Too often, companies see customers as another distraction from work, but it’s actually happy customers who require less work and offer a better bottom line, according to Richard Beevers of Customer Plus, one of three independent speakers who presented at the CompTIA UK Channel Community Meeting in Coventry in June.
Happy customers are loyal customers and loyal customers are less expensive to serve, will recommend and will pay a premium, according to Beevers, speaking to members of the more than 100 delegates who descended on the Ricoh Arena for the meeting. “Managing Toward Business Excellence” was the theme for the day, and the speakers touched on the areas of business excellence that every company can start improving immediately: team excellence, operational excellence and customer service -excellence. An in-depth account of the UKCC meeting is available here.
So why aren’t all our customers happy already? Although fantastic customer service is not theoretically difficult, it is difficult to do in practice. Great customer service means different things to different people, he said, and the key is to be in tune with your customer. Don’t treat people how you want to be treated — find out how they want to be treated and treat them that way.
Customer focus needs to be everyone’s priority, the whole way through the company. After all, who would want to fly on a plane when the baggage handlers, refuelling engineers and air traffic controllers don’t care about you as a customer? Beevers also argued that companies should seek out complaints through regular surveys. This will lead to more complaints, not because a company is worse but because you are seeking them out — and a high proportion of complaints aren’t reported. A lot of our work in IT is about dealing with complaints and queries, so addressing them and dealing with them brilliantly will make you stand out to your customers over the competition.
Another key takeaway: A lot of the work in IT is about dealing with complaints and queries, so addressing them and dealing with them brilliantly will make you stand out to your customers over the competition.
CompTIA offers community meetings to help better connect with its members and learn what they want to hear the most. At Coventry, for example, members voted — and the results are being tabulated — on the next piece of research that they would like CompTIA to conduct. Exercises like these are an attempt to better understand what trends members want to know about.
For more on June’s CompTIA UK Channel Community Meeting, click here. The document includes insight from keynote speaker Tracy Westall of Specialist Computer Centres Ltd., and learn from Paul Tomlinson of Mirus IT, why making the team the heart of your business can be a key to success.
“We had 120 people sign up for this event, and it was the first time that we’ve had to use a waiting list for any CompTIA event, showing how valuable community meetings are for our UK members,” said Vaughan Shayler, CompTIA’s director of channel strategy. “CompTIA would like to thank everyone who joined us on the 17th and 18th to share experiences, expertise and help us work towards a brighter future of IT.
Michelle Peterson is a communications specialist for CompTIA.
