Strategies for Improving Customer Service

It's a given that a business needs to offer excellent customer service to survive in this tough economic climate. If the quality of customer service is less-than-stellar, or there are indications that the customers are not satisfied with the level of customer service, the business needs to know the problems and what specific things to improve. Only by understanding the problem can the business devise effective strategies to solve the problems.

The Gantry Group conducted a Customer Satisfaction Business Impact Diagnosis survey in 2009 and looked at the strategies used by big businesses when improving customer service. Here are the results:

* 59% = conduct a customer survey
* 47% = conduct phone interviews with selected customers
* 43% = compensate customer service employees for performance
* 37% = install CRM system to track performance
* 27% = conduct sales with win/loss analysis
* 11% = increase discounts to retain customers

Conducting a customer survey is the favored approach of most businesses to try to understand the state of their customer service. This is something that even small or home-based businesses can do, as well as calling selected customers and soliciting their feedback directly. An excellent customer service is the best arsenal small businesses have to compete against the big boys.