9 Ways to Avoid Confusion from Within Your Organization

Strategies to Create Certainty and Ensure Customer Loyalty Remains Within the Business

Have you ever worked in an organization where the operating procedures were inconsistent and created confusion? Or have you conducted business with other companies, with which you were unsure what to expect from the services being offered? Will it be good today and awful the next day?

To some persons, this may be a call of uncertainty. For the pupose of this article, we will be using the words employees and internal customers interchangeably, as they both have the same reference in this context.

“treat your employees the way you want them to treat your customers”

Uncertainty within an organization may be experienced by both internal as well as external customers. As customer service providers, it is imperative that you reduce the following uncertainties within your businesses, in order to help retain customers as well as acquire new ones.

In his book: The Cult of the Customer, Shep Hyken speaks to a plethora of symptoms that customers usually experience from organizations operating at the level of uncertainty. Shep’s book alluded to the following symptoms below:

• Inconsistency or lack of internal processes
• Lack of communication
• Placing focus only on ‘happy’ or ‘satisfied’ customers
• Employees not having the feeling as though they are a part of a team
• Lack of information/explanation to issues or problems customers might be challenged with
• There is a lack of motivation and an attitude of indifference from within the organization
• The organization is ‘operations-focused’ instead of ‘customer-focused’
• Superiors operate authoritatively causing employees to feel intimidated
• Lack of improvements over a period of time

To reduce this kind of behaviour-related uncertainty, treat your customers well in the steps leading up to, during, and after the purchase; while treating your employees the way you want them to treat your customers. Another great way to overcome uncertainty is by providing your potential customers with testimonials, and references from past clients.

Sometimes, it is dependent on how we treat our internal and external customers that determine whether or not they become our loyal advocates.

Consider this fact:

If you are disloyal to your customers, your customers will also be disloyal towards your brand and your company.

1. Have effective communication channels set up for your internal customers and external customers
2. Provide a framework that endorses the organization’s purpose, priorities, and principles and model the behaviour you want the employee to display towards the customer
3. Let your employees and customers know how much you value them, by being ‘customer-focused’ rather than ‘operations-focused’
4. Be consistent in your delivery. How you treat and communicate with customers sends a message about your organization and what it stands for
5. Empower your employees to be able to respond autonomously to customer complaints
6. Make yourself available and easily relatable to your customers
7. Be proactive and Communicate honestly and openly about any new developments the organization is being faced with
8. Ensure that employees are properly trained and equipped with the required soft-skills when dealing with customers
9. Personalize every employee and customer interaction

** BONUS**

10. Be reliable and dependable

11. Create a ‘circle of safety’, by collaborating with employees opposed to intimidating them

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