Top 10 most costly customer service slip ups

1. Assuming you understand your customer's needs
It may sound obvious but one of the most common errors made when serving a customer is not understanding the entire picture. As consumers we choose to buy products or services based on several needs, but we may only articulate one or two of those needs. What are you doing to understand all your customer's needs?

2. Poor listening
Are you waiting for your cue to speak or are you attentively listening to your customer's concerns or desires?

3. Not following up in time
Are you making morning after calls or are you doing them when you get around to it? Do customers call you several times before you finally get back to them with the requested information?

4. Bad mouthing the competition
When you speak poorly of the competition, especially if you do not have first hand experience, you are turning off your potential customer. When you focus on the positive attributes of you competition and compare them to your positive attributes, your prospect is thinking positive thoughts about you.

5. Making it all about you and your product or service
My name is John Henry. I am a consultant. I am a trainer. I can do that. I can help you. I know how to fix that. I can do it, me, myself, and I. Hmmm...not so appealing is it?

6. Answering the phone when a customer is standing in front of you
The person in front of you IS your customer. The customer on the phone MAY become your customer. Deal with what you know before you move onto what you do not know.

7. Continually excusing yourself so that you can seek the answers from an expert
There is nothing wrong with needing to get the expertise of a co-worker. However, you can show your customer you value them by inviting the expert to join you, rather than continually leaving the customer waiting while you "go find out".

8. Low value on internal customers
When you put your people to the bottom of the customer service list, you are compromising the network in which you operate. Keep in mind that the tables will turn one day and you will need something from them.

9. Not knowing when and how far to bend the rules

10. Not thanking your customers
Everyone loves to be appreciated. When you thank a customer they revisit their positive experience and are apt to share it with others. Thanking a customer can be as simple as a hand shake or as elaborate as a gift.

Control operational activities

Control production and service provision:
- processes
- information
- instructions
- equipment
- measurements
- activities

Validate production and service provision by proving special processes, process personnel, and process equipment can produce planned results.

Identify and track your products by:
- establishing the identity of your products
- maintaining the identity of your products
- identifying the status of your products
- recording the identity of your products

Protect property supplied by customers by:
- identifying
- verifying
- safeguarding

Preserve your products and components during internal processing and final delivery.

Perform remedial processes

There must be a plan for remedial processes to assure conformity and improve the system.

Remedial processes must be implemented to demonstrate conformance and improve the quality management system.

Analysis of data

Quality management information needs must be defined to evaluate and improve the quality management system.

Data must be collected to monitor and measure the suitability and effectiveness of the quality management system.

The information that must be analyzed includes:
- customer satisfaction
- conformity to product requirements
- characteristics and trends of processes and products including opportunities for preventive action
- suppliers

ISO 9000

The ISO 9000 series of standards is among ISO's most widely known standards ever. ISO 9000 standards are implemented by over 750 000 organizations from more than 150 countries. ISO 9000 has become an international reference for quality management requirements in business-to-business dealings.

The ISO 9000 series is primarily concerned with "quality management". This means what the organization does to fulfil:
- the customer's quality requirements, and- applicable regulatory requirements, while aiming to
- enhance customer satisfaction, and
- achieve continual improvement of its performance in pursuit of these objectives.

The vast majority of ISO standards are highly specific to a particular product, material, or process. However, the standards that have earned the ISO 9000 series a worldwide reputation are known as "generic management system standards".

"Generic" means that the same standards can be applied:
- to any organization, large or small, whatever its product
- including whether its "product" is actually a service,
- in any sector of activity, and
- whether it is a business enterprise, a public administration, or a government department.

"Generic" also signifies that no matter what the organization's scope of activity, if it wants to establish a quality management system or an environmental management system, then such a system has a number of essential features for which the relevant standards of the ISO 9000 series provide the requirements.

"Management system" refers to the organization's structure for managing its processes - or activities - that transform inputs of resources into a product or service which meet the organization's objectives, such as satisfying the customer's quality requirements, complying to regulations, or meeting environmental objectives.

The main standard in the ISO 9000 series of standards is:
ISO 9001 - Quality management systems, requirements