Research done by American Express showed that 93% of customers feel that they are not getting the type of customer service they expect.
What does this mean? It means that everything you’re doing right now in customer service is not enough. You’re not getting the type of results that really matter with customers.
Do you know that typically less than 5% of dissatisfied customers will actually complain to a service provider? But what about the other 95%? They complain to other customers (the worst thing that could ever happen).
The customer service gold standard
It’s no longer enough to not be as bad than the competition in your industry. You have to be the best across industries.
Customers today are empowered. Social media magnifies the voice of the customer and they expect you to deliver the best (because they deserve it). You don’t need a Verizon $2 customer outrage incident to understand what your customers want. We need to appreciate the power in the voice of the customer and create systems, workflows, and empower employees to deliver value based on customer expectations.
Voice of the customer is GOLD!
When I say gold, I mean gold. Imagine that I give you a solid gold brick. That’s 27.5 pounds, nearly $400,000.
How would you care for your gold brick? Would you be careless? Just stash it somewhere and get it taking care of it later? Doubt it. It’s precious. It’s valuable. It needs care and attention.
How easy do you make it for customers to give you feedback? How natural do you make the feedback process? What do you do with the feedback you receive? How do you communicate action based on customer feedback?
Do everything in your power to make it really easy to customers to give feedback and tell you about problems they are having.
Do you know how?
Don’t you know how?
Make the most of your valuable customer feedback!
- Understand who is your customer so you can understand context of the feedback.
- Know your customers.
- Let your customers know you.
- List and act on customer complaints.
- Be helpful to customers, potential customers, and even non-customers – even if there’s no immediate profit in it.
- Engage in real time. No “we’ll get back to you in 24-72 hours” auto-responses here. You need an immediate, human connection.
Quality customer service
Ultimately, there is no way that the quality of customer service experience can exceed the quality of the people who provide it. Realize that your people will treat your customer the way they are treated. Motivate your people to serve. Inspire your people to serve. But most importantly, enable your people to actually serve the customer.
Your customer service experience is the “why” your customers should work with you. Not many of us enjoy monopolies. Customers have options. But if we make our service so good, our customer won’t be able to ignore it, let alone consider switching to another provider.