Why Quality Customer Service Is In Serious Decline

In today’s lean environment, how can companies improve customer service?originally appeared in Know almost: A place to gain and share knowledge, enabling people to learn from others and better understand the world.

Reply By Charlene Walters, PhD, Business & Branding Instructor, Corporate Training, About Know almost:

Many service experiences today leave something to be desired. This is mainly due to the sharp decline in the soft skills of employees over the past few years. These skills include professionalism, courtesy, friendliness, attention to detail, and more. I attribute this decline to two main reasons:

1. Human interaction has decreased significantly during the pandemic
2. staff shortage

Unfortunately, the employees who stayed at the company were overworked and their attitude towards work went downhill as a result. So how can employers turn this around?

1. Train employees in soft skills and provide incentives for quality service. If implemented, your customers will have a better experience and so will your employees.
2. Finding Soft Skills in the Hiring ProcessYou can do this in a number of ways, such as asking probing questions when interviewing potential candidates and using role-playing activities and scenarios.
3. Put scheduling activities front and center. If your employees are overworked, their soft skills will naturally decline. They will become grumpy and resentful, and their interactions with customers will not be positive. Make sure to address scheduling issues ahead of time to prevent this from happening. It should be one of your main areas of attention.
4. It will take a while to reverse this downward trend, but we must start now. We don’t want our soft skill levels to drop further. That’s why it’s crucial to focus on correcting the situation as soon as possible.

this problem originally appeared in Know almost – A place to acquire and share knowledge, enabling people to learn from others and better understand the world.