5 Ways Service Culture Drives Profit - Copy

Promoting a healthy service culture is far more important than many business owners, executives and managers may realize.

Organizational problems are often approached from a strategic standpoint while overlooking the essential cultural changes that are important to customers.

Whether a company is aware of it, they have a service culture that customers value very highly.

"70% of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated." – McKinsey

This cultural mindset is a common set of principles, standards, infrastructure and processes that make service and customer satisfaction the utmost priority within an organization.

These five methods provide ways to build a strong service culture that will enhance customer relationships and lead to higher business profits.

Signify the Importance of Sales
Selling a company’s services is a crucial component to so many successful businesses. In fact, a recent study in the Journal of Marketing highlighted that companies that produce more than 30 percent of revenue from service have greater overall worth than the competition.

To take advantage of this, service technicians should use their status as reliable advisors and sell when they see an opportunity. Hire technicians that can not only facilitate repairs, but also make customers aware of when it’s time to replace/upgrade a product or extend a service contract. This method is candid, proactive and will ensure dependable continuous service for customers.

"The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%. The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%." – Marketing Metrics

Constructing a Collaborative Atmosphere
Technicians go out each day to resolve problems that customers encounter. Frequently, these matters are multifaceted and the technician only has access to a limited amount of resources. With the rise of socially innovative communication, technicians no longer have to solve everything on their own. Instead, they can easily access the knowledge of the right person within the company. Along with this, videos and pictures can be made readily available to troubleshoot and be shown to someone that is hours away from their location simply through a mobile device.

Encouraging Communication
Measuring the success of an organization goes far beyond the communications between a technician and customer. That’s why it’s important to provide transparent information about the organizations’ performance and accomplishments to technicians so they are more informed. With this information, managers are able to be far more proactive and executives can make critical business decisions in real-time rather than waiting for reports.

Incentive-Based Motivation
Increasing revenue requires service technicians to go above and beyond the call of duty. That’s a service that should be rewarded. Providing technicians with incentives to achieve specific goals and publicly acknowledge them goes a long way in promoting positive work ethic.

Feedback from Technicians
Field technicians are on the frontlines. These employees have a plethora of valuable customer and product information that they gather on a daily basis. From there, companies can evaluate problematic areas with their products and identify ways to make servicing them easier. Along with this, the human resources department can help hire the right technicians, the marketing department can study customers, and the sales department can bring in new prospects.

Dennis P. Jaconi is a part of Teletrac's vibrant Marketing team and contributes insight into the ever changing world of m2m technology. He loves to speak directly with customers to learn how fleets are leveraging GPS software for improved business efficiency while reducing carbon emissions. To read these customer stories visit Teletrac's Customer Reviews Archive.