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Q:  Improving Customer Relationships -What is more important? Results or Perception?
 
What satisfies your customers? Is it customer self-help? Having the best CRM solution? Having a "certified" service center? Exceeding industry averages?
 
These things are all result oriented, while perception is the customer's insight, thoughts or viewpoint regarding the interactions they have with company employees. If we focus only on the results of the services we deliver and do not spend time managing perception, we are missing the greatest opportunity to improve our customer satisfaction ratings and additional sales.
 
Of course, focusing on results has a positive impact on customer satisfaction. The problem is, we can achieve results that meet or exceed industry averages and still have poor customer satisfaction ratings. How can this be? First of all, services management and team members have to realize that they are in the relationship game and that "working" the relationship is the best way to impact customer perception. It is easy to understand relationship selling. Good sales people are masters at this game. We know that customers buy from the people they like, so it makes sense to wine 'em, dine 'em and get on a personal basis with prospects. Yes, relationships are crucial in selling and they are even more important on the services side of the business.
 
When you ask service personnel what they think would have the greatest impact on improving customer satisfaction, their first response is most often " We need more technical training". The second most common response is "We need more people". Because of the complex product environments service management deal with today, they will never be able to give their staff enough technical training. Because of the state of the economy and budget restrictions, adding more people is an even greater obstacle than it has been in the past.
 
In reality, more technical training and more people rarely increase customer satisfaction anyway. What does work is teaching service staff how to build and improve customer relationships.
 
When relationships improve, customer perceptions change and increased satisfaction follows. When service personnel have a good relationship with their customers, the customers "like" them and feel more positive about service as a whole. Customers are more forgiving when problems occur and are more willing to work as a partner during problem resolution.
 
How do we improve customer relationships? We must focus in two areas relating to "soft" skills. They are professionalism and use of proven client-handling techniques.
 
Professionalism includes such things as showing respect, being empathetic, polite, and honest. In other words, all the things we learned in kindergarten, but may have forgotten as adults. It also includes representing the service organization and company in the best possible light.
 
Client-handling techniques come more naturally to some people than to others, but they can be taught. Training should focus on techniques for building relationships between service personnel and customers as well as the more common topics of handling conflict, being confident, listening, questioning, setting expectations, follow-through, etc.
 
Formal training in client-handling techniques is very important, however there are some on-the-job techniques that you can use that will have an immediate, positive impact on relationships. One approach is to have service personnel pick a few customer calls every day for practice. Have them focus on the relationship side of the call by taking an interest in the customer, and their business, by asking open-ended questions beginning with what, where, when, why, and how. By asking open-ended questions we give the customer an opportunity to tell us more about themselves and their organization. Showing interest in them has a positive impact on the relationship, and of course on their perception of your organization.
 
Another approach to improving relationships is to take advantage of conflict situations to get to know the customer better. This is the time when they are more inclined to open up in the heat of the moment and tell you things about their company, department, goals, needs etc. You simply need to give them the opportunity.
 
Perhaps perception is more important than results. Improving relationships with your customers is the best way of impacting their perception, and satisfaction with your service organization and company. Remember... whatever the customer perceives is reality. The success of your customer interactions are based on what they perceive you did, regardless of the results. If they perceive that you did badly, then you did!
 
Virsten TeleCorp, Inc. helps service organizations build relationships and improve productivity.