Integrity and Truth for Superior Customer Relations 

It's hard to imagine your company not living up to its promises. It's difficult to accept criticism from your customers. And it's demeaning to make excuses when there should be none. However, these are the very issues that a CLEC's customer care organization faces and is asked to perform every day. 

A CLEC's customer care organization faces the screams and torrents of customers who don't care that you offer the best price or the fastest service. These customers only care that they get the service that they ordered, the service works, and they are billed properly. This is a simple request, but if not fulfilled, often results in lost customers. It can also lead to employee turnover. 

Customer Care is not a difficult role if the entire organization understands that every department supports the customer. This is one reason Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become the rage in telecom. Managing a customer's expectation and providing a positive experience throughout the customer life cycle, and utilizing the new technologies to achieve this is the essence of CRM.

Before CRM can become a reality, a company must first develop a strategy that permeates the entire organization. Service is not a single department's concern. Every segment of a company has to provide premier service to its customers. 

How to begin…..
One, recognize why customers are dissatisfied. The majority of issues are service and billing related. The simple fact that the requested service is not installed when promised, not installed at all, or installed improperly, and billed improperly can cause heartache.

Two, manage expectations at the customer level. 

Managing expectations begins at the sales level. The sales force must understand the install intervals for the products on a daily basis. It is not enough to provide a monthly average. An average means that there are shorter or longer timeframes. If the shorter timeframe occurs, the customer is pleased. On the other hand, the longer it takes, the higher the frustration level on the part of the customer and CLEC. 

Incessant communications are required between departments within a company. Sales is a customer of provisioning, and provisioning is a customer of the network engineering organization. If human resources aren't available to perform the necessary tasks. If a supplier delays delivery of services. If network capacity is low. These impacts to expectations must be appropriately expressed to each customer. 

No one likes to promise delivery of an item and not have it happen. But what is worse, is not informing your customer that there is a problem, or burying your head in the sand and hope he doesn't notice. The old adage "the truth will make you strong" is extremely important in setting expectations. We all would rather be told the truth and be disappointed, than not be told anything or lied to. Disappointment can be understood, but lack of integrity cannot.

Customers and your departmental cohorts need to be treated in the same fashion. Departments who hide the truth or blur it to enhance departmental performance affect the entire company. This is a simple truth that is often not realized. Integrity in performance and capabilities are the strengths of strong companies. Also, leaders of organizations that instill integrity have lower service issues and high profit margins as their external and internal customers are mostly satisfied.

Departments are not islands, they are part of a framework of interconnecting components which when placed in the proper sequence and working together, can bridge any gaps to the user of a company's service. The key is setting expectations, sharing results and working together to improve service delivery and quality. 

Jim Marsh is a senior consultant for The Management Network Group, a telecom consulting organization.  Jim has worked in telecom for 15 years and is an expert in revenue assurance, risk management and fraud. Jim speaks and writes on improving operational systems and functions to improve bottom lines.