Customer Service: not just for customers

Written by Cori Burns, Marketing Director for the WT Enterprise Center. For more information about the WT Enterprise Center visit www.IncubationWorks.com.

When you are growing a business, the critical and key element for that growth always comes back to people. The people on your team and the culture you develop can make or break your growth. The people determine the rate of growth and to what level. So many owners and managers think that a product or service can sell itself. But even if it can virtually sell itself, a product can’t support all that it takes to run a business. We are in the process of hiring a key member of our team. One of the most critical wheels that keeps our machine running is our client service coordinator. Without this person to support our coaches, to support our stakeholders and to ultimately make it easy for people to do business with us, incubation would not work. This process brought up a good question today and that is the question “What does Customer Service mean to you?”

Now that seems like a simple question, especially for a customer service position. But I was really amazed at the perspectives and meanings that the term customer service has for different people. When discussed among our team members, the answers were as diverse as those given by the people wanting to join our team.

If you lead a business or own a business, ask your customers, ask your team, and ask your colleagues what customer service really means to them. To grow a business, you have to serve people inside your organization and outside of your organization. What does your understanding of customer service mean in the context of your business?  I don’t think I have come up with a new magic concept. What I was reminded of is a need to consistently recheck how we define customer service, how we communicate within our team and support what we have defined our customer service to be. Most importantly, we have to check how we educate our community of entrepreneurs, service providers, and future team members what customer service means to us and our clients. What does customer service mean to you?

Categories: Business Insight In the Know