Set goals for dealing with your clients

You've probably set goals for what you want to achieve in your own life and for your business, but have you set targets for how you deal with your clients?

We all understand there are commitments made at every stage of a client life-cycle from initial enquiry, to order fulfilment, and on through long term after-care - have you set targets for those? 

Maybe you should, and in some businesses you have to, or you won't be able to sell your products or services.

So how about defining your service levels and setting up Service Level Agreements with your clients that you can both work to, to your mutual benefit.

Service levels

Why can't my service level be 100%? 

In practice this is unrealistic for whole variety of reasons: human nature, equipment failure, adverse weather, travel delays etc, and your true service level will be less than that. 

For example, let's say your business is to supply staff - cleaners, maintenance staff, nurses, guards etc. 

Your records show that in about 1 in 20 cases someone calls in sick or is otherwise delayed, and it takes you at most an hour to find a replacement.

Your service level is then 95% on-time and 100% within an hour.

If you explain that to your clients, in most cases they will accept it as realistic - you have been honest with them and your promise is based on history, not fiction: you have established a level of trust with your client.

 

Of course, those with good business reasons for needing a quicker solution can be dealt with individually, and you can establish acceptable service levels for them also.

What about your business?

So what is it about the way you deal with your clients that could make them turn to another supplier? Please think about it - these are the areas where you should set about defining your service levels!

For example, how long does it take to:

• Answer a telephone enquiry that goes to voice-mail or an answering service;
• Provide a quotation for a customized product or service;
• Be on-site to deal with an IT issue or a water leak;
• Provide a repair or replacement under warranty, or even out of warranty; or
• Respond to a customer complaint (we'll deal with complaints in our next blog post)?

No doubt you'll have a short list of time-critical activities that you could translate into service levels. 

Service Level Agreements

Having set their service levels, it is becoming increasingly common practice for companies to write them up into Service Level Agreement or SLAs that form part of their contractual agreements with their clients. 

And some have even published their SLAs on-line. 

If you think you should go down this path and you want to find out more, do a web search and see what comes up - there are plenty of good examples.

Continual Improvement

There is a hidden benefit to you, the supplier, too. If you have defined a set of targets you can set about measuring your performance against them - something you really can't do if all you have is woolly intentions.

And that will allow you to introduce a culture of continual improvement - regularly reviewing performance and making changes to drive up client satisfaction levels.

It is essential also for ISO9001 and accreditation in certain industries.

A high performing business, achieving and driving up its service levels, and as a consequence with great client satisfaction - wouldn't that be nice, eh?