How Do You Keep a Strong Level of Customer Service Whilst Your Business is Rapidly Growing?

Being part of a rapidly growing company is always exciting, but also exacting.

It’s completely normal to feel like there isn’t enough resource to deliver the excellent customer service levels expected of your business. Although this seems like a problem, it’s a great one to have and it is important to keep in mind that no matter what stage your organisation is at, the principles of great customer service always remain the same:

• Listen to customers at various levels and functions of the business to gain invaluable insight to take action
• Immerse yourself into who your customer is and what they do. In other words, see their world through their lens not necessarily from the more convenient perspective of yours
• Determine the ‘need’ from the ‘want’. Both are important to the customer, but finite resource means that you need to prioritise. Ask yourself: What is required to make my client’s business work better; What are they looking to achieve?
• Under-promise and over-deliver
• Measure what you are delivering (NPS). This enables you to keep track of individual and team performance and quantify improvement. Seeing improvement is really motivating for employees and customers alike
• Be honest. If something does not go well, hold your hands up and learn for the future
• Take your customers’ ‘temperature’: talk to customers regularly to gauge where your service levels stand with them
• Share any customer feedback (good or bad) with the relevant colleagues in your organisation in goodwill, in the constant quest to improvement.

The only thing that is certain during growth is change, and in all likelihood what the position is now will have changed in six months’ time. Flexibility and nimbleness are key. Engrained within your mindset before any change is executed or any decision is made should be the question:

Will this have a positive effect on the customer?

It’s often easy to get distracted by the ‘noise’ and forget that the customer comes first. If you build this question into your company culture, you’ll find it hard to go wrong.

Ultimately, great customer service will create your strongest brand advocates. Advocates being those who, when addressed will positively recommend your business to another business.  

Advocates are a necessity to most business development. It is therefore arguable that customer service has the potential to be the biggest driver of business growth. It should never be ignored during periods of success but instead nurtured and built up using the principles above