{"id":32190,"date":"2020-08-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hyken.com\/how-to-avoid-roadblocks-to-great-customer-service\/"},"modified":"2024-01-17T12:03:31","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T12:03:31","slug":"how-to-avoid-roadblocks-to-great-customer-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hyken.com\/customer-service-strategies\/how-to-avoid-roadblocks-to-great-customer-service\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Avoid Roadblocks to Great Customer Service"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Company<\/a>\r\n\r\nWhat gets in the way of creating a great customer service experience for you and\/or your organization?\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIs it a process that is clunky, inconvenient and difficult for the customer? Is it people who aren\u2019t properly trained or don\u2019t have the right people skills? It\u2019s easy to ask yourself these questions and self-diagnose your organization, but have you ever asked your people?\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s exactly what my friend and client, Diane Kniowski, did. Diane is president and regional general manager at Univision. As she moved into this role, she realized the opportunities that would come from providing a better customer experience. The question she asked her team was simple:\r\n

If I can remove one roadblock that gets in the way of you doing your best work, what would it be?<\/h3>\r\nWhile this question was general, it focused on what was getting in the way of success<\/a> for both the employees and their customers. Her team came back with their answers and consolidated them into 26 areas of opportunity. To date, 25 of those original 26 areas have been eliminated. I say \u201coriginal 26\u201d because as some of these \u201croadblocks\u201d were eliminated, new ones were discovered. This exercise, as simple as it sounds, was her way of creating a process improvement initiative that has been wildly successful.\r\n\r\nThis is similar to an exercise that we do in our customer service workshops. We ask participants to identify the problems and complaints they hear most from both internal and external customers. Then, we add one extra question: \u201cHow often does this happen?\u201d We list them all, vote on the top three, and then have a team discussion on how to eliminate or mitigate these problems and complaints.\r\n\r\nHere is something interesting related to the \u201chow often\u201d question in our workshops. When someone says, \u201cIt happens all the time,\u201d I ask, \u201cWhy?\u201d Why hasn\u2019t anyone done anything to at least reduce it from happening \u201call the time\u201d? This is just common sense. Unfortunately, when you\u2019re in the middle of your work, you don\u2019t or can\u2019t always take the time to step back and analyze certain situations.\r\n\r\nWhat responses you get from Diane\u2019s question or our workshop exercise will vary. Some answers will be major \u201caha!\u201d opportunities, while others will seem trivial and unimportant. All must be considered, and nobody\u2019s issue should be casually dismissed without a good reason as to why it won\u2019t be pursued.\r\n

So, what are you waiting for?<\/h3>\r\nSit down with your team and find your roadblocks to more success. Once these roadblocks and problems start to get eliminated, you\u2019ll be amazed at how other issues start to resolve themselves. This translates into a better experience for both employees and your customers.\r\n\r\n