Sometimes the lightbulb goes off in interesting ways!
Years ago, I had the responsibility to improve desktop support, where technicians visited people's desktops to troubleshoot problems. Since many times, the people were not at their desk when this happened, they felt frustrated with this support because they didn't know the status of their problem or even if their problem was fixed.
It suddenly hit me! One day while on a business trip, I saw that the maid service left some chocolates on the pillow with a card indicating that they visited my room.
So I decided to use a similar strategy for the desktop support group. Instead of chocolates, I set up a system for the technicians to bring two postcards with them to leave at the desktop they visited.
The first postcard indicated that the support team visited this desktop, with an indication of the status of the troubleshooting investigation. The second postcard was a very brief survey to relay how the support team performed on this service call.
It was a hit!. Clients loved seeing those cards at their desk since it indicated that they were being serviced. They also enjoyed sending back their brief survey indicating whether or not they were satisfied with the service.
It's sometimes the little things that make our relationships with clients more successful. I always like a great quote. Oprah Winfrey's seems appropriate: "Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity."
An additional customer service benefit was that we were able to use that survey feedback to implement a benchmarking analysis of how the customer satifaction was progressing. The results helped us address further customer service improvements. We were able to report back to clients and management the successes and strategies that were implemented. Many metrics are needed to track internal service provision. But for external clients, the indicative metric is -- would your clients recommend you to others?
Years ago, I had the responsibility to improve desktop support, where technicians visited people's desktops to troubleshoot problems. Since many times, the people were not at their desk when this happened, they felt frustrated with this support because they didn't know the status of their problem or even if their problem was fixed.
It suddenly hit me! One day while on a business trip, I saw that the maid service left some chocolates on the pillow with a card indicating that they visited my room.
So I decided to use a similar strategy for the desktop support group. Instead of chocolates, I set up a system for the technicians to bring two postcards with them to leave at the desktop they visited.The first postcard indicated that the support team visited this desktop, with an indication of the status of the troubleshooting investigation. The second postcard was a very brief survey to relay how the support team performed on this service call.
It was a hit!. Clients loved seeing those cards at their desk since it indicated that they were being serviced. They also enjoyed sending back their brief survey indicating whether or not they were satisfied with the service.
It's sometimes the little things that make our relationships with clients more successful. I always like a great quote. Oprah Winfrey's seems appropriate: "Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity."
An additional customer service benefit was that we were able to use that survey feedback to implement a benchmarking analysis of how the customer satifaction was progressing. The results helped us address further customer service improvements. We were able to report back to clients and management the successes and strategies that were implemented. Many metrics are needed to track internal service provision. But for external clients, the indicative metric is -- would your clients recommend you to others?
