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As we work tirelessly to deliver super customer experience, I find and fix common everyday mistakes that drive customers away.

Recent experiences focus me today on ways we imprison customers which do everything but build loyalty. You might think imprisonment is too strong a word. Yet that is what customers report.

Give customers a get out of jail free card — fix these mistakes!

Ways We Imprison Customers!

1. Endless Loops. This is definitely #1 on the customers list. Beyond the endless unclear phone menus (voice response units – VRUs, IVRs), customers also feel imprisoned by agents, reps, and CSRs with poor skills.

   The Story: A business owner needed to become a credit card merchant. The sales rep was clear, focused, and offered a great deal. The business owner signed up. The sales rep reported that the support team would send an email with account # and temporary password. Support would then call to finalize everything.
   

   

   Super Customer Experience: Loyalty Not Imprisonment! Image: iStock for Editorial Use.

   
   The business owner received a phone message from support saying “By now you have received your email with account # and password. Please call me, Mindy, at this phone number and extension.” The business owner left Mindy a message saying “We never received the email. Please let us know what to do now.”

   Mindy left a second, third, and fourth message saying the exact same thing as her first message! When the business owner finally spoke on the phone with Mindy, she continued to say “you should have received the email by now.”

   Imprisonment: The business owner finally said, “Time is money. Move me forward or I will cancel my account.”

   Customer service is forward not stagnant. To customers, stagnant feels like imprisonment.

   Release customers from status quo prison! For a super customer experience, move them forward to the solution.

   Question: Where in your organization do customers get stuck in the status quo?




2. Lack of teamwork. Multiple teams engaged in service with little or no teamwork leave customers trapped in a maze. Customers must jump between teams to get a solution or jump out of the maze and choose freedom. That’s not conducive to customer loyalty.

   For super customer experience, deliver a single point of solution not multiple points of failure. Build teamwork with shared technology, mutual service level targets, and one service culture.

   Question: How many teams in your organization must work together to deliver a super customer experience? Do they all give it the same priority? If not, customers end up imprisoned in the maze.




3. Tunnel vision. A less evident yet still common mistake, thinking only from the company or agent perspective. Super customer experience requires seeing things from the customer’s view. Else the customers feel ignored and overlooked — imprisoned in solitary confinement.
   Cultural tunnel vision in global service leaves customers in the dark.
   Rigid script reading and poor listening slam the door shut.
   Websites with poor e-commerce design drive customers away — to well-designed easy-to-use sites.

   Shine the light of customer awareness throughout your organization to free customers from solitary confinement and to value them in your organization.

   Question: Where in your organization is tunnel vision blocking super customer experience? Expand the vision. Replace the tunnel with bridges to the customers and to your success.

Customers want information and solutions that meet their needs. Online, in person, or on the phone, they seek positive easy experiences to get what they want. Imprisonment is not positive nor easy. It makes them want to break out, run away from the stress and find success elsewhere.

Think customer care not customer control. Think bonding not bondage. Think customer!

I look forward to working with you, leaders, and your teams to create super customer experience.

From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

Related Posts:
Super Opportunity to Improve Every Customer Experience
Simply Great Choices Create Super Customer Experience

©2012 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service, customer experience, teamwork, and leading change. For 23 years, she has turned interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer testimonials and results.

Businesses, large and small, both want to deliver super customer experience. Two steps can take customer experience from good to great — be plentiful and ready. And it’s the best PR.

The trigger reaction of many leaders to the idea of being plentiful to the customers — “that costs money!” Well, it doesn’t have to be free to customers or expensive for your business.


Being plentiful and ready gives customers:

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Comfort. When people think of a shortage, the feeling is discomfort. In retail, some leaders believe that shortages can wield greater prices and yield more profits. Customers experience shortages as loss and void. Especially in service businesses, having a plentiful supply gives customers comfort.

For business to business, it is critical. Suppliers are invaluable when they deliver plentiful supplies of what you need when you need it. It builds trust.

Ease. Customers love it when you make it easy. On a recent stay in a Sheraton hotel, I asked to have four towels each day instead of two. Yet I had to call and ask for extra towels every single day. Why not just supply the plentiful towels each day when cleaning my room? Be plentiful and ready to make it easy for the customers. Making an exception is great; sustaining it is super!

Success. When your business can handle last minute overages and is ready for sudden needs, the PR is tremendous. You can just imagine referring a catering company to many others if it helped your special event be successful especially with last minute needs.

Conversely, I recently did a team building program with the theme of plug in and adapt. I found a small electrical adapter plug online and needed to buy hundreds. The supplier’s website would only let me order 50 so I called to check on quantities and availability. The customer service rep told me they had plenty but I could only buy 50 at a time with a maximum of 100.

How odd. They had plenty but weren’t ready or interested in selling me a large quantity. Meanwhile the print shop I used for the session handouts was ready. The staff produced and shipped not only the initial 500 booklets but also 50 extra at the last minute when my customer expanded the project. Success!

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For Super Customer Experience Today

Be Plentiful in:

1. Positive, can do, make it work attitudes.
2. Low cost welcoming gifts.
3. Experience.
4. Information and knowledge.
5. Advertised products.
6. Last minute alternatives and solutions.
7. Communication and behind the scenes teamwork.

Be Ready With:

1. Courtesy and care.
2. Culture that considers customer experience as a business driver.
3. Information rich well designed websites.
4. Inter-cultural knowledge.
5. Easy to use self-serve portals that address complete needs.
6. Mechanisms that enable you to quickly adapt to change.
7. Proactive listening, follow-through, and follow-up.
8. Thank yous and gratitude.

Be (P)lentiful today and (R)eady for tomorrow — the best PR for your business!

In what other ways should we be plentiful and ready? What would you add to this list from your experience?


From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

Related Post: Super Customer Experience: Customers & Us in Harmony

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on customer service experience, teamwork, and leading change. She turns interaction obstacles into business success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.

Recent studies show that loyal customers are the ones that find your service easy.  For hotels and the hospitality and travel industry, this has morphed into frequent guest profiles on room type, or rental car preference, or aisle/window choice on an airplane.

They have created a standard process on certain service items to earn customer loyalty. It’s just a beginning.

Hotels must go far beyond that and rewards programs to earn the customer loyalty especially of frequent business travelers. They must:

Make it easy for customers to get exceptions to the standard process and sustain those exceptions throughout each stay.

Most hotels don’t sustain customers’ exceptions. The hotels are driven by standard processes and handle each exception as a transaction. You can make a special request and hopefully they deliver on that exception. Yet if it’s something you want every day during the stay or for every stay, you must request it each time.

A recent example: Sheraton hotel provided two bath towels, two hand towels, and two wash cloths in the room. I asked for two additional bath towels. They delivered. The next day housekeeping gave me — you guessed it — just two bath towels, two hand towels etc… Each day I had to request the same exception to their standard process.

Delivering great customer service when requested may get you high customer satisfaction scores. Delivering pro-active customer service may win you great acclaim.

But to earn customer loyalty, deliver easy exceptions and sustain those exceptions. Why? In this example, it’s just one easy phone call each day for some towels right? Easy maybe. Loyalty building it isn’t.

Customer loyalty is earned from easy exceptions that you remember to deliver each time. When you sustain the customers’ exceptions, you are telling them you remember their needs. Being remembered and cared for creates psychological comfort. That earns you the customers’ trust and thus their loyalty.

Picture yourself as a customer. Think about the diner waitress who remembers exactly how you want your eggs. The dry cleaner who knows your name and remembers your preferences. The consultant who already knows your hot buttons and key concerns. The dentist who knows your pain tolerance and how to ease it. The florist who remembers what flowers you send your mother even when you don’t!

This type of customer service becomes more than service. To the customer, you become an essential part of their easy life. If a hotel makes my life easy, I don’t even consider a different hotel for my next trip. You prevent the question mark from forming in my mind. Your hotel becomes my sanctuary when you sustain my exceptions to your standard processes.

This is a challenge for large scale operations yet it is feasible with modern technology. How about easy online portals for all customers to send in their exception requests in advance — without having to call? Or even when they are on site? How about special request kiosks on each floor? Perhaps hand held devices on housekeeping carts that give the staff just in time info on what each customer wants?

Capitalize on the fact that most people don’t like change. They like comfortable easy situations that they can rely on especially when far from home. Following your standard process is a change. You earn their loyalty by making exceptions easy to get and remembering to deliver them each time.


Will it be your brand? If yes, let me know and I will be a regular at your hotel!


From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please first email info@katenasser.com for terms of use. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.

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Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers actionable customer service insights through workshops, keynotes, consultations, and DVDs. Now in her 21st year in business, her stellar results are well known in the customer service industry. See this site for more information.

I received an ad in my email box for a customer service training video.  Even after 20 years of teaching customer service, I still learn new things.  So I took a quick look at the sample footage.  What I saw was fake, neutral, and difficult for the customer.

They advise you to give an irate customer something specific - like a  form to fill out!  Tell an irate customer to fill out a form?  If you were the irate customer, how would you respond? I laughed so hard at this video I could barely find the esc key to stop the footage.  And this training video is for sale!

Now that I have stopped laughing, I deal you the ACE for top notch customer service: ACE – authentic, committed, and easy.

Authentic.  Customers want you to sincerely care.  Sincere caring shows in your authenticity.  This is why I rail against call center scripts.  Scripts sound company-focused not customer-focused.    Authenticity shines through when you paraphrase the customer’s request, use a tone of voice that reflects interest not script reading, and validate the customer’s situation including his/her emotion.  If you are face-to-face with the customer, then your body language as well as your courteous words also reveal your level of authentic caring.

To come across as authentic and caring, it helps to first be able to read the customer’s needs.  

Action steps: Take this well-known EQ (empathy quotient) test online free of charge to assess your ability to read others: http://glennrowe.net/BaronCohen/EmpathyQuotient/EmpathyQuotient.aspx.  I was thrilled with my very high score.  Can you imagine The People-Skills Coach scoring low on EQ?

If you want to test your ability to read others’ authenticity, here is a twenty question quiz based on the work of Dr. Paul Eckman: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml

Committed.  On one of my many trips, I was driving to a smaller city.  I had a terrible headache and no medication.  I spotted a large mall and went in to buy some Tylenol.  Thankfully the first thing I saw was an information booth.  So I asked the young woman, “Where is the closest drug store in this mall?  I have a terrible headache and have never been here.”  Her answer in a flat voice was: “I don’t know (IDK).”

My unspoken reaction was “Then why are you in the booth? Get out of the booth!”  Even if it was her first day, she could make an authentic attempt to help. Customers judge your commitment from your “first” –  first greeting, first response, first facial expression, first tone of voice, first attempt. 

Long pauses, IDKs, blank stares, attention to other people/things show lack of commitment – i.e. not caring.  What would you add to this list as signs of non-commitment?  I would love your comments below.

Easy.  Although customers’ expectations vary, there is one thing every customer celebrates – an easy experience.

Here are 5 things you can do to make it easy for your customer:

• Listen and speak from his/her perspective. http://tinyurl.com/cjbdhl 
• Quickly paraphrase his/her request and take action.
• If you don’t know the answer, find the answer.
• Use words that focus forward not back.
• Spot his/her personality type and treat them that way. http://tinyurl.com/ddfhgq

I would love your comments and insights below.  You are welcome to share the info in this article with others if you will credit me and the URL as the source.

These stories and tips are just a small sample of what I deliver in my sessions on customer service.   Tap me to speak at your next customer service event or for training to ACE every customer service moment. 

From my experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach

©2011 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. If you want to re-post or republish this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.