Quality And Marketing Are Not Part-Time Jobs!

Customer Inter@ction Solutions, Feb 2005 by Tehrani, Nadji

Above All

Don't send your most important assets (your customers' databases) halfway around the world. Sure you may save a few dollars, but you may lose many of your customers due to poor quality of services, rudeness, cultural problems, language problems, possible use of your customers' database by your competitors, a lack of security and poor compliance with FTC requirements, not to mention hidden charges, terrorist attacks against American businesses, poor morale, a lack of proper training, high turn-over and the current 12 percent annual raises in salaries. Some of this may explain why Dell, Inc. and many other companies closed down their customer support departments in India and returned them to U.S.-based teleservices companies. In fact, those companies returning from offshore outsourcers account for significant growth of domestic teleservices. Please refer to my January 2005 Publisher's Outlook for more information.

Eight Practical Guidelines For Success In Convergence Of 24/7 Quality And Marketing

1. Blend 24/7 award-winning quality with 24/7 powerful marketing and dominate your market.

2. Be a good listener. There is nothing like being a great listener to find out specifically what the customer's needs, concerns and problems are. Train your people to be good listeners, not only good talkers!

In fact, there is a great lesson here for sales people: great sales people are not those who are good talkers. The good listeners will always outperform the good talkers because by listening, a good sales person can find out what the customer's needs are first and then by positioning his or her product as a solution to the customer's needs, such a sales person will always outperform others.

3. Be an early adopter of Six Sigma awareness program. (Please see Roger Lee of etalk's article on page 44.) Here, in a nutshell, is how companies can benefit from implementing Six Sigma:

* Improvements can be tracked;

* Decisions are made based on tangible data, not merely "gut feelings";

* Cross-functional team involvement;

* The focus is on the process; and

* It creates an avenue for customer concerns to be heard and acted upon.

4. Establish a system of measuring, monitoring and tackling customer satisfaction.

5. Be an early adopter of advanced speech and IP contact center technologies,

6. Service companies must feature the following attributes:

* Offer unsurpassed quality service;

* Service must be seamless;

* Must have attentiveness;

* Must be resourceful; and

* Must be customer-focused.

7. Train workers so they can be of maximum assistance to customers.

8. Last, but not least, remember that low-cost customer service means high-customer turn-over.

As always, I welcome your comments. Please e-mail them to me at ntehrani@tmcnet.com.

Sincerely yours,

Nadji Tehrani

Executive Group Publisher

Editor-in-Chief

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