Be a Customer Advocate

Being an advocate for your customers and having them know this is a powerful tool to ensure customer satisfaction. Don't stand behind bureaucracy, fight for change to make sure you can exceed customers' expectations.

No more bureaucracy. It can be easy to stand behind the politics of the office when talking to customers and give excuses around why a problem was not solved. However the feeling this will give to the customer as though the company is not dedicated to them as a paying customer.

Declare ownership. When talking to the customer, declare your ownership of the issue. Say you are personally accountable for getting this fixed, and you will be in communication with them on a regular basis until it is done. Follow up on the status of the issue internally. See what you can do to help out and solve this issue yourself if possible.

Everyone is accountable. Whether or not it is your job, if someone comes to you with a problem, ensure they get the answer they need to move forward and keep solving the issue. The answer may be: "I don't know, but let me reach out to someone and see if I can get them to help you with this". This is a great response and lets them know you are not a dead end in their quest to solve this problem.

Internal and External. Regardless of whether the customer you are talking to is a paying external customer or an internal customer or co worker, you should treat them the same.

Following these guidelines should instill confidence in your customers that you are on their side and wanting to make their experience with your company a better one. Its ok to have challenges to getting customer problems solved. As long as the customer knows you are being proactive towards a solution they should remain happy.