Omatic Brown Bag Lunch Series – The Importance of Excellent Customer Service

Customer service was the topic of the month during the latest installment of our Brown Bag lunch series. Part of the new employee training at Omatic includes a discussion about how important customer service is to our reputation. With our “go-above-and-beyond-to-see-who-can-get-the-most-holiday-cards” approach to customer service, our clients rave about us, and we’ve given them a named status of “Omatic Fanatics.” They want to see Omatic succeed and grow because we want the same success for them.

Sharifa Owens from our Support Team presented “Customer Service Best Practices.” Sharifa brings vast experience from her career roles in customer service and client support. Our own past customer service experiences, the ones that were either REALLY good or REALLY BAD, are the ones that we laughed and commiserated about. Those stories made for a great discussion about why people expect GREAT customer service when they are paying for it, and likewise, why others go out of their way to share negative experiences on social media or public websites.

As Sharifa explained, the premise is simple: regardless of what we call it (technical support, client advocacy, customer support), we must always strive to be helpful, respectful, and proactive to client needs. Some of the ways we monitor this at Omatic is through our quick support response time, wellness and follow-up calls, Forum responses, and our UserVoice sites.

Sharifa reminded us of our keys for providing the best customer service:

O – Open conversations with a pleasant greeting
M – Make yourself available to listen to customer concerns completely
A – Answer questions as completely as possible
T – Talk about other solutions that we offer that may expedite the client’s process or improve their current process
I – Insist that the client feel comfortable reaching out with any questions or concerns in the future
C – Close the conversation with a clear action plan, follow through, and follow up!

Others shared ideas for their “above and beyond” approach like hand-written thank you notes, an email to say thank you, or a simple phone call to tell a client that we appreciate them. Sharifa also reminded us that customer service isn’t just for “paying clients”, but we also have internal customers (our co-workers), and we must treat our fellow Omatic teammates with the same respect we give our clients. Our corporate culture is the result of working together as a team when assessing the needs of our clients. It’s also about sharing in the frustrations that clients encounter and trying to build workarounds with our technology. Our goal is to let clients get back to what they need to be doing, which is not banging their heads against the wall fighting a database but rather advocating for their cause.

What have your best and worst customer service experiences looked like? Any suggestions for how we can continue to improve?