Over the last month or so, I have observed and/or experienced several “missteps” by service providers. Those missteps resulted in poor customer service. Some of these missteps included:

• The waitress delivered the food and everyone’s order was wrong – and when she went to correct it, she still got it wrong
• The dryer repairman failed to check some basics and ordered multiple parts. Once another repairman arrived, it became clear those parts were not needed and just a minor adjustment was required
• The customer service rep failed to react to a customer’s concern that the repairman had already come out 4 times and still had not resolved the problem.

In each of these examples, if there was a step in the process that included a quality check and/or escalation process, these missteps would have been avoided and the customer would be happy.

A common challenge with processes is that they do not include steps that are customer-focused to improve the quality of the product or service provided. In the examples identified above, the customer would have been much happier if:

• The waitress included a step that she did a quality check before delivering the food.
• The first dryer repairman had performed a more thorough evaluation to identify the problem
• An escalation step was included, based on predefined criteria, when a customer called multiple times for an unresolved issue

Adding an additional step for each of these examples would have eliminated unnecessary extra work and disappointed customers.

Assessing your customer-focused processes to improve the quality of your products and/or services will delight your customers and save wasted time, energy, resources, and money. As John Wooden, the UCLA Head Coach said so well: “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

Unsure how to assess your customer focused processes to improve quality? We can help. Contact me at CharleneA@mycooresources.com. Also, check out our blogs and previous newsletters and/or emails at http://www.mycooresources.com/?page_id=324