What is a Customer Service strategy?
A Customer Service Strategy is a plan to handle customer interactions throughout the entire consumer journey as a means of using customer-centric thinking to provide consistent customer satisfaction, build customer loyalty and promote a positive, friendly environment that will leave a great impression on customers.
What's included in this Customer Service strategy template?
- Customer Service Vision Statement
- 4x Customer Service Values
- 4x Customer Service Focus Areas
- 12x Customer Service Objectives
- 17x Customer Service Projects
- 26x Customer Service KPIs
Who is this Customer Service strategy template for?
A customer service strategy is useful for everyone involved in the customer experience and so can be as broad or narrow depending on the layers of the customer journey map that you wish to focus on. Different industries will have different layers of customer service; more automated industries could have more, whilst technological industries may have less. Even though the end goal of a customer service strategy is ideally customer satisfaction, this template is not only applicable to customers, but also to admin staff that deals with processing orders; transportation staff that either act as intermediaries or deliver or receive the orders; technicians that help facilitate a smooth working system; retail staff that sells the product; an after-sales service team that deals with customer inquiries and problems, and handles returns and refunds. It’s important to note that this entire process is overlooked and supervised by managers.
How is this Customer Service strategy template relevant to your organization?
Depending on the layer of the customer journey map you are seeking to improve, you can appropriately devise strategies to work on and improve the service provided in these sections.
1. Define clear examples of your focus areas
It can be easy to think of focus areas by looking at your customer journey map and then narrowing down on the layers you have identified to establish what problem areas your organization specifically needs to resolve or work on.
An example of a focus area for a Customer Service Strategy could be Operational Efficiency.
2. Think about the objectives that could fall under that focus area
Focusing on objectives within this area can help you narrow down further into the goals you want to focus on in these areas. The objectives you set can be SMART objectives so that they epitomize clear and succinct end targets for you and your team to work towards.
An example of some objectives that fall under Operational Efficiency can be; Ensure teams, groups, and networks in an organization are sufficiently staffed; Utilize the best technology to deliver customer service goals effectively; Meet customer demand and increase customer retention.
3. Set yourself measurable targets (KPIs) to tackle the objective
Whilst you can also track and measure the progress of your objectives, it’s also extremely crucial to set up smaller measurements that you can track and measure to monitor your progress.
Examples of KPIs that can measure this objective: Ensure teams, groups, and networks in an organization are sufficiently staffed are Get Average Resolution Time to 75%, Reduce Cost per Call by 30%, and Reduce Customer Callbacks to 60.
You can accordingly set up specific end dates or a time period that you want to achieve these KPIs.
4. Implement related projects to achieve the KPIs
After thinking about some KPIs, you may wonder how can these KPIs actually be achieved? This is where creating some projects becomes extremely useful. Projects can serve as tangible actions that you follow to achieve your end objectives.
Examples of projects that can improve your overall organizational operational efficiency can include but are not limited to: Create a training Investment per Employee, Generate a customer charter, Create an Employee Appraisal scheme, Utilize a Customer Journey Map, Send monthly emails to build customer engagement and Initiate a customer loyalty program.
5. Utilize Cascade tools to track and visualize performance
Once you’ve worked on your planner and created your objectives, KPIs, and projects; you can actually proceed to visually illustrate these to serve as visual performance indicators. These can help you visualize the areas that need improvement and are lacking and accordingly reward and acknowledge the parts of your plan that are doing well and succeeding.