Maintaining Client Service with Fewer Resources – Partly a Matter of Perception?

Even if your business is a goldmine, tough times and rising prices may present you with the challenge of maintaining client service with fewer resources. You examine your highest costs of doing business, and you find that labor and health care costs stand out as the biggest variable costs. At the same time, you see rising technology and supply costs. If you want to remain competitive, continually raising prices is not an option, but what can you do?

The easy knee-jerk answer is to reduce your labor force and have the people who remain take on more clients, maybe even at a reduced rate. That response is actually multiple strategies you might use to cut costs. If you use any of them, you need to prepare for the consequences in morale and perhaps, reduced service.



An alternative way to reduce labor costs is to find alternative way of delivering service. Some employees who take up space and use company resources can be managed offsite as they work from home. If new additions to the teleforce are part time working from home, you may save on benefit costs, as well as office space. Especially if you find yourself needing more workers than you have space for, offsite workers can be a real cost saver. The tradeoff may be investing in the proper technology, often a one time expense.



If you analyze the job your employees are called upon to do, you may determine that part of what they do is not essential to "good" client service. If you try to cut down on what customers are used to getting, you will find out some interesting things about your clients:



They want as much service as they can get. If you cut their perceived "service entitlement," that may make them mad. Assuming they stay with you, they may complain for a time before accepting reduced service as a norm.

If they have to pay for the service, they may consciously opt for less. Ask any company that offers levels of service - not everyone buys the premium package. Customers pump their own gas rather than pay for full serve, park in a lot two blocks away rather than valet park, and stick with the medium value meal rather than upsize to the large.

What seems to make customers happy with less service is choice. If they perceive they will receive adequate service in view of what they are paying, they will be less likely to complaint about "decreased service" because they do not see it.

Customer views of how good service is delivered have changed, alongwith their definition of what constitutes good service. Customers still want three basic things:a good product, ease of ordering, and a easy way to access the company if they have a question or problem. Customers may long for the old days of personalized service, but still perceive they are receiving good service as long as they get their business done and the process does not take too much time.



If you deliver a good, reliable product, customers will be flexible as to how they buy it, as long as it is easy to do so. The transition to online ordering is a good example of this, as web ordering has changed both brick-and-mortar retail and catalogue phone sales, since many people now prefer to order this way. Companies are measured by the speed and features of their website instead of the efficiency or politeness of their employees.



Before they buy or after the sale, customers want easy access to information or a solution to a problem. Some companies have implemented web solutions like FAQ sections, easy return forms, or complaint forms on the web to make it unnecessary for the customer to call. When customers do call in, they want to be served quickly, Some companies have implemented automated phone lines with Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or voice recognition services to eliminate extra employees and excessive transferring. Customers have adjusted to this as it may get them quicker service, but get annoyed at long menus, inadequate pickup of their choices, and inability to reach a person when needed.



Although companies must take steps to maintain client service with fewer resources, they must also skillfully teach customers to see that the definition of good service has changed a bit, and then meet and exceed the new expectations they have helped customers develop.