There is nothing more challenging, and exhilarating, than scrapping an old system and implementing a new one. Upgrading our online shopping experience to provide an easier customization and ordering process for our customers’ business greeting cards has been everything we thought it would be. Take a look at the result for yourself:
Nurturing Customers Through a Systems Change
Regardless of the months and months of planning, system conversions always present unexpected factors. In prior blog posts, I’ve shown how organizations can move from customer service to customer care. Over the past few weeks I’ve witnessed this happen here at Hallmark Business Connections in unique and special ways. Here are just a few of the things we do to truly demonstrate our “customer care” philosophy through this transition:
Great People with a Great Plan – Our leaders demonstrate their strengths in planning and preparation by focusing our teams on the customer before, during and after launching the new e-commerce site. It has been heartwarming, to say the least, to watch our employees become more engaged in their work. Their innovation ensures every one of our thousands of customers enjoys great experiences with the new site.
Customer Input – We could wait for our normal survey process to provide voice of the customer data about changes in the shopping experience, but we’ve decided to proactively call customers to ask about their experience. Our learning has accelerated and we look like rock stars to our customers.
Real Live People – Did I mention we make these calls with real people? Not an email survey or interactive voice response… real people make a real difference.
All Hands on Deck – I recently listened to calls made to customers and heard deep insights, but I was also intrigued and motivated by the sheer number of our associates making calls. Everyone from executives to marketing and technical staff has conducted inquiry calls to our customers. I was able to tell by the sounds of their voices that they benefited from making these calls as much as our customers who received them.
Proactive Vs Reactive Service – I’m so proud of our technical and product teams here at Hallmark Business Connections. With their astute awareness of a couple of unforeseen issues, we can alert customers to an error and provide a solution before they even know about it.
Focus on the customer, not internal needs – Implementing new systems comes with little bugs that need to be fixed and a laundry list of the next enhancements to make. Our team focuses on fixing what the customer needs, before addressing issues that only benefit us internally.
It Takes a Village to Provide Distinguished Customer Care
It’s easy to think that the customer service care team is the sole owner of the customer relationship, but behind-the-scenes players are every bit as important to customer satisfaction, delight and advocacy as customer-facing roles.
I’d like to share my motivation to write this blog post… big changes are hard. Really hard. Our team has invested so much of themselves personally to make this new experience happen. A few small issues may distort the reality of this great body of work. And the reality is that our customers and employees now have a system that is 100 percent better. All the late nights, weekends and personal commitment was WORTH IT. Thanks to the team at Hallmark Business Connections.
