The world has changed. The level of service our customers are requiring has changed dramatically. How do you know if you are actually delivering better service? We want great customer service. We provide great customer service. But are we rarely make progress. Why is that?
Maybe we’re focused on the wrong thing.
To get to this answer you need to focus on the outcome. Ask yourself, “What is the ultimate outcome we are trying to achieve?” Ultimately are you striving to provide great customer service or are you striving to have high customer retention? Isn’t high customer retention really what you are trying to achieve? If that is the case then go measure that. It is exactly like your brand promise. You make a promise to your customer, and you support that promise with a strong infrastructure (process, equipment, people) to support the brand promise insuring that you never break that promise. In this example, you are striving for high customer retention and must build the infrastructure (great customer service) to support and deliver “High Customer Retention.”
Focus on the “outcome” and measure it because we all know that what gets measured gets managed.
Action: Develop a method to measure your customer retention. This is the metric you should track and pay attention to.