My supervisor and I spent a significant amount of time the other day attempting to right a customer service wrong.
We had ordered flowers for a colleague, and rather than the flowers being delivered to that colleague, the flowers were delivered to us. And, rather than a receipt of the order being sent to my supervisor, a receipt of the order was sent to the recipient!
This was a customer service mess-up, to put it lightly.
And unfortunately, working with the company wasn’t much better. It was incredibly difficult to hear the representative on the other end of the call, and the resolution, while acceptable at the end, took close to an hour to get to.
After this call, it made me think about the need to truly be customer-service focused. We all are in service to someone or a group of “someones.” And our goals, when we come right down to it, need to be designed in order to support those we serve.
That means that a priority, always, needs to be on what our customers need, and how we can help them reach those needs. While thinking through a customer frame might make us worry that we were thinking too “business-y,” the value is that whether a business or a school, in the end, we want our charges to learn, and to be happy doing so.
This means that whether we’re selling services or helping others address a problem they’re experiencing, customer service is always key, and getting people from where they are, to where they want to be, should be the ultimate goal.