Six Customer Service Areas to Check

Conducting a customer service process audit will enable you to do a deep dive into your operation to understand the customer experience firsthand. Here are six items you can quickly check:

1) Check your job status or update process.

Grab any job in process and act like a customer wanting an update. The office personnel should be able to answer any question you ask and the response should be fast and at their fingertips. Give fast, accurate updates.

Watch how the information is pulled together before an answer is given. Are your systems fast? Reliable? How many systems needed to be checked? How many people had to be tracked down to find out? Look for ways to cut steps out and put your people in the driver seat with all the answers quickly.

2) Check your customer database.

Can you get at complete client information quickly within one system? The company should be able to export all active and inactive customers from a single system. That system should be fast and have complete information. Yes, even a client’s e-mail address. The customer information should also include a purchase history.

Do you have complete information for customers; e-mail, phone, address, key notes? Export out jobs from the last month and see how many holes are in the contact records. It is a great audit of your database and is easy to do.

3) Check how you communicate with customers.

Client communications should be documented and easily reviewed and clear. This should be coordinated so you are not blasting an e-mail the same day you survey your customers and send out that open house invitation. Time everything, and have a communication schedule. Also, how communication is currently managed with the customer base. Details of e-mail blasts, mailings, frequency and templates should be easily available and organized.