The Pillars and Pitfalls
The Pillars and Pitfalls of Extraordinary Customer Service
At Bovie Printing and Fabrication, we understand that superior customer service is the foundation of nearly every successful business. This shouldn’t come as a surprise - a simple internet search will surface blogs, whitepapers, and consultant articles with tips for customer service success. Some of the most common strategies include:
Personalizing interactions with the customer
- Treating customers as valuable assets
- Promoting and celebrating your customers
- Acting on customer feedback
- Removing obstacles to make it easier for the customer to work with your company
While these tips should be true for any company, at Bovie we strive to take our customer service to the next level.
Bovie’s Customer Service Pillars
Bovie Printing and Fabrication serves the needs of world class manufacturers in sectors as diverse as medical devices, pumps, electronic measure tools, industrial cooktops, and plasma torch cutters. While the customer service needs of these sectors can vary, we built our business on customer service pillars that support the needs of highly technical companies. Bovie strives to:
- Understand our customer better than any other supplier does
- Aligning our long-term strategies with those of our customers.
- Establishing customer centric policies and procedures.
- Acquiring responsive software and IT systems.
- Do all we can to earn trust and act with integrity
- Structure our policies, procedures, and systems to meet our customers’ unique needs
- Create the strongest customer service structure by:
- Aligning our long-term strategies with those of our customers.
- Establishing customer centric policies and procedures.
- Acquiring responsive software and IT systems.
- Execute this customer service structure without failure by:
- Periodically reviewing and revising the structure
- Hiring and training the right employees
- Implementing both qualitative and quantitative KPIs
- Manage customer expectations
Ultimately, we seek to find the mix of production performance and responsive customer service that meets or exceeds our customer's expectations.
Customer Service Pitfalls to Avoid
Just as we have customer service pillars that we strive to uphold, there are also common customer service mistakes that we actively aim to avoid. These range from shooting down a customer request without thinking it through first, to assuming that the customer is always right, to using unprofessional language when responding to a customer. While these might seem like common sense mistakes to avoid, we also teach our team about the uncommon pitfalls of customer service, which stem from taking the right customer service action but at the wrong time. Some of the uncommon pitfalls that we warn our team about include:
- Responding to the customer so rapidly that you did not understand their true issues
- Setting nearly impossible standards of performance and failing to meet them
- Emphasizing speed and convenience by sacrificing attention to detail
- Accepting customer thoughts, demands, and opinion even when you know doing so will produce an inferior product
- Valuing the customer so much that you undervalue your company’s contributions, potentially threatening the company’s ability to stay in business
How to Avoid Customer Service Pitfalls
A quote that the Bovie team uses when discussing how to achieve exceptional customer service is, “If you don’t drive fast enough to risk spinning out of control on the corners, you are not driving fast enough to win.” Sometimes, achieving exceptional customer service requires risking the dangers of a pitfall in order to meet the expectations that our best customers demand from us. Over the years, we have learned when it is appropriate to challenge ourselves and risk a pitfall in order to delight a customer. Providing exceptional customer services is a journey, not a destination.
Author: Gary Shirk - President, CEO and Owner