PACE Yourself: A Strategy for Best-in-Class Customer Service

A while back the Aberdeen Group published some strategies for best-in-class performance for customer service using the acronym PACE—Pressures, Actions, Capabilities, Enablers.  With PACE, your company can be the kid in the front row with all the gold stars on his achievement chart while keeping costs down.

P is for Pressures.
Particularly pressures that extend from customer demand and expectations.  Those pressures create the bar that each company must jump in order to keep their customer base high.  Some of those demands and expectations are first-call resolution, online customer service options, accessible information, user-friendly websites, etc.  The list goes on forever and yet companies are still expected to get each of them right on the first shot.

A is for Actions.
A company needs to be busy making their customer service practices better. We as business owners need to be involved with our customers, getting feedback and ideas. We may think that we are doing a spectacular job, but there is always a customer somewhere that can tell us what can be done better. Other actions that need to be happening are maintaining accuracy and consistency across all information channels and increasing access to information.

C is for Capabilities.
But what kind of capabilities? While not exactly superhero powers, to be Best-in-Class, a business needs to be capable of gathering information, storing it, and retrieving it in real-time, speeding up first-call resolution. However, a company also needs to offer capabilities to its customers just as much as to those in-house, abilities like searchable online databases.

E is for Enablers.
To enable a customer is to liberate them.  Enablers are tools offered to a customer that allow them to do what they need to do when they need to do it.  Web-based self-service portals and knowledgebases are two of the most common enablers available.  Others can be found by searching online for customer service management tools

Just remember to PACE yourself and your company will get those five stars.

 

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