Super Customer Experience: 5 Immediate No Cost Improvements #custserv
by Kate Nasser | 9 Comments »
Super Customer Experience: The Warm Quick Wins
Customer experience professionals study the complex structures, channels, and data to improve customer experience. Important work to be sure.
My work in super customer experience brings the research to life in everyday ways. Despite how customers differ, there are no cost improvements you can make right now to deliver super customer experience to everyone!
Super Customer Experience: Immediate No Cost Improvements Image licensed from Istock.com.
Image licensed from Istock.com
Super Customer Experience: 5 Immediate No Cost Improvements
Whether you are a global corporation, a hot new start-up, an infrastructure service group, a mid-size enterprise or a small business, customer experience happens in a moment and you can ensure those moments are easy and memorable!
- Speak clearly! Yes this simple no cost step reduces stress, inspires attention, and builds loyalty bonds. Whether it’s the words you use, the tone of voice, the web site verbiage, the written chat exchanges, or the quality of the phone line, it delivers super customer experience! If the customer ends up thinking or saying, huh … what, it’s time to revamp how you communicate. Get rid of jargon. Think customer not procedures.
- Think one! One customer at a time. One company delivering super customer experience. How? Empower all who interface with the customers to think and act as the one representative of the company. Finally, forever, get rid of silos! Silos can be organizational structure or even individuals who don’t talk to each other. Either way, seamless teamwork is a no cost fix that delivers super customer experience.
- Be complete! Half-truths, incomplete explanations, different answers from different employees, all of this undermines super customer experience. It breeds customer mistrust and disrespect. It delays the WOW. It is frustrating and negatively memorable. For no cost, you can deliver super customer experience by being complete when speaking with the customer.
- Think easy and even fun! Look at every aspect of customer interaction and ask, is it easy and fun for the customer? The places where it isn’t, you have most likely reverted to an internal focus, a procedural prominence, or manipulation to get them to buy more. For no cost, you can convert all this to super customer experience!
- Love the customers or leave the business. Hire employees who really like being in service to others. They exist. They sustain the customers, each other, morale, and the business! All the other applicants who see customer service purely as a stepping stone to a career will never deliver super customer experience. Why hire them?
Example: I recently heard a discussion at the next table in a Panera Bread. The young woman told her mentor, “I’m a people person. Yet all I did in the customer service department was listen to angry people complain. I want to work with nice people!” She’s not really a people person. She wants people to serve her needs. So beware of the phrase “I’m a people person” in interviews. Find out if they want to be in service to others! They will deliver super customer experience.
Immediate no cost improvements for super customer experience make a difference. They are the actions that communicate your mission of customer care. They tell the customers: We want you and we want you back!
Never ever underestimate the value of making life easy and even fun for the customer to get them back. When the product or service you sell hits the mark and the interaction to get it and use it is easy, customers have no need to look elsewhere.
Would you like to add 5 more no cost improvements to this list? Let’s hear your experience!!
From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
Related posts:
Super Customer Experience: Remove the Never Ever Rules
Customer Service: 24 Tips to Make It Easy for Customers
Super Customer Experience: Customers Feelings Aren’t Random!
©2013 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.
Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.
6. Listen. Even if your goal is to eventually sell something, start by truly listening to what the customer says and make sure you really understand. People need to feel they are being heard.
Aah Kirsi — so true — people need to feel they are being heard! Beautiful reminder.
Many thanks,
Kate
Kate – I love your simple staightforward list!
#3 Be Complete is so true, and so often left out!
Your story about the conversation at Panera hit home. Mostly because I was fortunate enough to never have to deal with an angry customer until I received some stellar customer service training. The training included a powerful video that showed showed the angry customer yelling at the employee, and then gave a unique opportunity to watch what the customer’s personal life had been like that day. Immediately after we experienced the paradigm shift we were given clear, specific, actionable, training about how to really listen and respond to an angry customer. (I was so excited about what I learned I coulnd not wait to have my first angry customer – just to have the opportunity to turn them into a raving fan!) …And when I did, I was ready, and it worked!
Love your spirit Chery — you are a teacher’s dream come true!
Thanks for your comment here.
Kate
Hi Kate!
#3 is so crucial as an integrity issue.
I recently came across an organization that instructed and pressured its customer service representatives to sell a more expensive product to the customer than they initially requested. This upselling approach was all outlined as several possible written scripts given the reps outlining exactly what to say and in what order. For example, if the customer didn’t want to pay a higher price, the customer service reps were instructed to say, “This is a fabulous deal, it won’t be around after x date, and we only have x left…” As a customer I don’t mind knowing the range of what’s available, but this kind of pressuring, which so easily slides into an outright lie in order for reps to get some kind of competitive award — or just helps them maintain their jobs — is nothing but a turn-off. Great article, Kate. In my experience, outstanding leaders always get and reinforce the power of the basics — and never put themselves above learning and relearning them.
All the best
Dan
Dan,
I too hate high pressure and manipulative sales. The boat sailed on that one among enlightened companies and yet there are many who still use those tactics. They’ll never get my biz!
We’ll keep blogging to effect positive change.
Thanks for adding your view here,
Kate