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5 Top Customer Service Articles for the Week of August 21, 2017

Each week I read a number of customer service and experience articles from various online resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

Tips On How To Handle Racist Customers by Kelechi Okeke

(CXService360) What do you do when a customer hurls racist remarks at an employee (you) or other customers? Here are tips on how to handle racist or bigoted customers.

My Comment: Let’s start off this week’s “Top Five” list with one of the most important articles you will read in a long time. What happens when a racist customer offends your employee. The author sets it up and turns it over to some industry experts to share their thoughts. This is a MUST READ!

The Future of AI in Customer Service by Nick Francis

(Martech Advisor) Nick Francis, Co-founder and CEO of Help Scout discusses, as artificial intelligence is poised to change everything about the way we work, many wonder where human workers fit into that picture. For the customer service industry, the future of customer support in an AI-dominated world lies in augmenting, not replacing, the human touch.

My Comment: Here is an excellent article that shows us a glimpse of how AI (Artificial Intelligence) is impacting customer service. While this is a look at the future, much of it is happening today. Will it frustrate customers? Will computers and AI eliminate jobs? Read the article to find out.

Top 5 Customer Service Care Changes You Need to Make Right Now by Lindsay Gibson

(Customer Think) Are you being left in the dust when it comes to your approach to customer service? Here are the top 5 customer service mistakes and easy to implement changes that will generate greater engagement, less costly overhead and better satisfaction.

My Comment: This excellent article covers five important topics including loyalty, friction, anticipation, customization and engagement. These concepts are important to every business.

10 Things That Matter to Customers and How These Affect Your Business [Infographic] by Adel Zsurzsan

(Transcosmos) In a customer-centric industry, your business should be able to identify and relate with customers’ wants and needs. Think of it as a ripple effect: when you make your customers happy, they will recommend your business, which then leads to improved company value and growth.

My Comment: What matters to your customers? This combination of a short article and infogtraphic shares ten things that matter to customers. I’m sure there are a few – if not all – that you will agree with.

Does Tweeting at Companies Really Work? by Katy Steinmetz

(Time) Maybe your flight was delayed. Maybe your Wi-Fi went on the fritz. Maybe you spent hours assembling a crib, only to find out that it was shipped to you with a crucial thingamajig missing. The part that comes next – contacting customer service to get your problem fixed – is full of pitfalls that can add to the frustration, be it faulty voice recognition, boilerplate email responses, rude representatives or long waits. So it is little wonder that many consumers have stopped bothering with old-fashioned phone numbers and are trying a different avenue: pinging companies via social media.

My Comment: I’m a big fan of companies having a Twitter presence and responding to customers. It is an opportunity to acknowledge and help customers who are upset, have questions and are happy. This article discusses some of the good and the bad of this popular social channel. I especially appreciate the comments from StellaService, who are truly experts in this topic.

BONUS

Top 40 Customer Success Influencers by Tenfold

My Comment: Here is a “TOP FIVE” bonus. Tenfold created a list of the top 40 influencers in the customer success space. I’m honored to be included. (Thank you Tenfold!) You may want to get the list (you’ll have to fill out their form to get it) to see if there are any influencers and experts that you might want to follow.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or  www.hyken.com . For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to  www.thecustomerfocus.com . Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

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Guest Blog: How to Make your Survey Better than Nordstrom, Lowe’s, and Wal-Mart

This week we feature an article by Martha Brooke who writes about how to execute a customer satisfaction survey that gives you the data you need. Surveys can give you a lot of data that you can use to improve virtually any part of your organization. – Shep Hyken

I know you get asked to take surveys all the time, because I do. Even the shortest business trip results in at least 5 surveys: Delta wants to know about your flight; Hilton wants to know about your stay; Enterprise asks about your car rental and on and on. But the most prevalent of all surveys is that one at the bottom of your sales receipt, the request from Apple, Kohl’s, Nordstrom, Target and virtually all retailers to “tell us how we did.”

So last fall, two of my analysts and I set out to measure the quality of those point-of-purchase surveys (Point-of-Purchase Survey Study). We thought it would be interesting to know what level of science and engagement the nation’s largest retailers bring to their surveys. The surveys say they want to know about our experiences as a customer, but do they really want to know? Or, is this just PR spin?

Well, friends, unfortunately… it’s PR spin. The nation’s largest retailers run tragically poor customer satisfaction surveys, they’re bad for customers, bad for companies—they’re a waste of time and money all the way around.

So what are these big retailers, like Amazon, Apple, Wal-Mart, Kohl’s, and Target, doing wrong? Are there lessons that can be learned from their mistakes? And how can you make your survey better than some of the biggest companies in the world?

Let’s look at the two main problems: First, the vast majority of the surveys were riddled with biases, so we can’t imagine they provide anything but highly skewed data. And second, most of the surveys failed to show they care about their customers and the experiences they had.

Let’s look at the problem of bias. There were five types of biases in these surveys, each negatively affecting data accuracy in different ways.

Leading Questions— Known within psychology as priming, leading questions are designed to elicit a particular response. Ace Hardware asked:“How satisfied were you with the speed of our checkout?”

This question is phrased in a way that assumes the customer is at least somewhat satisfied.

Forced Wording—The Gap asked customers: “ Rate your agreement with the following statement: The look and feel of the store environment was very appealing.” “Appealing” is a weird word. It’s probably not how customers think about their experience in a store like Gap. They’d be more likely to think “it’s a mess,” “that was fun,” or “it’s well-organized.” Furthermore, the question would seem to have an agenda behind it—as in Gap executives want to hearthat their store environment was very appealing.


Faulty Scales—Wal-Mart asked its questions on a 1-10 scale. This scale introduces two problems: first, there is an even number of selections and therefore no true midpoint:Selecting a 5 would imply a lower than neutral score, while selecting a 6 would imply a higher than neutral score.The second problem with Wal-Mart’s scale is that there is no zero and some experiences are just that, zeroes, not sort of poor, plain old bad.
Double-Barreled Questions—This is where one question asks about multiple topics, usually that’s two questions compressed into one. Lowe’s asked customers:  “Were you consistently greeted and acknowledged in a genuine and friendly manner by Lowe’s associates throughout the store?” Here, we see four questions in one. Yikes! Does Lowe’s want to know if the customer was greeted OR acknowledged? And was that greeting/acknowledgement friendly OR genuine?Imagine Lowe’s finds that 85% of customers say “No,” they were not consistently greeted/acknowledged in a genuine/friendly manner. Obviously they need to make improvements—but what? Their greetings or their acknowledgements? How friendly they are or how genuine they are?

The best survey questions provide clear and actionable insights. To improve, Lowe’s should instead divide this question into four, or even better, consider what they really want to know and devise a clearer way to ask it.
Question Relevance—Ace, Gap, JC Penney, and O’Reilly Automotive all asked about their associate’s product knowledge (e.g. “Please rate your satisfaction with the employee’s knowledge of parts and products)—and none of these retailers offered the NA option. It’s likely that a large portion of shoppers didn’t ask a question of any associate and so would have no way of accurately providing customer feedback.There are two ways to ensure questions are relevant to the customer. One way is to use survey logic and gating questions such as “Did you ask an associate for help?” Only customers that respond “Yes” will be asked about the associate’s product knowledge.Another way to do this is even simpler: offer the N/A option, this way, when the question is irrelevant, you won’t have bogus responses clogging up your data.

On top of the myriad data accuracy issues, our Point-of-Purchase Survey Study showed that retailers have little regard for their customers.

For example, Walmart asked 4 introductory questions irrelevant to the customer’s experience, and required the input of 2 receipt codes. Really? That’s a hassle.

But the biggest, most consistent engagement mistake? Many of the surveys were just too long—the average length was 23 questions. A survey should certainly never take longer than the interaction itself, in fact, it should take less time.

Family Dollar asked a whopping 69 questions in their survey—with 10 seconds a question that’s over ten minutes spent reflecting on items that cost a buck.

Designing a quality customer satisfaction survey is a process, requiring multiple edits to reach the best version. Throwing in every question is how NOT to design a survey. Think about what you want to know, and carefully craft your questions.

It’s also important to set expectations at the outset, communicating how long the survey will take, and then meeting that expectation. Nordstrom advertised their survey as 2 minutes, but with 25 questions it took closer to 5 minutes.

Most retailers didn’t provide any estimate of survey length, and instead simply let their customers click into the abyss.

To execute a customer satisfaction survey that’s better than just about every major retailer, get serious about accuracy and engagement:

Ensure your survey collects accurate and actionable data. Eliminate biases such as leading questions, forced wording, and faulty scales.
Make every question clear and relevant to the customer.
Show the customer that you respect and value their time by designing a survey that only asks what’s necessary and that states at the outset how long it will take.

If you follow even a few of the guidelines we’ve provided here, your survey will be leagues ahead of the biggest companies in the world. For additional hints about how to improve the quality of your customer feedback, get our Genius Tips. And if you’re interested in more about the first of its kind, Point-of-Purchase Survey Study, check out the 2-minute video or ask us for the complete report.

Martha Brooke, Founder of Interaction Metrics, leads sessions and workshops on how to improve the customer experience.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article:  Verizon Unveils Personalized Rewards Program With Lady Gaga

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The Fish Is So Fresh It Hasn’t Even Thawed Out

I’ll never forget having dinner with my close friends, Kim Tucci and the late John Ferrara, more than 30 years ago, at a fancy restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona. John’s twelve-year-old son, Ben, was also with us. The server came over to tell us about the specials and take our order. One of the specials was a seafood dish. Kim asked, “Is the fish fresh?”

I’ll never forget the server’s answer. “The fish is so fresh it hasn’t even thawed out.”

Fresh fish? Still frozen? I’m confused! Even Ben, at the young age of twelve, thought this was funny. But, the server was serious. Apparently fresh fish meant anything that wasn’t packaged in a cardboard box and sold in the freezer section of the grocery store.

The server gave the wrong answer, and that’s the point of this lesson. There are certain questions that customers often ask. And, the best employees know the correct answers, mostly because they have been taught the answers. They were properly trained and receive updates on the questions and answers as needed.

So, what are the most common questions that are asked in your business? In a restaurant, some of them might be about the ingredients, the price, substitutions and more. As a frequent restaurant patron, here are some of my top questions:

• What’s the soup of the day?

• Does this entrée come with a salad or side dish?

• How is the fish prepared?

That first question, the one about the soup of the day… I’m surprised at the number of times the server doesn’t know. Their response is, “Let me go back to the kitchen and ask the chef.” How could he or she not know? And, just as important, how could the manager or the chef not inform the frontline staff of the soup of the day or any other specials they need to know about?

So, here is a little homework. There are three main steps to the assignment:

1. Come up with the top three questions your customers ask your employees.

2. Create the best responses.

3. Train your people to answer the questions correctly.

After you’ve done this and everyone is comfortable with answering those first three questions, come up with three more popular questions and properly train how to answer them. Do this as often as needed, for all your most frequently asked questions. Everyone should know how to answer these questions properly and with consistency, from one employee to the next.

When your customers realize that your employees have the answers to their frequently asked questions, this will instill trust, which will lead to loyalty to your business.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

(Copyright © MMXVII, Shep Hyken)

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Amazing Business Radio: Jason Bradshaw

Jason Bradshaw Explains Wow is Not About Champagne, Caviar, or Fireworks

How can you create the best experiences for your customers?

Shep Hyken interviews Jason Bradshaw, the Director of Customer Experience at Volkswagen Group Australia, who believes that you become great by thinking small.

First Up:

Shep Hyken’s opening comments focus on how you should strive to be number one and deliver the best possible customer service, but your real goal should be ranked in the top tier within your industry. Even the best sports teams don’t win championships every year, but they are still considered to be elite. Do you always pursue what’s best for your customers? What do you do to drive the love of your customers? You need to be number one for whatever they need.

Featured Interview:

Shep begins his interview by asking Jason Bradshaw about his experiences as a young entrepreneur. Jason explained that he had major disadvantages. First, he was a new start up, and second, he was young – just a teen ager. How did he compensate for these supposed disadvantages? By loving his customers more than anyone else.  This fueled his passion for creating the best experience for his customers.

Shep and Jason discuss that by creating trust with your customers, you create loyalty And, you do that by delivering a personalized experience that is consistently above average. Jason adds that the small things matter. So, rather than focus on creating big changes you should focus on making smaller changes that are easier to implement. Small things can make a big difference.

Top Takeaways:

Your first customer is always your team. Be consistent with them. Empower them so they can achieve what they desire while delivering a consistent experience for your customers.
The key is not in being perfect; the key is to be human. When something doesn’t go perfectly, respond quickly to fix it, improve or to do what you need to do get back on track.
Wow is not about Champaign, caviar, or fireworks. Wow is about connecting with your customer and delivering just a little above their expectations – all the time.
You don’t build customer loyalty by having the cheapest product. You build loyalty by giving an experience that the customer values.
Think Small – If you don’t pay attention to the smallest details, then everything else will unravel. Your customer is looking for consistency and wants an easy experience.
Tenacity – Never give up in your pursuit of delivering the best customer experience possible, one that, at a minimum slightly exceeds your customers’ expectations.

About:

Jason Bradshaw is the Director of Customer Experience at Volkswagen Group Australia.  At just fourteen-years-old, he started his own telecommunications and hardware distribution business. This first foray into entrepreneurship gave him a taste of how to offer customers an experience, not just a product. It was there he began a lifelong passion for customer experience.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert , “New York Times” best-selling author and your host of Amazing Business Radio.

“If you are constantly thinking small, it gets your closer to being number one. And that makes you great.” – Jason Bradshaw

 

      

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions … and more:

Why is it important to think small?
How do you build customer loyalty?
How do you create an amazing customer experience?
What is the key to creating customer loyalty?

The post Amazing Business Radio: Jason Bradshaw appeared first on Shep Hyken.

5 Top Customer Service Articles for the Week of August 14, 2017

Each week I read a number of customer service and experience articles from various online resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

Appearing to Care by Seth Godin

(Seth Godin) We know that your customers will put up with imperfect, but one thing that they’d like in return is for you to care.

My Comment: Let’s start this week’s Top Five with another Seth Godin article. As usual, Seth’s articles are very short, so I’ll share the essence of this one. It’s simple: Care about your customers.

10 Things Never to Say To a Customer On Live Chat by Chandan Kumar Singh

(ProPofs) Over time, I have learned a few more lessons and in this post, I am going to share the 10 things that you should never say to a customer on live chat.

My Comment: Here is a great list of ten things to never say (or type) to a customer on “live chat.” The reality is you would never want to say any of these things to a customer in any form of communication. This is the kind of list you want to print out and share with all employees who talk, email, tweet, etc. to your customers.

I beg you, retailers, don’t digitize the in-store customer experience by Ben Davis

(Econsultancy) Online shopping is eating into physical store visits – that much is obvious if you watch any news bulletin about Black Friday.

My Comment: Innovation is a big word in business today. What does it really mean and how can it positively impact business? Read this article about five ways successful retailers have innovated to make a better CX. Even if you’re not in the retail industry, these examples may kick-start a good conversation around creativity and innovation.

How to Justify the Importance of Customer Experience by Nitish Gautam

(Ameyo) What is the best way you can improve your business? It’s not to build an excellent product using the latest innovative technologies. The answer lies in improving Customer Experience (CX). But just how important is customer experience for your organization?

My Comment: It seems surprising to me that a company’s leadership would question the importance of customer experience, but some do. This article shares some of the reasons that CX is important and why it shouldn’t be left to chance.

Will AI Replace Humans In The Customer Service Industry? by Tiago Paiva

(Forbes) On the heels of several recent high-profile customer service debacles in the airline industry, it’s clear that how you treat your customers can make or break your company and its reputation. From legacy giants to the booming on-demand economy, fast and intelligent customer service has never been more crucial. And with new developments in technology, including buzzwords like cognitive computing, machine learning, and VR, merging human interaction with AI is seeming to be more and more likely the solution for managing customers needs.

My Comment: Will Artificial Intelligence (AI) AI take away jobs in the customer service industry? (Did video kill the radio star?) The short answer is no. This article is a good look at how AI can support customer service reps, and the result is a better experience for the customer.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or  www.hyken.com . For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to  www.thecustomerfocus.com . Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

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Guest Blog: How to Get Customer Obsession to Start at the Top

This week we feature an article by Borge Hald who writes about the importance of  being a customer obsessed company and how it is the key to success. We need to obsess about creating such an amazing customer experience that our customers will want to do business with us and nobody else.  – Shep Hyken

In a recent letter to shareholders that went viral, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos talked about customer obsession and its criticality to remaining a Day 1 company. “There are many ways to center a business…. But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of Day 1 vitality,”* said Bezos.

Customer obsessed companies are the future.  Look at any industry that’s facing disruption and you’ll see the same thing: upstart companies solving age-old customer problems. It’s not that the established players didn’t already know about customers’ frustrations or desires – they just lacked the wherewithal to address them. Their indifference to – or, in some cases, outright disregard for – customers left openings for new, more customer-centric entrants to become the solutions – and the future.

There are only a few customer-obsessed companies. You know them – they are the brands you love. They’re the ones that constantly experiment to add customer value either by either reducing the friction of buying from them or offering new products and services that fill your unmet needs. Customer-obsessed companies don’t always get it right but they course-correct their mistakes and double-down on their hits quickly.

And, perhaps most important, customer obsessed companies are led by customer-obsessed executives. And all of those executives are themselves addicted to understanding the customer.

So how do you get customer obsession to start at the top? Here are a few tips.

Connect executives to customer feedback. In a study of 275 B2C customer experience programs, we found that programs that shared feedback directly with executives achieved Net Promoter Scores 6 points higher, on average than those that did not.
Focus on both data and stories. Feedback must include elucidating comments, not just numbers.  Your executives are storytellers in chief who connect employees and customers to the company’s purpose through tales of impact. Does a hotel executive more effectively drive customer obsession by discussing a 5 point increase in guest satisfaction or a guest’s feedback about how a housekeeper inadvertently saved his life with a small gesture of hospitality?  Stories move people. Arm your executives with stories about customer impact and customer obsession will follow.
Embrace all feedback, the positive and the negative. Positive feedback is great stuff. According to one of our customers, “it’s like turning on a faucet of recognition for our employees.” But to be customer obsessed, companies need to understand the customer fully – not selectively. So wire your executives with all of the feedback, the good and the bad.
Make customer feedback a daily habit. To be customer obsessed, executives need to think about customers, and what they’re saying, all of the time. They need to build the voice of the customer into their routines as seamlessly as possible. For example, with the Medallia Voices™ mobile app, executives get to swipe through a selection of reviews and comments from various channels right on their phones, wherever they are, every day.
Make it easy for executives to share the voice of the customer within the company. CEOs can provide recognition for positive feedback and also raise alarm bells for fast action based on negative feedback. Many customer-centric companies have CEOs who regularly forward customer feedback to people at all levels of the organization, thanking them for their customer-centric actions and/or flagging issues that need to be fixed.

Connecting to customer feedback should be a priority not just for teams who directly interact with customers but for those at every level of your company. CEOs and other executives can be disconnected from the customer experience, and find themselves being “handled” by their staff. In reality, the most successful executives need the full range of customer feedback to make high quality decisions.

* Day 1 is dawn and, in Bezos’ words, “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death.”

Borge Hald is the Co-Founder and CEO of Medallia. Medallia’s mission is simple: to create a world where companies are loved by customers and employees alike.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article:  How Amazon Competes Against Walmart And Every Other Retailer

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Five Ways to Create the Customer-Focus Mindset

Your people attend customer service training. They learn techniques and tactics on how to deal with complaining customers, angry customers or customers who just need a little support. They are taught the right answers to some difficult questions. This is what customer service training is all about. But…

What happens when something happens that is outside of the parameters of the training your employees have received?

While good customer service training teaches the how-to’s, great customer service training goes into the mindset – and, that’s more than having a great attitude with lots of smiles and a warm personality. That’s important, but a customer-focused mindset goes beyond that.

A customer-focus mindset encompasses all the how-to training, the positive attitude and (here is where the mindset comes in) an understanding of the reason behind a relentless effort to deliver an amazing customer experience. The concepts of the mindset can be considered intangible. They can be about an inner drive and an ambitious effort to take care of the customer. Sometimes they can be intuitive. So, with that in mind, here are five concepts that will help create the customer-focused mindset:

The desire to take care of people – Not every employee has that mindset coming in. Even after basic customer service training, they may still not get it. Sure, they may understand the techniques to deliver service, but don’t get the essence. A customer-focused mindset includes the desire to serve.
Being in the moment – This is realizing when you are delivering a positive service experience. There are certain parts of delivering service that are natural and automatic, however people must be conscious of what they are doing and always looking for ways to make it better.
Know where the line in the sand is – An environment that fosters a customer focus mindset empowers people to do what is necessary to take care of the customer – without crossing the line. The boundaries are typically further out than most people think. Teach them, by example and story, how far your employees can go to take care of their customers – both internal and external customers.
Always learning – The best of the best are continuous learners – and not just about their own products and services. They learn about competitors, what’s the latest and greatest in the industry, and general knowledge about many things. They are interesting people to talk with and understand how to talk to customers the right way.
Recognizing the Awesome Responsibility – At any given time, one employee – the one who your customer is interacting with – has the responsibility to deliver an experience that is in alignment with your vision. This one person represents your brand and all his or her fellow employees. Does he or she deliver?

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

(Copyright © MMXVII, Shep Hyken)

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Amazing Business Radio: Gadi Shamia

Gadi Shamia Discusses the Latest Trends in Customer Service and How to Create a Better Experience

How can you use technology to create a better experience for your customers?

Shep Hyken interviews Gadi Shamia, COO of Talkdesk, about how you can improve your customer service.

First Up:

Shep Hyken’s opening comments discuss the company Talkdesk, their upcoming roadshow, and how to improve your customers’ experiences.

Featured Interview:

Shep Hyken interviews Gadi Shamia, COO of Talkdesk, about how you can improve your customer service. The interview begins with Gadi sharing some background on himself and  Talkdesk, a cloud based contact center platform that connects their support team to their customers. Gadi gives us the backstory on Talkdesk and shares some examples on how Talkdesk has improved upon existing technology to create a simpler cloud solution for support agents. That leads to a fascinating conversation about how technology has impacted customer service, and what tools and solutions you can use to make for a better customer experience.

Top Takeaways:

Make it easier for the customer. You need to ensure what you’re doing impacts the customer in a positive way. Provide self-service options for your customers.
Empower your team. – Using current technologies, we have the power to make customer information available to our teams to allowing them to assist the customer the best way they can.
Knowledge is power! We can’t teach empathy, but we can provide agents with more information so they can be empowered to understand the customer’s issue from the start.
Don’t deflect calls. If a customer is calling, take advantage of the opportunity to resolve the customer’s issue yourself. Do not send a customer to a website or a self-service option. Nowadays most customers only call when self-service options have already failed them, whether they couldn’t find the solution or they couldn’t understand the self-help option. This is your opportunity to connect with the customer and build a relationship.
Spend less on marketing and more on customer service. Once you get a customer through the door you can do a lot to retain them, which is much more cost effective than trying to always focus on new customers.

About:

Gadi Shamia is the Chief Operating Officer at Talkdesk, the world’s leading call center software start-up. Gadi has had much success throughout his career working for such great companies such as Adobe, SAP, and Reach Local – just to name a few.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert , “New York Times” best-selling author and your host of Amazing Business Radio.

“(Today most people use self-service options first) So, when you call customer service you don’t do it because you have to, you do it because self-service failed you.”  – Gadi Shamia

 

      

This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions … and more:

How do I empower my team?
How do I create better customer service experiences?
Should I have my phone system deflect calls to self-service options?
How important are self-service solutions?
Should I spend money on marketing or customer service?
What technology is there to help with customer experience?

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5 Top Customer Service Articles for the Week of August 7, 2017

Each week I read a number of customer service and experience articles from various online resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

Is The Customer Service “Department” Becoming Obsolete? by Mike Wittenstein

(TCFCR) Let’s face it, most Customer Service Departments were created, and still exist, to deal with a mismatch between customer expectations and what a business delivers. This mismatch can occur even when the organization does due diligence and thinks it knows what customers want.

My Comment: This is an interesting article with a provocative title: “Is the Customer Service Department Becoming Obsolete?” I highly doubt that the customer service department will ever be obsolete, but there is no doubt it is changing, for some of the reasons mentioned in this article (and more). The entire landscape of customer service and support is changing. My prediction is the big change won’t be about obsolescence, but importance. Customer service and experience are more important than ever, and that is a trend that will continue.

6 Lessons in Retail… from a Cheese Monger by John Boccuzzi

(LinkedIn) So the first question you might be asking is: what in the world is a cheese monger and what could they possibly teach me about retail, marketing and customer experience? Turns out: a lot.

My Comment: John Boccuzzi knows retail. In this short article he shares six lessons about customer service he learned from a cheese retailer. However, don’t think these lessons are limited to just retail. It’s all about service, the story, the way people feel when they interact with you and more. That’s applicable to any business in any industry.

How Brands Can Use Social Listening to Improve the Customer Experience by Smadar Landau

(Social Media Explorer) Social media listening is one of the most important b2b trends that businesses, especially the ecommerce space, has seen in recent years. The practice of monitoring the customer voice via social for complaints, praise and feedback is an incredibly effective tool for building on the customer experience and journey. An effective Social Listening strategy can provide a significant business advantage to an ecommerce or brick-and-mortar business, and build a great brand.

My Comment: This is a short, yet powerful article on another spin of the popular topic of social media. No doubt that social media is about interaction. However, the concept of listening is powerful. It is a way to gain insight from customers and an advantage over your competition.

Chatbots: Should you waste your time? Top Minds Chime in by Henry Foster

(Ignite My Company) Although chatbots have been around for a while, within the past year there’s been a surge in interest and usage. There have been more and more companies offering bot building services, website integrations, and developer tools.

My Comment: Chatbots are a hot topic. They are becoming more and more important in customer support and marketing. They are great for handling basic customer support functions, communicating with customers when a rep isn’t available and more. This particular article focuses on the Facebook Messenger chatbot and marketing. The author reached out to 14 experts to get their opinions.

4 Simple Yet Innovative Tips To Boost Customer Care (without sacrificing your tech budget!). by Neal Dlin

(LinkedIn) Here are 4 simple yet innovative tips that help change the way customer care operations are run and improve the customer experience for the better.

My Comment: This article is outstanding. Read it and if you are not already using the ideas shared in this article, the do so. I especially appreciate the first concept the author shares, which is to stop punishing honest customers for the crimes of a few – probably a very, very few. I also love his idea that employees are customers, too, and their journey should be mapped, just as you would a customer. Okay, there’s two out of the four. You’ll have to read the article to get the other two.

BONUS

Here’s a bonus. Not an article, but a video interview where Jeff Nicholson from Pegasystems was the host, and I was the guest. We talked about artificial intelligence and how many people don’t even know they have experienced AI. Jeff did a great job with the questions. Click here to watch the video.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or  www.hyken.com . For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to  www.thecustomerfocus.com . Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

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Guest Blog: The Evolving Nature of Digital Customer Experience – Are You Ready for the Future?

This week we feature an article by the Strategy Institute featuring insights on key Digital Customer Experience factors from different business leaders. A customized digital experience is your opportunity to connect with the customer as an individual. 

The continual advancement of digital technology is nothing new, yet providing an outstanding customer experience is now becoming more impossible to do without incorporating the latest digital elements into it. As Andrew Watson, Director of Customer Experience & Partner Marketing at Vivint, states “CX professionals have been pioneers in driving the digital backbone that now permeates the entire business ecosystem; inserting themselves into product development, policy making, marketing, operations and more”.

The following industry experts provide a number of different insights on key Digital Customer Experience factors and the potential impacts on the industry that could result.

Automation and Artificial Intelligence

Automation and artificial intelligence are adapting to serve many different customer experience needs, such as automated chat-bot responses that improve resource efficiency. Automation was the area that industry experts bought up most frequently and saw as the biggest change that is coming in the future.

Dutta Satadip, Director, Customer Success, Americas, Google says “I believe that Machine Learning will have a big impact on the future of customer experience. While computers will not replace humans we will be in a position to deliver better customer experience as technologies will be able to provide more assistance especially to problems that are pattern based.” Dan Gingiss, Senior Director, Global Social Media, McDonald’s emphasises however that “when customers need real help with complex problems, “bots” will most likely fail them, because there is not a replacement for human-to-human interaction. Companies that understand this will figure out how to integrate automation into the digital customer experience in a positive way for both the brand and the customer.”

If companies are going to be able to integrate automation into a company whilst also maintaining customer experience it is essential that it is seen as complimentary to the human skills the company already has. Finding this key balance will be critical to success.

Personalization

Personalization is becoming increasing important as customers crave individual experiences rather than cookie-cuter replies and solutions. As Andrew Watson puts it “ten years ago, companies had to focus primarily on delighting the most lucrative customer segment, whereas today we have the ability to craft a relationship strategy with all types of personalities, communication styles and preferences, and other data points.” Using all the newest ways to communicate with your customers at every touch point will ensure your relevancy but if you are able to offer these services in a personalized manner, it provides a great opportunity as a differentiator for your brand.

Alex Genov, Head of Customer Research, Zappos goes a step further and thinks companies should be “using new technological advancements to measure non-verbal expressions of emotion, such as facial expression, voice modulation, psychophysiological reactions, etc.” which is going to allow businesses to understand customers more as people which will allow the personalization process to go that step further.

Big Data

Companies are swimming in customer data and often have the tools to understand that data. However, Kristen Engelhardt, Vice President, Voice of the Customer, Salesforce questions that “data without the story behind it is just numbers. How will organizations drive an effective experience…?”. Companies must ensure they are using all of the intelligence tools available to them (such as big data analysis, predictive intelligence, and artificial intelligence) to truly understand their customer, utilize their data to its full potential, and ultimately to make the experience better for the customer.

Overall, the future of a successful digital customer experience will require proficiency in and the ability to leverage all of the above aspects (and more such as mobile, VoC, etc.) into a seamless process.

The above contributors will all be speakers at the 4th Annual Digital Customer Experience Strategies Summit at the Fairmont Chicago, IL September 19-20, 2017. The event is a one-stop-shop for all the freshest cross-industry insights into innovations in mobile, social, AI, personalization, VoC and big data. Speakers include Google, McDonald’s, Twitter, Verizon, Salesforce, Comcast and many more. To find out more about the summit please visit the website: www.digitalcustomerexp.com

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article:  How Brands Stay Classy In An Age Of Internet Trolls

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