Customer service culture is something that cannot be set up once and stay forever, it grows and changes with your business. It cannot be built within one department, everyone in the company should be involved. It cannot come from frontline employees, it should be supported by top management. Do you care enough about having systems like live chat as your customer service culture in your company?
What is happening inside your organization defines your customer service culture. Organizations are similar to families. Children behave like their parents as employees behave like their bosses. Personality of the CEO has a significant impact on customer service culture. The right attitude of the CEO and top management to employees and customers makes a good base for customer focused culture.
To build a great customer service culture start with your management team. Work out your mission, vision, goals, main principles, values and standards. Make sure every member of your management team understands and shares them. It is very important because they will have to pass them to employees.
Hiring the right people is crucial for customer service culture. The culture starts at the top. That is why all members of your management team must share it. Admit that top professionals may be alien to your company culture. If you are committed to your goal to build a strong customer service culture, let the top professionals find their own way outside your company. Skills can be trained. Make sure your employees fit in to the culture first.
With the top management team that shares your goals and values you can introduce your customer service program to the rest of the company. Here start regular training and team building. Use the same strategy when hiring employees. Hire people who fit in to the culture. If you do not feel that new employees are able to share your values and standards, you may need to reconsider the way you communicate your attitude.
Sharing your values is not the same as communicating them. Live Chat Communication makes a big difference. It may take you time and efforts before you understand how to communicate your values. Work at the messages with your team. Test and improve them. If you perfectly understand your customer service values and standards that does not mean that the right words will come at once. Find the words that are equally cleat to you and your employees. They should be simple and concise.
As a CEO or top manager you must be devoted to your customer service culture, you should be able to communicate it and scale it. This is the only way to build a great customer service company.
