Here is a simple test for you.  Count the number of “F”s in the sentence below.

Don’t read any further until you have decided your number.

If you said six “F”s, then congratulations!  If you said anything else, don’t feel bad.  Most people see three.  Look at the sentence again.  Did you miss the “F”s in “OF”?  Now that you see the “F”s, it’s pretty obvious right?  It makes us wonder why we missed it in the first place.

Now, think of your service business.  Opportunities to help your customers should be obvious too.  Or are they as obvious as we might think?  Is your service team missing opportunities to help your customers?

Even with a Process in Place, Is Your Customer Seeing All the “F’s”?

Perhaps you have encouraged your field team to look for ways that you could help your customers achieve their business goals.  You’ve set up processes and systems to capture any opportunities identified.  You may have even told your customers your intentions and why your field team’s actions are not only unique but of great value for the them.  Even with all of this in place, how confident are you that they are seeing all of the “F”s – that is, how confident are you that they are not missing any opportunities to help the customer to be better off.

Four Actions to Ensure Your Field Service Team Does Not Miss Important Opportunities

Here are four actions that you can take to help ensure that your field service team does not miss opportunities that are important.

1. Establish a customer visit routine

Whenever your field service professional calls on a customer, ensure that each one of them follows a specific process which may include steps like:

• • Stopping by the customer’s office to explain the nature of the visit upon arrival and asking if anything has changed since their last visit.
  • Stopping by the customer’s office after the work is completed to go over what was done and asking if there is anything else they would like them to address while they are there.

2. Have your field team follow up on previous recommendations

Your customers are busy and, even with the best of intentions, some of your recommendations will get forgotten.  It’s a valuable service that you provide when your follow up reminds the customer to address something that had completely slipped their minds.  This is particularly important if the recommendation would prevent something that could seriously and negatively impact the customer if it is not addressed.

3. If appropriate, have your field team ask the customer to take them on a tour of their facilities

While on the tour, the field professional can point out ideas where you may be able to help and even some issues that may not be related to your business at all but will help the customer see that there are improvements that can be made.

4. Share best practices between team members

Whenever a field service member makes a recommendation that benefits a customer in a significant way, share it with the rest of the team.  What was the issue at hand?  How did the recommendation help the customer?  How many other customers might benefit from a similar recommendation?  What do these customers look like?  What questions might the field professional ask to uncover whether they could benefit from a similar recommendation?

Every time we make a proactive recommendation to a customer, we have an opportunity to help them toward achieving their business goals.  But, recognizing opportunities is not always as easy as we may first assume.  Andmissed opportunities might result in a problem for the customer.  Help your field team establish a process that will minimize lost opportunities and further enhance the value that you offer to your customers.

As always, I welcome your comments and questions. You can connect with me via telephone or email or leave a comment right here on the site. And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim Baston

“I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one”

– Mark Twain

The post Is Your Field Service Team Missing Opportunities to Help Your Customers? appeared first on jimbaston.com.

During our Proactive Service® workshops, we ask technicians if they have ever proposed an idea to a customer where the customer has never gotten back to them and where they do not know what the customer has decided to do.  Almost everyone’s hand goes up.  We then ask, “Why do you think that is the case?”  Responses range from, “They decided not to do it” to “They got someone else to do it.”  Occasionally someone will say something like, “Maybe they forgot about it” and if they don’t, then we suggest it.  We then relate the story that I told in my last blog about the technician that passed on a lead from the field that was never followed up by the salesperson.  In that situation, the recommended action was to prevent a failure and a few months later, the failure indeed occurred.  Of course, the customer was angry and the technician was put in an uncomfortable position because of inaction on the part of the salesperson, but the problem would have been avoided altogether if the technician just took a moment to inquire with the customer whether they had given any more thought to the matter.

Usually there are one or two techs in the room who share with the rest of the class that they make it a point to follow up.  When they volunteer this, I ask them “What does the customer say when you remind them of something important that they may have forgotten about?”.  “They thank me” is the usual reply.

If we truly want to deliver a more valuable (and valued) level of service, we must do more than simply bring opportunities to the customer.  We must inquire about them when the customer has not taken action to ensure that the customer does not lose sight of those important recommendations and save them grief and aggravation down the road.

I’d love your feedback! And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

– Thomas A. Edison

The post Step 5 of a Proactive Service® Culture – Follow Up on Opportunities appeared first on jimbaston.com.

Nothing will stop a technician from making recommendations to a customer more quickly than poor or inconsistent follow-up by the rest of the company’s staff.  A technician that makes a recommendation that requires follow-up by others (salesperson or manager for example) and which is not followed up, is unlikely to continue to do so.  But worse than that, lack of follow-up can have serious consequences.

I worked with one service firm that did not have a formal process for handling opportunities from the field.  I interviewed one of their technicians and he related a story that highlights the problems that can occur.  The technician had found a problem with a key piece of equipment and recommended to the customer that it be replaced as soon as possible.  The customer asked the technician to have someone get in touch with him with pricing and installation information for the replacement.  The technician reported the opportunity on the work order along with the request for a follow-up call by the salesperson responsible for the account.  Unknown to the service tech, the information did not get to the salesperson and no one followed up.  About a month later, the customer called in a panic because the equipment failed, just as foretold.  Rather than praising the technician for his ability to predict the failure, the customer was furious that there was no follow-up on the part of the firm.  The service technician took the brunt of the customer’s anger and felt let down by his colleagues.  Needless to say, by the time we spoke to the technician, he was reluctant to identify opportunities in the future.

Even when a process for opportunity management is in place, it may not include an important step.  One of the most common complaints we hear from technicians is that, even when there is follow-up, the technician is not kept in the loop.  The lack of a communication loop to keep the technician informed causes more than hard feelings.  It also can cause a customer service failure.  Let’s assume that the technician has spoken to the customer and they are interested in pursuing an idea that she brought forward that may reduce energy consumption.  The salesperson or manager is duly informed and goes out to visit the customer.  If there is no communication back to the technician, the salesperson may develop a solution that is beyond what the technician had in mind and far exceeds the customer’s expectations.  A simple discussion with the technician would have prevented this from happening and the technician would have an opportunity to share her ideas with the salesperson that could be incorporated into the ultimate solution.  In addition, by keeping the technician in the loop, the technician will have an informed response if the customer asks about the progress on the opportunity development the next time she is in their facility.

A key step therefore, to ensure that you create a successful and lasting Proactive Service® culture is to ensure that you have a clear, concise and consistent process for identifying and following-up on recommendations from the field.  Not only will this improve your service delivery, but it will let your technicians (and customers) know that these recommendations are important and that they play a key role in your firm’s the overall service delivery.

I’d love your feedback! And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim

“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.”

– Peter Drucker

The post Step 4 of a Proactive Service® Culture – A Clear Opportunity Process appeared first on jimbaston.com.

Almost every service company can point to one or more of their techs who are naturally gifted to promote their services. They are always making recommendations to customers and promoting new services – and their customers love them. In our experience, these technicians are successful because they don’t see their recommendations as selling, but rather as an enhancement of their service.  If you have one or two techs on your team that fit this description, then you know the potential of getting everyone on your team to act in the same way.

In this series of blogs we are going to examine six steps that you implement to create a Proactive Service® focus from all of your service team members.  This will greatly enhance your efforts of developing a distinctive and sustainable competitive advantage and result in higher revenues and delighted customers.  I also contend that it will make your business a more desirable place to work.

The six steps we will explore are:

1. Focus on the service, not the sale
2. Encourage your techs to get to know your customer’s business goals
3. Provide continuous educational opportunities on your products and services
4. Develop a clear opportunity response process with feedback loops to the technician
5. Create a follow up process for quoted work
6. Provide ongoing coaching and support

Next time we will consider how we position our efforts as a service to ensure we get engagement from our techs and our customers.

What kind of service culture does your organization have today? I’d love your feedback! And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Jim

“Do today what others won’t, so tomorrow, you can do what others can’t.”

 – Unknown

The post Creating a Proactive Service Culture Throughout Your Service Team appeared first on jimbaston.com.

Recall that the name RATER is an acronym with each letter representing the first letter of one of the five key dimensions of service quality.  They are:

R eliability: Our ability to provide what is promised, dependably and accurately

A ssurance: Our knowledge and courtesy, and our ability to convey trust and confidence

T angibles:  Our physical facilities and equipment, and our appearance

E mpathy: The degree of caring and individual attention we provide to customers

R esponsiveness: Our willingness to help customers and provide prompt service

Empathy, in the RATER model, is defined as the degree of caring and individual attention that we provide our customers.  I assume that, if you are reading this, you truly care about your customers and about their needs and goals.  However, despite our good intentions, our customers may not feel that we do.  We may feel one way, but be doing things that suggest something else.

Empathy is another case where perception truly is reality.  Our customers will pick up clues about how much we care by the simple interactions that take place between them and our company.  Every interaction needs to consistently reinforce our empathy for the customer.

As you ponder this dimension of the RATER model, here are some questions to consider:

• How does your staff answer the phone?
  • Do they sound like they are happy to receive the call or do they sound more like they have just been interrupted?
  • Do they put people on hold and forget them?
  • Do they pass customers off to others without ensuring that the call has gone through?
  • How well does your field staff consider the needs of the customer?  For example:
    • Do they park in the “visitors” spaces without first establishing that this is acceptable?
    • Are they polite to everyone?
    • Do they respect the customer’s property?
    • Do they:
      • Clean up after themselves?
      • Cover desks and office equipment with plastic if they are disturbing the ceiling tiles?
      • Check in and check out?
      • Ask if there is anything else that needs doing?
      • Etc.
• Do they explain the work that has been done?
• Do they treat the customer’s property with evident respect?
• Do they take the time to understand the customer’s needs and goals so that they can make recommendations to help them achieve them?
• How does your staff deal with questions or issues that are outside of their responsibility?
  • Do they say it is “not my job”?
  • Do they try to find a solution and “stay” with the customer until they do?

Various studies have indicated that the reason most customers give for leaving a business and going their competitor is because they experienced indifferent customer service – in excess of 65% of the time.  I find it hard to believe that most companies truly don’t care about their customers, but I do believe it is true that most companies don’t communicate that they do by their actions.

How about you? How is your company doing with respect to empathy for your client base?  I’d love your feedback! And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Next time, we will wrap up by considering the second R of RATER – Responsiveness.

Jim

“You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.”

– Zig Ziglar

The post Transform the Service Experience through Empathy appeared first on jimbaston.com.

Recall that the name RATER[1] is an acronym with each letter representing the first letter of one of the five key dimensions of service quality.  They are:

R eliability: Our ability to provide what is promised, dependably and accurately

A ssurance: Our knowledge and courtesy, and our ability to convey trust and confidence

T angibles:  Our physical facilities and equipment, and our appearance

E mpathy:    The degree of caring and individual attention we provide to customers

R esponsiveness:     Our willingness to help customers and provide prompt service

The challenge for us when considering tangibles, is to define how we can contribute to the service experience through the tangible clues that our customers see.  Everything that the customer observes says something about the quality of our service.  Therefore, every tangible aspect of our work must be consistent with the image that we want to portray to the customer about our service.  For example, if we promote ourselves as providing a premium level of service, then our technicians must be dressed in a neat and professional manner, their truck must be clean, free of rust and dents and well organized, and the tools they use must be in tiptop condition and of recent vintage.  Anything less will cause the customer to question whether they are really getting the quality of service that they have been promised.

Other things to consider include all areas of our business such as:

• The quality of our written reports
• The content and appearance of our literature and our proposals
• The condition of the work area before, during and after service is provided
• The appearance of the equipment after it has been serviced
• The use of appropriate safety equipment during the performance of the work

The list can be extensive but the effort is worth it.  Next time we will consider how we can help the customer experience our empathy – the E in RATER.

What tangible clues are you providing your customers? I’d love your feedback! And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Until next time,

Jim

“Costumes are the first impression that you have of the character before they open their mouth 
– it really does establish who they are.”

Colleen Atwood

The post Transform the Service Experience through Tangibles appeared first on jimbaston.com.

1. Knowledge:  We must clearly define our expectations of what we want our technicians to do.  Often we assume that our technicians know what is expected and overlook the importance of this step.
2. Skills:  We must ensure that our technicians have the skills to act in the manner we ask of them.  Engaging in proactive discussions with customers may be uncomfortable for some of our technicians and they may lack the skills to do so effectively.
3. Perception:  We must ensure that our technicians understand why we ask them to act as we do.  Speaking to customers about our services and capabilities may be perceived as a sales task by our technicians.  They need to understand that helping our customers operate their facilities more effectively is a service, not a sale.
4. Tools and processes:  We must make certain that the technicians have the tools and are supported by our processes to do what we want them to.  When our processes do not support our technician’s efforts, they will perceive that what we are asking is not that important and quickly lose heart.
5. Motivation:  To get our technicians to enthusiastically embrace a proactive service approach, they must want to do it.  Otherwise, at best they will simply go through the motions or, at worst, not act in the manner we would like them to at all.

As mentioned above, this next and final webinar called Maintaining the Service Experience (Tuesday, February 26^th, 2013), will focus on our role as managers to motivate and support our technicians to create and maintain momentum for change.

For more information on this last webinar in the Transforming the Service Experience Series, click the link below:

Tuesday, February 26^th: Maintaining the Service Experience

Note: This webinar is open to everyone.  Non CMCEF members are welcome to attend.  The webinar will commence at 11:00 AM EST and is scheduled to be one hour in length.

Once you’ve attended the webinars, I would love your feedback! And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Until next time,

Jim

The post CMCEF Webinar Series – Part 3 Maintaining the Service Experience appeared first on jimbaston.com.

This follows the first in the webinar series that took place on Tuesday, January 29^th, 2013, where I presented on Defining the Service Experience.  We focused on the five key steps that technicians can take to transform the service experience that you create for your customers.  The five key steps our technicians can take are:

1. Understanding what builds trust in a business relationship and using this knowledge to proactively create higher levels of trust through every customer interaction
2. Recognizing how customers assign value to intangible services and delivering that service in a manner that clearly communicates this value
3. Understanding the unique service proposition of your firm and looking for opportunities to communicate this to each customer
4. Recognizing and discussing opportunities for services that will help the customer achieve their business objectives
5. Turning challenging situations into positive opportunities.

The third and final webinar later this month is entitled Maintaining the Service Experience and will focus on our role as managers and how we can create and maintain momentum for change.

For more information on webinars 2 and 3 of the Transforming the Service Experience Series, click the links below:

Tuesday, February 12^th: Creating the Service Experience

Tuesday, February 26^th: Maintaining the Service Experience

Note:  This webinar series is open to everyone.  Non CMCEF members are welcome to attend.  Each webinar will commence at 11:00 AM EST and is scheduled to be one hour in length.  The cost to attend each seminar is $50.00 and we will recap at the beginning of webinars 2 and 3 so you can join the series at any time.

Once you’ve attended the webinars, I would love your feedback! And as always, please feel free to leave a link back to your own blog if you have one via the commentluv feature here on the site. If you are reading this blog post via email, you will need to locate this post on my website by clicking here. Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will find the comment section.

Until next time,

Jim

The post Creating the Service Experience Part 2 – CMCEF Webinar Series appeared first on jimbaston.com.