Outstanding Customer Service – A Call Out to Leadership

Think about it. How hard can it be to provide outstanding customer service to your customers? It isn’t hard at all…WHEN you make it a priority.

The foundation of good service begins with the Leadership of the company. Company leadership is responsible for ensuring the company culture is customer focused. If “good-enough” products or service is the philosophy of Leadership, the entire company will adopt a ‘good enough’ attitude that customers will see and deliver exceptional customer service.

Regardless of the type of customer service, outstanding customer service requires strong leadership to create a culture of customer-centricity, empower employees to make decisions, and continuously improve the customer experience.

Customer service experience refers to the overall interaction a customer has with a company when seeking assistance or information about a product or service. Some good customer service tips include listening actively, responding promptly and empathetically, offering personalized solutions, and following up to ensure satisfaction. Delivering great customer service involves providing fast, reliable, and friendly service that exceeds customer expectations. It can lead to increased customer loyalty and repeat business.

4 Types of Outstanding Customer Service

1. Reactive customer service: This type of service is provided in response to a customer inquiry or complaint. The goal is to resolve the issue as quickly and satisfactorily as possible.
2. Proactive customer service: This type of service involves anticipating and addressing customer needs before they become problems. It often involves personalized recommendations, product demonstrations, or regular check-ins.
3. Self-service customer service: This type of service allows customers to find solutions to their problems independently through online resources such as FAQs, knowledge bases, or forums.
4. Omnichannel customer service: This type of service provides consistent support across multiple channels, including phone, email, chat, social media, and in-person interactions.

Customer loyalty refers to the tendency of satisfied customers to continue doing business with a company over time. This can be achieved through excellent customer service, product quality, and value. Poor customer service can result in dissatisfied customers, negative reviews, and lost business. It is essential to address customer complaints promptly and offer meaningful solutions.

Customer service teams are groups of employees who specialize in providing customer support agent and assistance. They often work in call centers or online chat platforms. Satisfied customers are customers who are happy with the products or services they have received and feel that their needs have been met. Customer service examples include resolving a technical issue, answering a billing question, or providing product recommendations.

Loyal customers are customers who regularly use a company’s products or services and are less likely to switch to a competitor. They may also refer new customers to the company. Customer journey refers to the series of interactions a customer has with a company, from initial awareness to post-purchase support. It is important to understand the customer journey to identify areas for improvement and provide a seamless customer experience.

Quality of excellent customer service and quality of products makes for proud employees. Proud employees are enthusiastic. Proud and Enthusiastic employees lead to truly exceptional customer service. Give your employees a reason to be proud. Give your employees a reason to provide great customer service personalized and attentive service.

It really isn’t that hard, but it is up to you, the Leadership.

In Conclusion

Outstanding customer service is crucial for businesses to attract and retain customers. It is not just a task for customer service teams but requires strong leadership from the top to create a culture of customer-centricity, empower employees to make decisions, and continuously improve the customer feedback experience. Different types of customer service, including reactive, proactive, self-service, and omnichannel, can help businesses meet customers’ needs and expectations.

Outstanding customer service strategies is making your customers feel like you understand their needs and their issues. There is another way of letting your customers reach out to you that is faster and more structured than an email exchange and more productive than a phone call.

Online Chat is a nice way to personalize your online exchange and enhance the timeliness of your communications. Bang, bang, bang and I can have my question(s) answered and proceed with my order. That is how fast a live chat session can work.

The cost can be approximately $99 per month per concurrent user. But, the benefits may outweigh the costs for your business. Productivity is one of those benefits. For example a user can typically handle up to 3 chat sessions at a time which is much better than the 1:1 ratio of phone calls.

3 Key Criteria to consider for servicing customers with live chat:

1. Are your users or clients on your website? Your chat sessions would have to originate from your website for this solution to make sense.

2. What kind of inquiries you are receiving now? If the inquiries are quick how-to, when and where type questions you can probably benefit from an online chat service. If the inquiries are detailed how-to, trouble-shooting questions online chat will still work for you but up to 3 sessions at once may be a stretch.

3. Having an ‘operator’ available during ‘regular’ business hours is a base requirement to getting the most out of your online chat service. This option is not ideal for a one-person office with other responsibilities away from the computer.

The little secret and value behind these online chat services is that you can build a knowledge base of ‘prepared’ responses for the user to drop into the chat sessions.

3 Benefits:

1. The true speed of responsiveness

2. Diminished need to type and re-type the same answers

3. With prepared responses you can ensure consistent communication from your company to your customers.

Free online chat services with Yahoo, Gmail and AOL are wildly popular in business settings, especially technology companies. Why? Because, they enable quick and concise communications that allow the users to continue making progress with the task at hand. Yes, chat sessions really do enhance productivity.

Isn’t that what you want your customers, clients, and shoppers to do? Live chat. Is it for you?

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The First Step

A Needs Assessment is a systematic exploration of the way things are and the way they should be. These “things” are usually associated with organizational and/or individual performance.

WHY design and conduct a Needs Assessment? We need to consider the benefits of any Human Resource Development (HRD) intervention before we just go and do it:

• What learning will be accomplished?
• What changes in behavior and performance are expected?
• Will we get them?
• What are the expected economic costs and benefits of any projected solutions?

We are often in too much of a hurry. We implement a solution, sometimes but not always the correct intervention. But we plan, very carefully and cautiously, before making most other investments in process changes and in capital and operating expenditures. We need to do the same for Human Resource Development.

The largest expense for HRD programs, by far, is attributable to the time spent by the participants in training programs, career development, and/or organization development activities. In training, costs due to lost production and travel time can be as much as 90-95% of the total program costs. Direct and indirect costs for the delivery of training are about 6% of the total cost, and design and development count for only about 1-2% of the total. Realistically, it makes sense to invest in an assessment of needs to make sure we are making wise investments in training and other possible interventions.

Friday: 4 steps to conducting a Needs assessment.

Happy Training and comments, concerns and guests are welcome

Leigh

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For more resources about training, see the Training library.

– Looking for an expert in training and development or human performance technology?
– Contact me: Leigh Dudley – Linkedin – 248-349-2881
– Read my blog: Training and Development

Help Thyself. It is the ‘it’ strategy these days. It makes good business sense. Outstanding content can divert call and email volume. It can improve the Customer Experience. As technology has evolved so have self-help presentation options. Long, static user guides are quickly becoming passé as quick guides, indexed documents and how-to videos become ubiquitous.

Which Customer Self-Help Strategy is best for you?

First, think of self-help as just one of the cornerstones of your Customer Experience. Self-guided learning works great, but only for those customers/users who would rather find the answer instead of waiting for an email response or to make a call.

When you ‘walk’ from the outside-in through your Customer Experience, do you discover ways to teach your customers how to best use your product or service? Can you think of ways to encourage your users to better understand how your product or service can add value for them?

Self-Help options should be a natural extension of how a customer learns to use your product or service. If there are a lot of visual references required, then video is a solid option to include. If a quick reference guide of steps 1 through … makes sense, then don’t use a video. The user would have to write down the steps instead of having that quick guide in hand. Or better yet, pair the two together if that enhances understanding and ultimately utilization.

Comprehensive product manuals are somewhat of a necessary evil. It’s likely they are not fully used and they take a lot of time and resources to create and keep current; but, you can’t get away without having one. (Side note-have your new employees use the current manual to learn about your product/service as well as to identify what may be out of date.)

Does your self-help content include references to how your customers will use your product or service? User-based, topical presentations are the secret to user traction. To improve comprehension and utilization, present your information with when and why content.

I am a big fan of ‘bite-sized’ learning. If you have a complex service or product, then try to segment your Self-Service offerings to facilitate quick, incremental learning. Create short, topical content based on how the product or service will be used.

Create content based on the Who’s-on-First perspective: WHO should do WHAT, WHY and WHEN; and, don’t forget the HOW to ensure those who will try self-help, can find the answers.

Exceptional Self-Help strategies will divert inbound customer requests; but, they will not be effective as the only Customer Service strategy. Create your self-help content and presentation strategy as one of the pillars of your overall Customer Experience.

Amazon, Netflix, Go-To-Meeting are a few examples of outstanding self-help strategies. What are your favorites?

Usually I end my posts with a quote to provoke further exploration of these Customer-Centric concepts. Today I am starting with one because I believe your Customer Experience map should be considered your key strategy to elevate you above your competition. Onboarding is a critical element of this strategy.

“A strategy is, at its core, a guide to behavior. A good strategy drives actions that differentiate the company and produce financial success.” Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Authors of Make it Stick.

Getting customers is hard enough. Keeping them is the greatest challenge of all. A special Onboarding experience should be a key element of your overall Customer Experience strategy. Let’s talk specifically about how you welcome your new customers.

A special Onboarding experience takes advantage of Buyer’s euphoria. Making purchase decisions can be tough. There is a sense of relief when the decision is made. This is the time to seize the moment, as soon as the contract is signed or a new customer is registered. Shower your new relationships with love and attention. Reinforce to your new customer that they made the right decision to do business with your company.

Critical components of Onboarding:

Outreach: In general, your customers should feel appreciated. How do you currently say “Welcome, Thank-You-for-your-Business”? Email, cards in the mail or a phone message demonstrates how much you appreciate them.

Set Expectations: I also list this as a Customer Service Basic in a previous post. If your business entails some kind of implementation or project rollout, your welcome letter should include a general guideline of the process and timeline.

Introductions: Depending on your business, you should provide some key points of contact for your new customers. Ensure they have the 800# and the email address. Ensure the end users of your products/services know how to get in touch in the event of problems.

Getting Started: A quick start guide, product/service documentation and online training sessions are all modes of helping your new customers get started, while they are still excited about the new purchase.

Checking In: Do you have a process for ensuring you check-in with your new customers? Do you have a way to ensure your customers are using your new product or service? One of the top metrics I listed in an earlier post is Utilization. If there isn’t rampant use within the first 3 months your new relationship may be at risk.

Ask so they will tell: How are we doing? Finally, if you don’t ask you are not likely to know why this new relationship may be failing. A key element to your overall experience is that you keep asking.

Bringing on new customers and keeping them are your biggest challenges. Give your customers a reason to say “this is the start of a beautiful relationship.” Ultimately you are striving to build long term customer loyalty.

Share what is unique about your Onboarding process.

Who Owns the Customer Experience in your Organization?

Answer: Everyone Should.

Who drives the Customer Experience strategy?

Answer: The Leader who is responsible for providing customer service.

The executive team should be 100% supportive and enabling of the necessary collaboration to establish an effective Customer Experience strategy that is the best in Delivering Service Value.

The foundation for delivering outstanding service requires your touch teams to:

1. Know your Customer.
2. Understand how they use your products or services.
3. Ensure this information is shared with all of your customer touch teams.

Don’t have a CRM tool? No worries, the Sales team or customer service teams gather this information during the sales process from customer experience management. Good ol’ fashioned text documents or customer profile forms will work just fine. Don’t let the lack of fancy tools prevent you from this most critical step of understanding your customer feedback to get your customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Create a Customer Experience Map.

Build your strategy by understanding what is happening today. Start by mapping out all customer journey touch-points, customer feedback data, and by whom. Be sure to delineate the type of outreach: email, phone, and face-to-face. Depending on the size of your organization, this is likely to be a collaborative effort with your sales, marketing, service, and fulfillment customer support team to customer journeys. Don’t think you can effect real change without the participation of these other customer success team.

After you have your map of touch points by whom and by type, fill in the expected timeline. For example, if you send a Welcome letter then be sure you have designated the timeline of when this letter is sent. Is it with the first order? Is it as soon as the opportunity has been converted to a successful customer experience strategy with a signed contract?

Example: Welcome Letter -Email – Marketing- Upon Signing of Contract

If implementation and/or training are a part of your customer expectations rollout to get a customer satisfaction score, then be sure to include general touchpoints and timelines.

This map is the start of your Customer Experience strategy. Once you map what you have, then add what should be included. From there, drill down into each touch-point to specify what, whom, how, and when. Final Step: communicate, communicate, and communicate.

Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages. …Henry Ford

The ultimate goal for your business is to figure out how to create an exceptional experience and establish it as the standard.

Coming next…Customer Onboarding. What is your current process? What makes it exceptional?

Customer Service is just one piece of the entire Customer Experience. When was the last time you or someone in your organization became a ‘new’ customer of yours? The Customer Experience starts before the contract is signed and lasts throughout your relationship and with every department that customer may interface.

Like walking into your living room with a new set of discriminating eyes, I’ll bet you’d find something that just isn’t right. Similarly, by stepping through your customer experience with an outsider’s point of view you will find opportunities to improve the experience for your new customers’ experience.

All this talk about customer experience these days is not new at all. Mystery shoppers were created with this concept in mind. Here is a short list of companies who are known for creating an outstanding customer experience: Hilton Hotels, Apple, Nordstrom, Amazon.com, Zappos.com. These companies make their customers feel special regardless of whether it is a new transaction or an interface with a different department in the organization.

It’s all in the kool aid. The employee base at these companies know how important their customers are. It is part of the company culture….from the top down. Customer Experience is THE Differentiator for these leading and quite successful companies.

The ability—or inability—for a company to serve its customers in a way that is consistent with meeting or beating their expectations will prove to be the ultimate differentiator that separates the corporate winners from the losers in the near future. Joseph Jaffe

Mull over this quote and next time we’ll discuss strategies for creating a differentiating Customer Experience.

Let’s be clear: if you’re not measuring any part of your service delivery, you are missing a huge opportunity to improve, grow or even save your business during these scrutinizing, tight economic times.

The challenge with specifying key indicators is that not all businesses will use the top customer service metrics. For example, a retail or fulfillment organization will have decidedly different key performance indicators than a software-as-a-service company.

For the purposes of this discussion, I have highlighted relatively general and important customer service metrics and incorporated a few varying perspectives for different use cases.

Service Level

For call centers, support, and service desks, the first call resolution is the Holy Grail. For a shipping operation, product delivery, and project implementation, on-time performance is the measuring stick. In a high-transaction business, the first interaction with a customer experience will be a key determinant of whether customer satisfaction will return with the first contact resolution rate of the customer support team. Don’t underestimate the importance of timeliness and thoroughness.

Customer Retention

For SaaS businesses, Utilization is the best indicator of a customer’s dedication to your service. Use this metric to understand who is at risk at contract renewal time. Monitoring Repeat Business is going to help non-SaaS businesses understand how sticky their product or service is for their customer effort score base. You should know which customers are using or buying different parts of your business to see the net promoter score. These customers who buy throughout your offerings are perhaps your most important to track customer satisfaction to focus on for your retention strategies with the exceptional customer service you provide.

Response time

You’d be surprised how many customer satisfaction surveys come back with comments such as “your service is great, you got back to me right away….” “I was surprised with how quickly you responded to my inquiry and it made all the difference even if I didn’t get the answer I was hoping for…” In today’s world of electronic relationship management, response time to the customer service team is one of the only ways we can communicate our sense of urgency and concern for our customers with our product or service. What is your Response goal – within X hours? Set one and achieve it. You should know what your competition is doing and beat their goal.

Want to really blow away a customer and cement your relationship? Pick up the phone and give them a personal call.

Time with the Customer

Are your customer-facing employees incentivized to keep calls short or to move too quickly from customer to customer? If so, you are sending the wrong message and subsequently affecting the quality of the customer interaction. There is a definite happy medium between the overly chatty service provider and the thorough and efficient provider like the customer service representative or customer service teams. Set your benchmarks for call duration and general time with the customer in relation to the ultimate goal of first call resolution, NOT the other way around.

In other words, a completely satisfied customer with great customer service agents not requiring a follow-up call or visit is much preferred over a quick, unresolved interaction.

Churn 

Cancellations and returns are the equivalents of customer churn. If you don’t know how much business you are losing, you won’t be able to understand how much new business you will require to stay out of the red. As important as knowing how much, is understanding WHY you are losing customers. Take it to the next level and use follow-up surveys, phone calls, and personalized ‘how can we get you back’ emails. This survey information is real business insight for understanding your lost business.

By all means, this is not a comprehensive list of key performance indicators. To expand further we would need to focus on a particular business model to provide a more granular perspective. Start measuring and start making changes. Continue to evolve your key customer support metrics as your business evolves. Keep this process circular for continuous improvement.

Post these key performance indicators in your facility or on your intranet and regularly communicate them to your employee base to give everyone in your Company sensitivity to how you are performing for your most important asset: your Customers.

As always your comments are encouraged and appreciated. What are your key metrics?

The first question you should ask yourself…How do you measure customer satisfaction?

If you are measuring by the # of complaints you are or are not receiving, you are in trouble. Not everybody bothers to take the time to tell you about his/her horrible experience. If you are asking your customers if they are satisfied, you are telling them that their satisfaction matters.

There are many different ways to ask: post-purchase and post-support surveys, enclosures in the monthly invoice, follow-up phone calls, and quarterly or annual surveys. The right method depends on your business and your customer base in customer service skills. Try different ways. Just do it.

4 Tenets For Your Customer Service Mission

A few basic rules about customer service:

Honesty is the Best Policy. Integrity

Be honest and own up to your mistakes. Communicate what you plan to do to change or prevent the same mistake from happening again. Don’t be fooled into believing that a regular ‘mea culpa’ will get you off the hook. At some point, the plan to fix the problem must take effect because customer service is important always!

Break Glass in Case of Fire. Response Time

The best tact is to quickly get on the phone with the customer to explain your company’s mistake and accept their customer feedback. Don’t rely on email for this communication if it can be done quickly one on one. If you are communicating to a large customer base then email is certainly the fastest and most effective way to quickly notify your customers that you are aware of the problem. Frequent updates if there is a protracted issue and a brief overview of how you will prevent it from happening in the future will give your customers confidence that you are aware of the customer impact as the customer service manager with the customer support team.

Keeping it Real. Set a Realistic Expectations

Customers who have been promised something that isn’t delivered as promised are far more frustrated and disappointed than if they are notified at the outset they won’t have it sooner than later. In other words, under-promise and over-deliver is the best policy. This may take some arm wrestling with other departments who want to take a feature or product to market before it is ready. Set the expectations correctly internally as to what the fallout may be so everyone understands the impact on customer satisfaction and ultimately customer retention with the excellent service you provide.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Everyone in your company should love your customers. Without them, you have no company. This doesn’t mean you won’t have difficult customers who will push the limits and try everyone’s patience. But if you don’t have a company philosophy to respect and appreciate your customers for great customer service, the opposite tone will infect customer interactions from all departments specifically with the customer service professionals or the customer service managers. All departments, customer-facing or not, should care about customer satisfaction and good customer service.

From Gandhi, “We must become the change we want to see in the world.”

Use these 4 tenets as the foundation for your excellent customer service mission. What do you do to ensure your customers are treated as your most important asset with your exceptional service? When will you say why customer service important?