Feelings have a critical role in the way customers are influenced. I’d like to introduce you to Kyle. Kyle is an example of the things that are right at Best Buy’s customer care service.
It’s not that Kyle is the only example of great customer service at Best Buy, but I was so delighted with my new Samsung Galaxy S5 that I didn’t get a picture of Jeff, who signed me up. Suffice it to say he looked like he just started to shave. But the perfect customer focused sales agent who knew all the lessons in customer service.
Watch out: 10 Guarantees of Poor Customer Service
He was very aware how much feelings impact the ways customers are influenced.
Here is how the story goes:
A customer walks into a store
A couple of weeks ago, I walked into my local Best Buy store to shop for a smartphone. What I wanted was to buy an Android phone that was not going to lock me into a particular service plan for two years and a plan that would give me unlimited phone minutes, data, and text for a price that I was happy with.
I certainly got that, but I also came out with an extraordinary impression of Best Buy. I’d been thinking a lot about customer service myself as my agency works with its clients on this subject. Over the first two weeks or so I owned my new phone, Best Buy’s customer service did nothing but reinforce my initial impression.
This may surprise you, but receiving actual extraordinary customer service is rare enough in my life that I find it difficult to find examples to learn from. So I thought I’d deconstruct Kyle’s and Best Buy’s customer service for what I could learn.
I gave every Android phone there a thorough working over, asked lots of questions, and Kyle never once treated me as if he was in a hurry to move to a new customer. Instead, he showed patience and understanding that this was a significant purchase that I’d be affected by for months, if not years, to come.
My clients are spending a heck of a lot more money with me than I ever will with Best Buy, for a design that is far more business critical than my cell phone is to me. No matter what other projects I have going, I need to constantly remind myself to take whatever time I need to take to ensure the clients’ designs are the correct ones for them.
Be Classy
When someone is switching to your services from working with another company, often they’ll explain to you what their reasons are for switching. I was pretty clear about what my reasons for switching were when I was buying my phone from Kyle.
While he was always helpful, he never once took my whining as an excuse to pile on the competitor. I’m not sure if this is something trained to Best Buy’s employees or if it is just how Kyle is, but I was impressed with the class he used in handling the situation.
Kyle took a few moments out whenever a new customer came into the department to greet him or her. And it was a genuine, friendly greeting.
I had the feeling that Kyle knew exactly how each person’s kids were doing in the little league. I really appreciated knowing that existing customers were treated so well. And, of course, the implication was not lost on me that if I became a Best Buy customer, that this is how I’d be treated.
Avoid paranoia
One of the things that Kyle said to me as he closed the sale was, “We want you to be with Best Buy because you want to be with Best Buy.” This was in stark contrast to my previous experience. Even though I’d been with them for eight years, they refused to sell me a phone I’d be happy with at a reasonable price without locking me into a 2-year contract.
That particular company exacerbated the problem by associating themselves closely with the manufacturer of their most over-hyped phone, one that claims to deliver wonderful experiences by forcing you to have exactly the experience they want.
Shortly after I went into business, I had several clients not pay me, to the tune of enough money that it pretty well fouled up my credit. So for a while, I was all about ensuring that my clients were locked down about as tight as I could get them. But you know what? If you do that for long enough and don’t ever extend any trust to your clients, sooner or later they’ll start not trusting you. And start counting the days until they are allowed to leave.
I don’t want my clients thinking about me like that.
Customer care service tips … don’t make clients feel bad
As I mentioned before, between having a couple of clients not pay early on and having my property hit by a major hurricane, my credit is not perfect. When Kyle ran my credit, Best Buy already had a plan in place that was perfect for where I am in the credit repair process. Everything went smoothly, and I didn’t have to stammer out any explanations about hurricanes and bad clients.
Once I had my phone, I had an issue where the flash would go on and off while I was trying to use the camera for QR code scanning. I called up the store with a little bit of a chip on my shoulder. I was afraid I’d allowed myself to get stuck with a bum device, despite the fact that they’d explained I could return the phone within 14 days for a full refund.
“If I can’t get this resolved, I’m going to have to return it,” I proclaimed.
“OK,” said the voice on the other end of the phone.
Completely took the wind out of my sails. And when I took the phone into the shop, Kyle competently verified the problem, not remotely implying that I was stupid or insane to even have a problem. Amazingly, she even knew what to do to fix it, though we were both surprised that it worked.
How many times do we as designers feel the need to “prove” that a problem that the customer is having is because they’re doing something wrong? Even if they are, a better way to handle all around is just to tell them what the right procedure is, going to screen sharing if necessary.
If it really is your problem, you haven’t said something nasty to someone you then need to apologize for.
When I left with my new Behold II, I had something else as well–a business card from the Best Buy with Kyle’s personal phone number on it, in case I had questions. I strongly doubt that Best Buy insists its employees do this, but it’s hard to beat having motivated employees who will take it upon themselves to extend this kind of personal touch.
What Have You Learned?
How about you? Do you have stories of people or companies that have completely “wowed” you with their customer service? Please share.
Do you have a lesson about making your customer service better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your customer attention and focus. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on customer service from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Stunning Customer Service Lessons and Their Examples
10 Guarantees of Poor Customer Service
How to Build Trust to Keep Customers Returning
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
The secret of success is to do the common things uncommonly well. A secret? No, not really. Small things? Yes, certainly. Sometimes small actions or even inactions by a business can have the ability to improve customer service. And it is usually due to a lack of an explicit consumer experience strategy.
Companies lose customers for a variety of reasons, some of which they never discover. Sometimes customers walk away after a single unpleasant experience.
Other times they’re frustrated by a series of small perceived problems. Is a lack of a customer experience strategy costing your company customers? Do you know the answer? It is not rocket science, is it? It is a key secret to your success, however.
Before we continue, let me ask you a question.
What works best for customer experience design in your business? We would love to hear what it was. Would you do us a favor and post it in the comments section below? It would be greatly appreciated by our readers and us.
The truth is, it usually takes significantly more time and energy to find new customers than it does to lose them. So you can be sure a strategy to build a positive customer experience can pay off when done well. All the marketing in the world cannot make up the damage when it is done poorly or ignored.
Customers today interact with businesses in many different ways, leading to numerous touch points and tremendous opportunities for positively influencing their customer experience.
If one considers the hundreds of interactions each client has throughout his/her life cycle with a company, how do you define a client experience to focus their limited resources? Here are some priorities to consider:
Set Customer Segment Targets
Always start by asking: For which segments? Although this may sound obvious, when striving to improve customer experience, it is critical to define the segments in the marketplace that you want your business to focus on.
Map the Consumer Experience Steps
Define the steps of the consumer journey. Remember to think of the entire trip, not just the steps your company is involved in. For example, for the home movie entertainment businesses, these steps would be: define the occasion, select a title, get, watch, and return the film. Mapping these steps for each of your priority segments is important.
Also necessary for each step of the journey is to understand the time spent, the activities performed, the criteria used to make a decision and move to the next phase of the journey. And finally defining how to make each step as short and easy as possible.
Define the categories of influencers at each step of the journey. Touchpoints are opportunities to intersect with and influence the customer experience. In the home entertainment example, the influencers would be self, retailers, external resources, friends, family members, and movie studios.
Remember that the activities performed by a consumer fit at the intersection of an influencer with each step of the journey. For example, a customer may go to Netflix and view recommendations and retailers would be the influencer.
In this example, providing online recommendations that are trusted would be the touch-point. For each priority segment, understanding the relative importance of various influencers by steps of the consumer journey is the key to success.
Customer service tips … experiment with collaboration
An efficient way of ensuring that experiences meet customers’ needs is to bring customers and frontline employees into the design process through collaboration. And yes, in our opinion many customers would welcome this approach.
When they are face-to-face with a design team, customers can provide valuable input, including firsthand accounts of what they want seeds of ideas to build upon, and feedback for real-time prototyping.
In a single-day workshop, the Fidelity Charitable team gave employees just one hour to create pen-and-paper prototypes for ideas that they thought would fill a particular donor need. Customers then joined the group for a mocked-up fundraising cocktail party that enabled them to test out the prototypes in a realistic setting.
Through this process, the Fidelity Charitable team got multiple rounds of feedback that focused its work on the most valuable solutions. Intuit has likewise embraced a hybrid of design thinking and “lean startup” to do rapid experimentation and prototyping across the organization
Types of customer service … align customer-facing employees
The quality of customer experience depends on a complex interdependent set of employees, partners, processes, policies, and technology. Firms like USAA, Apple, Zappos, and Starwood Hotels are companies that do an excellent job of orchestrating across their enterprise.
USAA has identified approximately 100 important experiences associated with customer business engagements like buying a car or preparing to deploy abroad, all of which have owners and cross-functional teams responsible for detailed customer processes.
For one of those car buying experiences, the company manages auto dealership relationships on behalf of clients, understanding that customer hesitation haggling with dealers for pricing slows its ability to provide loans and sell insurance.
Customer signals are critical.
Act on customer signals
Your client insights are essential to this effort. We’re not talking just satisfaction surveys—good customer understanding doesn’t come just from spreadsheets and data crunching.
Instead, we’re talking about consumer sentiments and needs through detailed customer observation, listening and relationship building. Social skills that identify and shares unspoken or latent needs. A process of gaining useful insights and then acting on them.
Experimenting at first and then full ahead. Having a governance mechanism to work on ideas is critical…otherwise, there will be no positive change.
Improve customer service … activate improvements
Now for the most important touch points, you could generate ideas for improvement. In the example above, an activation idea could be to develop a studio agnostic website that incents consumers to state their preferences, tracks their viewership, and accordingly makes highly relevant recommendations for what to watch next.
After you have implemented this framework for the first time, it will yield recommendations for what data to collect and at which critical touch points, and what types of analyses and metrics are needed to improve the customer experience.
Improve customer service … final customer experience example
Want to know one of the most efficient ways Zappos has found to create reciprocity with their clients? And create customer experience differentiation at the same time?
Surprise them!
People like getting things for free and like them, even more, when they are viewed as “favors,” but they love receiving these favors as surprises.
For instance, did you know that Zappos automatically upgrades all purchases to priority shipping … without so much as even a mention of the sales or checkout page?
Why offer this sort of benefit without mentioning it?
Pure: A company like Zappos, a business leader in customer service, recognizes the benefits of surprising people with a next day delivery. That’s not even mentioning the fact that this shipping creates immense goodwill between Zappos and their first-time buyers.
That kind of reciprocity is justified by almost any cost, and the hit Zappos takes by doing this is paid back multiple times over by the customer loyalty they generate from making people happy.
Companies that are proactively managing all elements of their customer experiences are most successful in achieving customer loyalty.
Remember, customers create the most value for you … when you create the most value for them.
The bottom line
What’s missing is the concept of service. The desire to help clients achieve their goals rather than to assume you know what their goals should be. Talk about direct response metrics won’t help a client whose brand awareness is trailing by ten points.
Interestingly, top digital players like Yahoo! and Google do understand this. However, many in the industry are still the same arrogant bunch that went down in the first dotcom boom and will surely go down again, screaming “nobody gets it!” along the way.
Like this story? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.
More reading on customer experience from our Library:
Random Acts of Kindness for Customer Experience Improvements
Maya Angelou once said: People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya knew a thing or two about the spirit of customer service lessons didn’t she? Her secret of course was focusing on making people feel good about themselves. And, by transference, feel good about the business that was serving them.
Why is this a powerful secret? Because doing nice things for people often get talked about. A lot. And things that get talked about are at the core of word of mouth marketing. The most valuable way to execute your marketing, in our humble opinion.
There’s much to be learned from companies that place a value on the details of customer service. For the small business, there are practical lessons, such as how to increase business by developing a relationship with existing customers.
For larger corporations, there are lessons to be learned about company philosophy and brand development, and how taking a customer-first approach can benefit all aspects of an organization. And perhaps most simply, businesses can learn how to emphasize customer service from those that are doing it best.
Regardless of what lessons there are to be learned, or whether or not businesses choose to adopt this approach, there is little doubt that for many businesses, placing customers first leads to real benefits.
As it turns out, in a world where there are ever more businesses competing for the consumer’s dollar, one of the best ways to stand out from the crowd is to make those consumers feel appreciated and wanted.
Amazon, Trader Joe’s, Ritz Carlton, Marriott, Zappos, LL Bean, Legos. These are our favorites among the best of the best when it comes to customer service. But what lessons can these companies impart?
Well, each adopts different policies in order to meet their customers’ needs but the fundamental lesson is simple: do everything possible to appease the customer, and you will earn his or her loyalty, and that means return business. So how do businesses achieve this?
Well, let’s take a look.
Amazon.com
When Amazon started out, the idea of doing most of your shopping online was still foreign for most. In order to convince individuals to skip the department store and shop online instead, Amazon needed to first earn their trust – and they did that in part through their now quite well-known return policy.
Nearly everything on the online giant’s website can be returned within 30 days of purchase, no questions asked. This return policy is seen by consumers as a sort of safety net, helping build trust and loyalty.
Customer service … Marriott
I have been a loyal Marriott customer from the start of my business career for over 45 years. Did quite a bit of travel throughout my career, and got sold early on with Marriott, from their Rewards Program, one of the best, if not the best in the industry.
Of course, in addition, their properties were all consistently outstanding. But since my retirement, I have not had the opportunity to stay with them very often.
But for my wife and I’s 20th anniversary, we decided to visit Miami Beach for a couple of nights. For my many years of loyalty, I am a Marriott Platinum Rewards member. The most significant benefit of this is having access to the concierge lounge and upgrade to a nicer room if available.
When I called to make a reservation, the corporate reservation desk person reminded me that he would request an ocean view upgrade, in case they were any available. A few days later, after thinking about it, I called the local hotel front desk, told them we had a reservation for 2 nights in celebration of our 20th anniversary, and asked for a special favor for the ocean view room for this special occasion. The front desk assured me they would do their best.
On our arrival at check-in, the front desk welcomed us with a warm anniversary congratulations and welcome. They said they were able to find us a very nice ocean view room. We certainly were not disappointed.
Later, after getting back from an afternoon of sightseeing and a dinner on the bay, we returned to the room to receive a very nice bottle of champagne and fresh strawberries from the front desk and hotel chef. What a great surprise and ‘wow’ customer experience.
The thing is this: the front line of any brand in the marketplace is not the advertising, packaging, or product design. It is the interaction of the customer experiences that determine the brand’s reputation to a large degree. It is human and emotion, and at that critical time when a customer engages with your employees at your touch points, your brand (your product and reputation) will either be enhanced or diminished. No doubt about our experience was there?
Ritz-Carlton
If someone told you that Ritz-Carlton Hotels was voted one of the best companies for customer service, you likely wouldn’t be surprised. Our research on them certainly didn’t surprise us. And that’s kind of the point; by making customer service a priority, the company has established a reputation as being always willing to put the customer first.
And this reputation not only engenders loyalty from existing customers, it attracts new customers as well. Ultimately, that is the promise of customer service and the point of brand reputation – to earn new business.
LL Bean
For some companies, it’s a magical return policy, while for others, it’s anticipating the customer’s needs before he or she is even aware of it. Retail giant L.L. Bean takes a simple approach; working every day to improve customer service across the board, by implementing policies and taking steps to put the customer first.
And perhaps this lesson, above all, is the one to take away from this article. If you run a business, whether it is Google or a local coffee shop, put your customers’ needs first – work hard every day to keep them satisfied, and in turn, they will give you their business.
Trader Joe’s
We frequent Trader Joe’s when we can (none in our local area) and we like to witness their operation first hand. Our study shows them particularly adept at random acts of kindness. Here is a story to illustrate.
An elderly man, 89 years of age, was snowed in at his Pennsylvanian home around the holidays, and his daughter was worried that he wasn’t going to have access to enough food due to the bad weather in the area.
Calling multiple stores in a frantic attempt to find anyone who would deliver to her father’s home, she finally got ahold of someone at Trader Joe’s, who told her that they also do not deliver … normally.
Given the extreme circumstance, they told her that they would gladly deliver directly to his home, and even suggested additional delivery items that would fit perfectly with his low sodium diet.
After the daughter placed the order for the food, the employee on the phone told her that she didn’t need to worry about the price; the food would be delivered free of charge.
The employee then wished her a Merry Christmas.
Less than 30 minutes later the food was at the man’s doorstep—for free! In refusing to let red tape get in the way of a customer in need, Trader Joe’s shows that customer service doesn’t need to be about the fanfare, it can simply be about doing the right thing.
LEGO’s imagination
Lego’s customer service lessons
We love many things about this brand, from their innovation to the way they engage with their customers. Here is a perfect story to illustrate.
Nothing like losing a favorite toy to wreck your day. Especially devastating to a young child. Longtime Lego fan Luka Apps spent all of his Christmas money on a Ninjago (Lego ninja) named Jay XZ. Against his dad’s recommendation, he took his Ninjago on a shopping trip … and lost it.
Luka wrote a letter to Lego explaining his loss and assuring the Lego staff that he would take extra-special care of his action figure if they sent him another one.
Hello.
My name is Luka Apps and I am seven
years old.
With all my money I got for Christmas I
bought the Ninjago kit of the Ultrasonic
Raider. The number is 9449. It is really good.
My Daddy just took me to Sainsbury’s and
told me to leave the people at home but I took
them and I lost Jay ZX at the shop as it fell out
of my coat.
I am really upset I have lost him. Daddy said
to send you an email to see if you will send me
another one.
I promise I won’t take him to the shop again if you can.
– Luka
The response he received from a Lego customer support representative was nothing short of remarkable.
He told Luke that he had talked to Sensei Wu (a Ninjago character), writing:
He told me to tell you, “Luka, your father seems like a very
wise man. You must always protect your Ninjago minifigures
like the dragons protect the Weapons of Spinjitzu!”
Sensei Wu also told me it was okay if I sent you a new Jay
and told me it would be okay if I included something extra
for you because anyone that saves their Christmas money to
buy the Ultrasonic Raider must be a really big Ninjago fan.
So, I hope you enjoy your Jay minifigure with all his weapons.
You will actually have the only Jay minifigure that
combines 3 different Jays into one! I am also going to send
you a bad guy for him to fight!
Just remember, what Sensei Wu said: keep your minifigures
protected like the Weapons of Spinjitzu!
And of course, always listen to your dad.
It’s rare to see such a thoughtful, creative response to a distraught customer. So rare that this story went viral and repaid Lego many times for its kindness. And paraphrasing Seth Godin, ‘remarkable actions get talked about the most’.
Our takeaway
Remember this important fact. This is your time to create a remarkable spirit of customer service to tell the stories of what you are all about. Great way to own the moment with lots of customers.
Social isn’t a new way of marketing, it’s a new way of doing business.
Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer experiences? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?
Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job and pay for results.
Call Mike at 607-725-8240.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas to make your customer experiences better.
When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.
Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on customer service and customer experience from our Library:
Customer Service Tips … How to Take Charge with Basics
Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.
There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else. Sam Walton understood customers, didn’t he? Using these customer service tips is not rocket science.
How often, as a customer, do you experience WOW customer service … the type that you normally can’t imagine? Average or less customer service seems like the norm in many industries.
In some, it’s so common that when we provide great service, we yield customers who feel like they’ve won the lottery, if only for a moment. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Many organizations have big challenges that can be obstacles to providing great customer service. But so do many other companies that find ways to provide the wow attention getter.
They choose to overcome their challenges and they take care of their customers very well.
And they make a point to do it consistently.
We often get questions and comments on improving customer service from clients and people commenting on our blog. Many relate to customer service actions that are reminders of what we already know (but we occasionally forget).
These are bid enablers of customer service. They usually won’t create a WOW service on their own, but their absence is noted by customers and makes excellent customer service just good or less.
As we work with companies to help them in improving customer service, some things stand out. These are things a lot of small businesses don’t do consistently. Yet if they did they’d find the quality of their customer service would improve and their customer loyalty would increase.
Here are ten things any company can do for improving customer service they’re providing. I know many companies already do some or all of these things. And for those that do, it shows. They are the organizations people rave about. They are the service superstars.
We all know not every customer request is easy or possible to fulfill. But rather than tell them “no”, try to find other ways to help them get what they want.
Always focus on finding a solution. And, when you do this, customers will come back more often because they know you you’ll do everything you can to help them.
Always empower employees.
Customer service tips … empower employees
Let employees make decisions in crucial customer moments.
No one turns an unhappy customer into a fan faster or better than a team member empowered to instantly fix the situation.
Provide training and guidelines — then trust them to make the right decisions. This is the single most important thing a company can do to create great customer service over the long haul, in our humble opinion.
Seek first to understand for best customer service tips
When a customer is telling you his issue, give them your complete attention. Customers consistently tell us they hate dealing with employees who don’t listen or pay attention.
When you begin talking with a customer, stop whatever else you are doing and focus on them. Don’t multi-task. Don’t half-listen. Write down what they are telling you and get specifics from them.
Make appropriate eye contact, listen, nod and show them you are paying attention. Then confirm that you understand.
Always greet customers promptly and with a smile
You may not be the owner, but you should care like you’re the owner. Not all owners or executives make great leaders, but the ones that are should be emulated. Watch how they take pride in how they deal with customers and employees. Then copy them. Act and care like you are the owner.
When talking with a new customer, give them your full name and get theirs right away. This makes your conversation more personal and enables you to better connect with your customer.
It also tells your customer you’re willing to be accountable for helping them because if you don’t, they know who you are!
Don’t forget to say, “Thank you!” It would be remiss of me not to remind you to show appreciation.
Remember 1 thing.
Remember 1 thing
Remember 1 thing about each customer you meet. People do business with people. Make your actions personal. Customers should want to do business with you because of you and your employees.
Make your customers “feel at home.” You may have a great location, cool displays, great signage, etc. That’s all great, but if your people can’t make your customers feel welcome and appreciated, all of the other doesn’t matter.
Focus on details
Remember this, little details can often create big experiences. Pay attention to details. Figure out the details that your customers enjoy and make them a routine part of doing business with you.
Think creatively
Think creatively when solving customer issues. See your customer as someone who needs your help. But to deliver WOW service, remember your customers are there because they want and need YOUR help.
And remember how good it feels to help someone in need! Go the extra mile.
Involve Your Customers
No one knows what your customers want better than your customers. If you ask them with genuine interest, they will tell you. So ask them and heed their advice.
Customer-centric language
Use language that demonstrates you think in terms of customer-centric. Put customer needs ahead of your own. Design your processes and policies with your customer in mind. An example often overlooked … update phone messages to be customer-centric.
Customer service tips and tricks … secret competitive analysis
Personally, mystery shop your own company and your competitors. Find out how easy everyone is to do business with through your own experience.
Sure, you can hire a company to do surveys and mystery shopping, but learning through your own experience can be an eye-opening experience.
Don’t forget to analyze when things go right. When a company receives a complaint people usually have discussions to find out what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again.
Next time you receive a letter of praise, meet to find out what went right and how it can be repeated. Don’t, as the cliché goes, just learn from mistakes.
Focus on the can do’s
Focus on what you can do, not what you can’t. Always follow up and follow through.
One of the biggest complaints people have is they never hear back from sales or service employees. Someone promises to do something and it never happens.
An easy way to thrill your customers is to simply do what you say you will. Whatever you promise, do it promptly, thoroughly and accurately. Then do a little more. It thrills them every time!
Set aside time
Be sure and set aside time to look at the big picture. Things are never constant or ever as they seem. Your big picture analysis is essential in helping you adapt to change.
To illustrate how simple things in customer service can happen without much notice, we like to use the following example.
We occasionally visited Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch until a disappointment with a KFC takeout order of soggy, unappetizing chicken and fries. We called the restaurant chain’s toll-free number to complain but was told that complaints should be directed to the specific location’s manager.
One call is worth the effort for us, but not two … especially if the company shows a lack of interest in the first call. We find it easier, given these two incidents, to find a new place for lunch.
KFC lost a customer without even knowing it had happened. You can bet your customers make “silent” decisions like this on a regular basis …so make it easy for them to complain. Don’t rely on feedback forms. Ask customers for direct, face-to-face opinions. Do it regularly and have them know whom they can complain to, if anything goes wrong. The image above is real and a great way to let customers know you are paying attention and care.
What your customer perceives about your company is what determines whether they will stay with you. And their perception is built one contact at a time. Even one bad experience can taint their perception of you. So make sure every contact they have is a great one. Create customer evangelists by caring about your customers and showing it with everything you do.
So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you.
It’s up to you to keep improving your customer attention and focus. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, your competitor may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.
All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new lessons.
When things go wrong, what’s most important is your next step.
Try. Learn. Improve. Repeat.
Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?
Do you have a lesson about making your customer focus better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?
Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.
More reading on customer service from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:
Stunning Customer Service Lessons and Their Examples
10 Guarantees of Poor Customer Service
How to Build Trust to Keep Customers Returning
Best Buy Lessons in Customer Service
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