBACK form, and make a strong effort to resolve the complaint.

Customer Service Policy Procedure Activities

• Customer Service Goals
• Customer Service Plan
• Handling Complaints and Customer Feedback
• Measuring Customer Feedback
• Improving Customer Service

Customer Service Policy Procedure References

• ISO 1002:2004, Quality Management-Customer Satisfaction-Guidelines for Complaints Handling in Organization

Customer Service Policy Procedure Forms

• Customer Complaint-Feedback Strategy Form

Is Your Business Really About Customer Service?

Everyone talks about how customer friendly their business is; the customer is job one or how their business is all about the customer. We would all agree that without the customer you would have no business at all. Yet, who really comes first, the customer or your business?

Your Customer Service Policy will tell you a lot about your relationship with your customer. Let’s look at a few common Customer Service policies…

1. Minimum order size. Translation: your customer wants to order less but you insist that they order more.
2. Credit Limits. Translation: your customer wants to order more but you are afraid you will not get your money.
3. Two week turnaround. Translation: your customer wants their order now, but you think it is not cost effective for you to process their order right now.

All three of these example Customer Service Policies are about your business, not your customer. They arise because well meaning operational decisions are made regarding equipment, staffing, or financing. If you are thinking it is impossible to ship smaller quantities, eliminate credit limits or shrink turnaround times, then maybe you have just found a paradigm.

If you haven’t talked to your customer lately, how do you know that you’re meeting their needs? Sales numbers are certainly telling, but they don’t tell the whole story. What if there is a completely untapped market because you don’t understand the needs, values and perceptions of those who want to – or MIGHT want to – buy from you?

Get out there and talk to your customers. They may tell you something that changes your entire strategy. Or, maybe, you’ll simply learn something new about them.

Lean thinking focuses us on the customer and provides us with a paradigm that is not about what we can’t do. We can use lean tools to design processes that are aligned with the customer and not just the business. Strategy implementation requires us to prioritize based on the customer’s requirements.

Your business may introduce constraints, which are short term barriers to providing the customer with what they want. To stay in business for the long term you will need a strategy that uses continuous improvement to constantly break down your business barriers and move toward the customer at every turn. Thus, using new paradigms allows us to break free of our self imposed constraints and deliver to the customer what they really want and not just what we are constrained to provide. Isn’t this the strategy you really want – one focused on what the customer really wants?