Ethics 101
When people who belong to a particular organization ascribe to the same code of ethics, it helps to build community and loyalty based on shared values. Are you prepared to move your company to greater heights?
Are You Ready?
If you choose to develop an office code of ethics, it must be more than just a statement on the wall. It must truly be a code that you do business by. You must be prepared to change some of the ways you do business. You must also be prepared to commit to those ethics for a code to succeed. You must be willing to look for staff who commit to these ethics.
A code of ethics, when properly implemented and followed, can have the following benefits.
- Happier employees: A code of ethics can relieve tremendous pressure on employees by giving them a moral compass that they can make decisions by.
- More consistent decisions: If everyone knows the company’s standard of right and wrong and commits to it, decisions made within the company are more likely to
- More committed employees: An ethical office environment will likely produce more committed, loyal employees.
In summary, when developing a code of ethics, make sure you and your company are prepared to live by it. Make sure input is obtained from everyone, even if it’s just through a survey. And make sure people are committed to it; otherwise, it’s just another piece of paper on the wall.
Building a Strong Customer Care Team
Without having product sales, you won’t have a company for long. In that same vein, the people who provide customer service functions in your company can make or break your success.
The Pillars of Success
What is Customer Service?
Customer service is the way you treat the people who support your company. These can be paying customers (external customers) or staff members (internal customers). The customer’s perception of that service is what brings them back to you again and again. Great service is what they cite when they send referrals to you.
People who provide good customer service (regardless of the nature of their business) earn psychological benefits in addition to any rewards offered by their company. If you are unhappy in your job, take an objective look at the kind of service you are giving. In almost every case, your job satisfaction mirrors the satisfaction people feel when doing business with you. Giving poor service is a way of beating up on yourself.
The Critical Elements of Customer Service
There are really just six elements of customer service.
- A customer service focus
- Defined within your organization
- Given life by the members of the organization
- Be a problem solver
- Measure it
- Reinforce it
The Remaining Elements
Critical Element Two: Defined in Your Organization
Standards are helpful because they let us know what is expected of us. They also tell us what we have to do in order for our work to be considered satisfactory by our supervisors or managers.
Standards also need to meet the expectations of our customers, while still being reasonable. The customer may feel that the phone should be answered on the first ring, but the company may have a standard of two or three rings. Since this is pretty close to what the customer expects, it might be considered close enough. However, we should make certain that our standards are meeting or exceeding the expectations of our customers. The only way to do this is to ask our customers, on an ongoing basis, if they are satisfied with the service.
In order to meet expectations, we need to know what the standards are. Here are some sample standards.
If customers ask to have their repairs completed in 24 hours, and your standard turnaround is three days, you have to be clear on what you can do.
If employees are driving company cars that they sign out as needed, a standard may be that the car is returned with a full gas tank.
If you have not set standards yet, perhaps now is the time to do so.
Critical Element Three: Given Life by the Employees
If we make a commitment to providing excellent customer service, that commitment must be demonstrated by all of our employees, from the front line people right up to the CEO. When the commitment is only demonstrated by some employees, our customers will sense that there is a gap and their experience with the company will be diminished.
Critical Element Four: Be a Problem Solver
Conflict occurs when the emphasis is on the differences between people. The more divided you seem to be, the more differences there are. You get along better with people when the emphasis is on similarities. The difference between conflict with a friend and conflict with a difficult person is that with a friend, the conflict is tempered by things you have in common. Obviously, then, maximizing common ground and minimizing the areas of difference are key steps in reducing conflict.
Instead of managing through conflict, we want you to solve problems. Here is a great process to solve problems for customers and to achieve solutions.
Critical Element Five: Measure It
Wouldn’t it be great if all of our customers were happy and we didn’t have to deal with complaints or problems? The only way to know what’s really going right and wrong is to measure regularly.
You can measure a particular service or product in great detail. Follow up with customers and ask what’s working, what can be improved, and how much they like it. Also ask them what could be done differently to develop options. Then assess the advantages and disadvantages to determine whether it makes sense to make changes.
Critical Element Six: Reinforce It
Once an organization decides how they are approaching customer service and makes a commitment to their processes, they must live up to the expectations that they have subscribed to. Just as important, those practices must be reinforced.
If you are receiving pay (whether it is hourly, salary, or by commission), then you are getting paid to do your job. That is often enough external motivation to deliver what is expected, when it is combined with internal motivation. Sometimes companies will put enhanced reinforcement in place by doing things such as:
- Having customers complete a survey about the service they received
- Having supervisors observe when we do good work and provide some kind of recognition
- Celebrating when targets are met, like an increase in returning customers
All of these activities are a way to reinforce our commitment to providing excellent customer service. They reflect the relationships we build within the organization and with our customer base.