Customer Service is perfectly positioned at the intersection of the Customer and your Company. You’re helpful, you’re trusted and you know your customers better than anyone. Yet, customer service is often viewed as a cost-center to be rationalized and minimized. We all know customer service is not yet living up to its potential. The challenge is how to elevate customer service. Let’s start with how you present your customer service strategy to your executive team.
We created this customer service strategy template to give you a leg-up on recasting how the company views your customer service team. This is a beautiful template you can download, customize and present to your executive team. When it comes to strategy, presentation really matters.
Here are 3 example slides from the 11-slide strategy template, along with a brief discussion of each:
1. Customer Service Redefined
If you were to present only one slide laying out your customer service strategy, this would be it. What are the 3-4 essential aspects of your strategy? Don’t clutter the slide with extra words. You want your audience listening to you, not reading your slides. And make sure each element is unexpected. For example, “Strategic Support” is a term your audience likely has not heard before and will want to know more about. “ROI” they’ve heard before, but likely not from the customer service team. It’s all about grabbing their attention at the beginning. And presenting your strategy without fluff. Boom – here’s my strategy.
2. Customer Service as a Growth Driver
In the previous slide, you presented the essential elements of your Strategy. Now, give them a single slide on each providing more information. Customer service metrics are always great. In this example, you’re showing customer service will elevate from a cost center to a generator of revenue. Your CEO is thinking “What?!”. Yes, in fact, by the end of 2018 you’re going to generate 15% of the net new Sales Pipeline. Bold statements like this are key to help you elevate customer service. Of course, you’ll need investment to make this a reality. That request comes later!
3. Customer Service ROI
To close the deal with your executive team you’ll need to boil your strategy down to brass tacks. How much of an investment do you need, and how much will you return to the business (and when)? Depending on your company culture (or if your CEO is very impatient), you may want to present this slide at the beginning. Again, keep it clean and simple.
When presenting your customer service strategy there is always tension between presenting too much and too little information. Too much and you may run out of time, or your CEO’s eyes glaze over. Too little and the team leaves the meeting unconvinced. Truth is, you probably won’t emerge from this meeting with a clear answer. It often helps to position your strategy as a 2-part discussion. This is the high-level strategy, and based on how the discussion goes you will return to drill-in to key areas.
