HOW TO PROACTIVELY MANAGE CUSTOMER REQUESTS
“Our largest event of the year is today,” you tell your staff.
Your customer-to-staff ratio is 15:1.
In no time, the incident calls immediately start coming into the operations center.
You’re receiving eight to 10 customer requests between each incident call.
Suite customers have multiple food and beverage requests – one after another.
Wheelchair requests are coming in with no end in sight.
Your team is challenged with mitigating the high frequency of incidents occurring.
But, your staff is also struggling to handle the customer requests coming in through the radio.
The calls are so backed up people are complaining.
Some of your customers have left in anger and frustration.
There’s no differentiation between communication for incidents or customer requests.
Incident calls are taking priority, and so wheelchairs aren’t making it to your customers.
VIPs aren’t receiving their food or drink, and housekeeping is running behind, so there are unattended wet spills looming.
Routing all calls through one individual is creating chaos.
Your operation is breaking down when it should be moving proactively.
This shortfall leaves you feeling helpless.
What do you do?
How do you come back from this?
Great questions.
We’re going to show you.
MAXIMUM PERFORMANCE RESULTS IN FIRST-CLASS SERVICE
Are you and your staff responding to various incidents while simultaneously trying to maintain your secondary operations?
- Assault
- Theft
- Anaphylactic shock
- Wet spill
Properties like yours require staff to handle incidents and your team to answer the many customer requests ranging from wheelchair to food service requests.
Efficiently responding to them can become problematic, especially when they’re coming in through radio traffic, in person, or customers are calling them into the operations center directly.
Request calls get mixed in with high-priority incidents!
This drawback results in many overlooked requests.
Sound familiar?
Your customers then perceive a low customer service standard.
What happens then?
You got it. They don’t come back!
- Requests are overlooked
- Needs aren’t being met
They’re sent but never dispatched to appropriate teams.
It’s your job to deliver a memorable, safe experience for your customers.
But, are you?
The experience you deliver will either motivate them to return or never come back.
You need to do everything to ensure the experience you deliver motivates your customers to return.
We know that’s a high priority goal for professionals like you.
We have great news:
Boosting your operation with increased staff efficiency will lead to a better experience for the people you’re servicing. It can be accomplished using request tracking software.
AVOID SHORTFALLS BY USING REQUEST TRACKING SOFTWARE
Request tracking software exists to help you eliminate the problem of overlooked customer requests.
Managers need a user-friendly process to ensure their staff can dispatch and respond to customer needs efficiently.
It’s vital to make customer requests a priority while not diminishing your incident management.
Incidents and requests are found in all industries and are many times managed in a similar way.
Solution providers have modeled a system you can easily use to separate the two processes.
Regardless of your operation, you can attend to either incident or request calls as any proactive operation would.
You can organize all aspects of your customer services operation, and you can do all this for your specific needs.
Proactive software solutions allow a customer request to be submitted in three ways:
- Option 1: The most efficient way to enter request details is via a short form that can be pushed into a queue within seconds. Your staff can then return to the details later and complete additional information if necessary. Your employees effortlessly input the required data, reducing the time it takes to deliver.
- Option 2: Enter comprehensive customer service request information using an extended form option provided in the more advanced solutions you’ll find. When, what, where, who it’s assigned to, who is reporting, comments and notes and documents can be added to your long forms. This ability will provide you with historical records for future analysis.
- Option 3: Your staff uses their incident management mobile app to submit a customer request via their hand-held mobile device from anywhere on your property. This method works just like it would for an incident – but for a customer request.
PROACTIVE OPERATIONS EXCEED EXPECTATIONS
All the features of these software solutions collectively give you the functionality to be proactive on event day or even during the day-to-day operations on your property.
Inefficient processes and overlooking the needs of your customers can stay in the past.
Agree?
Cumbersome methods are out-of-date when you use these solutions.
Your problems with customer expectations are resolved.
Operational efficiency and customer satisfaction is the rewarding effect.
You can track and communicate requests using a separate solution rather than overwhelming your incident management system with non-incident related information.
This ability ensures your property’s requests are not overlooked.
- An excellent feature of these solutions is confirmation that a request was received, dispatched, and completed can be sent to requesting customers via text message, leading to a memorable experience.
- Request reminders can also be sent via text and email to your team so that they have record of when the request was needed and when it was performed.
An increase in customer satisfaction and efficient staff allocation is the return on investment you’ll see immediately!
Accountability and awareness are present.
Your staff is empowered with need-to-know information so the tasks they’re responsible for, get done.
From the start of the initial request to delivery of your customer’s needs, every team member is aware of the execution of tasks.
EXCEEDING EXPECTATION IS THE RESULT OF CONTINUED ANALYSIS
There’s no question; we’re advocates of analytics and measuring your operation for continuous improvement.
When choosing a system for your operation, make sure the reporting features allow you to generate comprehensive reports so you can review all critical statistics.
Analyzing these reports should be simple and give you the ability to see data on an array of charts.
Being strategic means taking advantage of your comprehensive reports for tracking, managing, and analysis.
- Accurately measure the performance of your operation
- Look at the inner workings of your procedures and performance to see what’s working and what needs to be refined
- Detect and identify issues with response times
Analytics is the tool for you being able to make better business decisions.
Employ Proactive Operations, and don’t stop improving your operation.
OVER TO YOU
After reading this article, you’ve probably realized how many customer requests are slipping through the cracks. You don’t know what you’re missing if you don’t know it exists.
Use request tracking software to manage customer requests proactively. This effort is how you exceed expectations for years to come.
Editor's note: This post was originally published in October 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and freshness.