Many companies pride themselves on the level of service they provide to their customers. During the course of our work with some of those companies, we often conduct surveys of current and past customers to get an objective view of service levels and customer satisfaction. Some companies are surprised by customer responses, while others consistently find that they have a good understanding of customer needs and expectations.

So, what is good customer service? Based on our experience, there are some common themes. For example, good customer service is:

• Having an internal environment that is committed to the customer, i.e., a true service culture as demonstrated by the statements, actions, and behaviors of the organization’s leaders. Many companies struggle with how to define and promote a service-oriented culture. The end result, however, is clear. All staff members understand customer satisfaction trumps their other priorities.

• Being available to customers when they want to do business. Increasingly, this means longer business hours, often approaching 24/7/365 coverage. It also means being available immediately, without extensive delays, wait times, or queues. Providing this accessibility in a cost-effective way requires sophisticated technologies and monitoring tools to staff the various contact points for good service levels. Such technologies include work-force management, remote worker infrastructure, voice recognition, and workflow to name a diverse few.

• Providing points of contact that are convenient to customers. Points of contact include face-to-face encounters, telephone, Internet, and mail. The key here is not to select one means of communication as the sole strategy but to provide access in all the ways your customers want to do business. Yet again, companies are faced with two primary issues in accomplishing this: creating and maintaining the points of contact and, most importantly, doing it in a cost-effective way.

• Having access to all customer information and accounts at the point of contact. For many companies, this requires a significant improvement in technology and data integration and a redesign of the way information about customers is collected, stored, and accessed. With all the emphasis in recent years on customer relationship management (CRM), it is both notable and troubling many companies still do not have ready access to comprehensive customer information at the point of a service contact.

• Being able to complete/resolve customers’ requests and issues in one transaction a high percentage of the time. Many customer service horror stories include going through extended menus to get to the right party, being placed on hold, being referred to another department, repeating the same request over and over, and being told “the check is in the mail.”