Retaining Customers Essay

BT is one of the largest communication theory companies in the world. One of the divine run they project is residential or personal communications solutions. Even though they now stir competition from any(prenominal) other companies offering consumers substitutes for their service, they still hold the largest market sh ar of providing residential guests with call in farm animals. For BT to maintain this market sh be, they must concord the clients they have. I go forth be recommending how they can retain their customer theme as well as winning new customers. I leave behind be looking at several models and theories in stray to do this.* Making Customers into Champions* The case of the sound off customer* The tip of the Iceberg ModelFrom BT a customer receives a core service. Telephony. The customer expects the telephone in their home to be working when they pick it up. They are non going to be wowed by the service if it is respectable working. However, when the custome r makes contact with BT to enquire, change or add close tothing they will use this opportunity to melodic phrase a science of BTs Customer Service. Most people who move to a different telephone provider do so because they get the picture indifference in the people they do business with at their current company.Customer feedback dissevers BT that one of the biggest drivers of dissatisfaction is the difficulty in registering their electric charge with BT. A large part of this dissatisfaction stems from a lack of promised callbacks 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 accredited a promised call back has been increasing. OFTEL have given BT a very clear reference that they expect this situation to be addressed and therefore it is paramount that the following recommendations are implemented immediately.* Own, Decide, Do Training to be rolle d 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 intimately what to do with it and follow any promised action up with a call to the customer to let them hump what happened.* Keeping the customer informed With some complaints resolution whitethorn 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 intelligence (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 dictate to measure its success. Through BTs sophisticated SMART datatbase, either contact with the customer is logged with the id of the advisor who took the call. This way trends can be spotted as well as training areasT he barriers for the customer to successfully register their complaint are as follows* The BT shunt BT is a considerable business with over 20 large call centres taking in the freephone 150 (customer service) calls. It is very flourishing for complaints to get lost in the system.* The call steering system. There are many different rime 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 thinkable.* Poor training and coaching target establish 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 being a nuisance. BA challenged this when they introduced the Ma king Customers into Champions Model.This model can be straightway applied to BT, who is, itself, striving to provide 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 heady skilfully and well, research suggests that this could actually enhance the customers perception of BT. So, in short, a customer complaint can turn in to a glowing report for BT. Further more(prenominal), if we make BTs customers in to champions, BT can learn from the mistakes they have made that might have caused complaints in order that they do not occur again.* A dissatisfied custome r will tell between 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 bring that BT should al evincey 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 tested to the full. It may be tempting for some employees working for such a huge cash cow as BT to believe that BT can move over 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 chemical group and will just quietly take their custom elsewhere and thus collision significantly on BTs profit margins. The article points out that whilst it would be easy for us to read Mr Shelt ons contacts with the company as neurotic, in actual fact Mr Shelton has responded very emotionally to the way he feels his complaint has been propagatet with. Customers should be allowed to vent their feelings, feel listened to and valued before their problem is resolved. They are experiencing feelings of power littleness and this will be compounded if they feel that an advisor is not listening to them. Paraphrasing can be a efficacious 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 clear 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 custom ers were dissatisfied with BTs service. Those 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 control board over the next 12 months in order to retain customers.* A review of the training do by all training should be underpinned with updated balance scorecard and appropriate coaching given by line managers* Quality must come before quantity. If all customers were dealt with the first time they called, there would be less calls* Approach customer complaints as a chance to dazzle and delight customers and enhance a customers perception of BT through a training programme* Work together with different departments and not as adversaries. elicit teamwork* Introduce an incentive scheme for teams and individuals who achieve excellent customer relations* Use customer feedback mo re effectively (EDCSMs)- find out what customers want/expect then exceed this* Give staff more responsibility and authority to deal with complaints. Allow then to be flexible when it comes to procedural rules. Stop quoting BT indemnity.* 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.