The Customer Service department in many companies are believed by many to be the source of customer service. I disagree, because every employee in a company can offer customer service to their customers, not just a select few.
Customer Service is in all of us. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do; we all serve customers in some degree or fashion. Let’s take a few typical roles in a business and see how they serve customers:
- CEO/President/VPs
- The upper echelon of a company usually yields the most power and influence over a company. Because of this, they are essential to the focus on initiatives.
- Directly serves customers directly by setting expectations and driving goals to subordinates.
- Indirectly serves customers by managing staff effectively.
- IT Administrators
- IT Staff usually are summoned by employees for software updates, installations or those infamous “Uh-oh” moments.
- Directly serves customers by ensuring systems are online, accessible and operational.
- Indirectly serves customers by supporting the employees in the company by making sure their computers are healthy and documents can be accessed, resulting in increased and sustained productivity.
- Software Developer
- Software developers are crucial for quality customer service by producing quality software that runs as designed. While, they may live in code all day, customers certainly appreciate a quality, working piece of software.
- Directly serves customers by producing quality code that runs fast in a timely manner.
- Indirectly serves customers by challenging the status-quo in terms of trying new methods and techniques to write better code.
These are just a few examples; but my point is, customer service functions thrive within us all. It’s not just a department it’s a skill. It’s important to occasionally step back and really question what you do for a company and see how every decision, action and task impacts customers.
