Retaining Customers Essay Example for Free

Retaining Customers EssayBT is one of the largest communication theory companies in the world. One of the advantages they offer is residential or personal communications solutions. Even though they now hold in competition from other companies offering consumers substitutes for their service, they still hold the largest market share of providing residential guests with telephone lines. For BT to maintain this market share, they must conceal the use of goods and servicesers they induce. I will be recommending how they can concord their customer base as well as winning impertinent customers. I will be looking at several models and theories in order to do this.* Making Customers into Champions* The case of the complain customer* The circus tent of the iceberg lettuce ModelFrom BT a customer receives a core service. Telephony. The customer anticipates the telephone in their home to be working when they pick it up. They are not going to be wowed by the service if it is pl ainly working. However, when the customer makes reach out with BT to enquire, change or add something they will use this opportunity to regulate a perception of BTs Customer Service. Most people who move to a different telephone supplier do so because they perceive indifference in the people they do business with at their authorized compevery.Customer feedback controls BT that one of the biggest drivers of dissatisfaction is the ambitiousy in registering their complaint with BT. A large part of this dissatisfaction stems from a neediness of promised c totallybacks and an initial difficulty in escalating their issue. This feedback has been substantiated by OFTEL in that the number of customers contacting them to complain that they have not received a promised call back has been increasing. OFTEL have given BT a very clear indication that they expect this situation to be addressed and therefore it is paramount that the following recommendations are enforced immediately.* Own, Decide, Do provision to be rolled out to all Customer Service Advisors. When a complaint is received in the 150 call centres the individual must own the complaint, make a decision about what to do with it and follow any promised action up with a call to the customer to let them know what happened.* memory the customer informed With some complaints resolution may not be speedy. There may be some technical difficulties, which hold resolution up. The customer does not know this and will perceive any periods of silence as the indifference of BT to their complaint. Keeping the customer informed of progress or news (good or bad) will enhance the customers perception of BT* EDCSMs (Event Driven Customer Service Measures), the service that BT offer customers must be analysed in order to time its success. Through BTs sophisticated SMART datatbase, every contact with the customer is logged with the id of the advisor who took the call. This instruction trends can be spotted as well as t raining areasThe barriers for the customer to successfully register their complaint are as follows* The BT shunt BT is a huge business with oer 20 large call centres taking in the freephone 150 (customer service) calls. It is very lento for complaints to get lost in the system.* The call steering system. There are many different numbers to press for different departments. It is difficult to speak to a human* The Call Handling Time that advisors are encouraged to adhere to. This measure the amount of time they are talkng with each customer in order to keep the Percentage of calls answered as high as come-at-able.* Poor training and coaching target ground coaching instead of skills based coachingIn the longer term there are some other changes that should be implemented by BT over a period of time in order to instil enhanced behaviours in all employees.Traditionally employees of a company see a complaining customer as organism a nuisance. BA challenged this when they introduced th e Making Customers into Champions Model.This model can be directly applied to BT, who is, itself, striving to turn in World Class Customer Service.This model labels different sectors of the customer base and how likely they are to contact BT with any dissatisfaction they may have and how easy it is to register this dissatisfaction. If the customer has a complaint and they cannot register this in any way, they may feel tempted to try a different provider. If the complaint is not registered then BT has not had a chance to resolve the complaint. If BT has a chance of resolving the issue, if it is resolved skilfully and well, research suggests that this could real enhance the customers perception of BT. So, in short, a customer complaint can turn in to a glowing report for BT. Furthermore, if we make BTs customers in to champions, BT can learn from the mis rides they have made that might have caused complaints in order that they do not occur again.* A dissatisfied customer will tell b etween 10 and 20 other people about their problem* A customer who has had a problem resolved will tell 5 people about their situationThe case of the complaining customer is a valuable study that BT should already have taken heed of. The problems experienced by Mr Shelton almost mirror the experiences some BT customers have when things go wrong and customer relations are tried to the full. It may be tempting for some employees working for such a huge cash overawe as BT to believe that BT can afford to lose difficult customers. This study shows that whilst few customers actually take the time and energy that Mr Shelton did to complain, there are actually many other dissatisfied customers (Mr Shelton is just the tip of the Iceberg).These customers are the missing in action group and will just quietly take their custom elsewhere and thus impact significantly on BTs profit margins. The article points out that whilst it would be easy for us to read Mr Sheltons contacts with the company as neurotic, in actual fact Mr Shelton has responded very emotionally to the way he feels his complaint has been dealt with. Customers should be allowed to vent their feelings, feel listened to and valued before their problem is resolved. They are experiencing feelings of impotence and this will be compounded if they feel that an advisor is not listening to them. Paraphrasing can be a useful tool here, to show empathy and check for understanding.TARP published a graphic representing the Tip of the Iceberg Principle. It indicates that consumer complaints to a third party are only a small portion of those that exist. Theyre just the visible(a) portion and reflect the much broader picture. This demonstrates how important it is for BT to be proactive in gaining feedback from customers at every possible opportunity. It was not the tip of the iceberg that sunk the Titanic, and it will not affect the business greatly if just those visible customers were dissatisfied with BTs service. Tho se that leave quietly will have the greatest impact and BT will have little or no information as to why they left.BT must strive to deal with any customer requests the first time every time. Here is a list of my recommendations for BT for implementing across the board over the next 12 months in order to retain customers.* A review of the training process all training should be underpinned with updated balance scorecard and appropriate coaching given by line managers* feel must come before quantity. If all customers were dealt with the first time they called, there would be less calls* ascend customer complaints as a chance to dazzle and delight customers and enhance a customers perception of BT by a training programme* Work together with different departments and not as adversaries. Promote teamwork* asseverate an incentive scheme for teams and individuals who achieve excellent customer relations* Use customer feedback more in effect (EDCSMs)- find out what customers want/expe ct then exceed this* Give staff more indebtedness and authority to deal with complaints. Allow then to be flexible when it comes to procedural rules. Stop quoting BT policy.* Allow a measure of redress such as goodwill payments and compensation paymentsIn implementing the above and re-training staff, BT will retain greater numbers of customers. Existing customers (especially those we have information about) are an ideal group to market new products to as well gain information from about how to improve on the products and services BT has.