A Winning Customer Service Strategy
By
Julie L. Mohr





Providing high-quality customer service in the help desk requires much more than
just technical troubleshooting skills. Employees must have excellent listening and
communication skills, telephone skills, writing skills and they must be able to
solve and prevent problems in the help desk. In addition, the ability to handle
difficult customers and minimize stress during the workday also increases the
level of customer service they provide. These "soft" skills are often more
important in ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction than an employee's
technical knowledge.Link Satisfaction to Training
In order to improve customer satisfaction within the support environment, a
customer service strategy should be in place to solicit feedback from customers.
Do they enjoy their support experience? What do they think about the level of
service? What do they say when they complain about the service? The answers to
those questions and data from the problem management system should then be
used to develop a training program to improve the skill level of the help desk
employees. Combine the customer service strategy with a solid employee hiring
process that recruits new employees with the necessary skills and it will result in
an increase in customer satisfaction. It is important to understand the link between
customer satisfaction and the skills of the help desk employees.
Step 1: Develop a Customer Service Strategy
A winning customer service strategy provides quality service and resolves
customer complaints. In the help desk industry, much effort has been placed on
customer satisfaction measurement. This includes developing processes to
measure satisfaction, implement changes to increase customer satisfaction and
communicate the enhancements to the customers. A critical element that is
missing is an emphasis on customer complaints. A support organization should
also develop processes for the management of complaints. A winning customer
service strategy includes six steps:
SOLICIT Ð Solicit customer complaints and feedback.
RESOLVE Ð Resolve customer complaints on first contact.
TRACK Ð Track, trend and proactively eliminate customer complaints using the
problem management system.
SURVEY Ð Survey customers on a regular basis.
TRAIN Ð Train employees, based upon complaints, survey results and
performance metrics, to increase quality of customer service and improve
complaint resolution.
Page 2 of 8MARKET Ð Market the winning customer service strategy to help desk
employees and customers to establish expectation.
SOLICIT
MARKET W W W I I I N N N N N N I I I N N N GGGRESOLVE
C C C U U U S S S T T T O O O M M M E E E RRR
S S S E E E R R R V V V I I I C C C EEE
S S S T T T R R R A A A T T T E E E G G G YYY
TRAIN TRACK
SURVEY
Why Focus on Complaints?
According to the 1996 report, Serving the American People: Best Practices in
Resolving Customer Complaints published by the National Performance Review,
there are five reasons why successful companies succeed at resolving customer
complaints and thus increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. A best practice
environment must:
f Make it easy for customers to complain and customers will make it easy for
you to improve.
f Respond to complaints quickly and courteously with common sense and you
will improve customer loyalty.
Page 3 of 8f Resolve complaints on the first contact and save money by eliminating
unnecessary additional contacts that escalate costs and build customer
confidence.
f Technology is critical in complaint handling systems.
f Recruit and hire the best for customer service jobs.
Customer satisfaction is more than just solving a customer's technology problem
or fulfilling a request as quickly as possible. It is also about how you handle
"poor" service. You can't expect every call to be handled perfectly every time.
Some customers get mad and get vocal. This often leads to the bad reputation of
the help desk. So even when you provide "bad" service, develop a clear strategy
for how to make it right - quickly and prevent similar problems in the future.
Step 2: Hire Only the Best
Quality service comes from quality employees. Develop a solid new hire process
that recruits only those employees who have the necessary skills. The new hire
process has four steps:
RECRUIT Ð Recruit for technical resolution, listening and communication,
telephone, writing and customer service skills.
HIRE Ð Hire only those employees who possess a complete skill set.
TRAIN Ð Train employees regularly to invest in their success, increase employee
retention and increase customer satisfaction.
Page 4 of 8PROMOTE Ð Promote and retain only those employees who make the grade in
your support organization.
RECRUIT
W W W I I I N N N N N N I I I N N N GGG
PROMOTE HIREC C C U U U S S S T T T O O O M M M E E E RRR
S S S E E E R R R V V V I I I C C C EEE
S S S T T T R R R A A A T T T E E E G G G YYY
TRAIN
Page 5 of 8Step 3: Invest in Your Employees
In both the customer service strategy and the new hire process, there is an
emphasis on training. A robust training program should address all the critical
skills that are necessary to provide the best service to the customer. In the same
report by the National Performance Review they state,
"Best-in-Business leaders consider training an investment, not an
expense. They use complaint trends/data to identify training
needs."
Organizations that spend a sizeable portion of their budgets on training can see a
direct link between training and increases in customer satisfaction and loyalty.
According to the American Productivity & Quality Center in their report titled
Best Practices in New Customer Service,
"The foundation of any successful customer service organization is
the empowered customer service agent. Management in the best-
practice organizations recognizes that external customer
satisfaction requires granting power to those internal company
representatives who serve as the critical link between the company
and the customer."
eService Consulting Practice Can Help
Our eService Practice consultants can assist support organizations in creating a
winning customer service strategy with our Customer Communication Plan,
Customer Satisfaction Plan, Customer Marketing Plan and Customer Service
Training.
Communication Plan Ð This deliverable helps to establish communication
standards in all written and verbal communications as well as defines the process
for how to communicate effectively with the customer.
Customer Satisfaction Plan Ð This deliverable develops a customer satisfaction
measurement process, assists with tool selection and provides sample surveys.
Marketing Plan Ð This deliverable is a help desk marketing strategy to inform
customers of the help desk services, help change the perception of the help desk
and establish customer expectations.
Page 6 of 8Customer Service Training Ð This class is designed to train help desk staff on
how to improve customer communication skills, develop effective listening skills
and develop strategies for dealing with difficult customers.
Our consulting practice can help your customers to achieve higher levels of
COMMUNICATION
PLAN
W W W I I I N N N N N N I I I N N N GGG
CUSTOMER CUSTOMER
C C C U U U S S S T T T O O O M M M E E E RRR
SERVICE SATISFACTION
S S S E E E R R R V V V I I I C C C EEE
TRAINING PLAN
S S S T T T R R R A A A T T T E E E G G G YYY
MARKETING
PLAN
customer satisfaction and at the same time help to increase employee retention.
According to Gartner Group,
"Organizations must begin to evaluate customer service as a
competitive weapon and make appropriate investments in
infrastructure, cultures, people and processes."
Page 7 of 8Professional Profile
Julie L. Mohr is the Principal Research Analyst and Author at
BlueprintAudits.com. For over 15 years, she has been passionate about service
and support management providing imaginative insight and dynamic leadership
to transform service and support organizations into best practice, customer-
focused environments. She has helped over 50 organizations including many
Fortune 100 companies to implement Knowledge Management, ITSM, IT
Governance, organization enhancements, process re-engineering and service
level management. Julie is an active contributor to the future development of the
industry through speaking engagements at conferences worldwide, researching
industry trends and publishing over 150 articles on best practices. Julie has
developed a support organization maturity model and audit methodology utilized
by thousands of organizations to identify weaknesses and develop improvement plans. She is an expert
worldwide instructor in multiple industry frameworks including ITSM, KCS and COBIT. Julie is a certified
¨
Helpdesk Director and certified ITIL Service Manager. She is currently serving as VP of Membership for
the itSMF LIG in Sacramento, a faculty member with HDI and participated on the HDI Support Center
Certification (SCC) standards committee. Julie is the author of Mapping Support Processes: Blueprint for
Success, The Help Desk Audit: Blueprint for Success, The Help Desk Toolkit: Companion CD and The Help
Desk Dictionary, and maintains an informative industry portal for practitioners at www.blueprintaudits.com.
She is a member of IEEE Computer Society, National Speakers Association, American Society for Quality,
Association for Computing Machinery, ISACA, PMI, HDI, itSMF and the Association of Support
Professionals. Julie is a graduate of The Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in
Computer Science.
You)can)contact)Julie)at:)
jlmohr@blueprintaudits.com)
+01­530­750­0240)

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