Proactive Customer Service - Problem Solving Made Easy

How do you generate ideas that are necessary to continuously improve the level of service that you offer your customers? If you're like most companies, you wait until you get a complaint from the customer something then you look at the situation and try to find ways to ensure that never again this complaint comes across your desk.

Why not consider a more proactive approach to your customer service and problem solving dilemmas? The best companies that we interviewed as a proactive problem solving using the following formula:

o Develop a list of what you think are your most serious problems of customer service. These priorities.

o In the meantime, inspect your customers to see what issues are important to them. Compare this list to the one who came up with the beginning of the year to see if they are worried about the same things you are. This serves as a kind of gap analysis that will help you to work on more pressing matters first.

O Publish this list and distribute to your employees. Ask them to come to your next staff meeting armed with a lot of ideas about how problems can be solved. Encourage them to be creative and let them know that every idea has potential. Even if something has been tried before but failed, should be considered. Times change, situations change and people change. What failed in the past can be a successful solution today. Make problem solving, the only item on the agenda, or, better yet, make it an all day staff retreat.

O Invite your customers in small focus group sessions that center on specific topics. Do this on a regular basis to make sure you're staying on top of current consumer trends.

or E as always, make mystery shopping a regular part of your customer service plan and the operating budget.

Encouraging creativity to the table in problem-solving, has become the trendsetter in your field. Happy coloring outside the lines! ......