Shep Hyken's Blog, page 193

5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of March 14, 2016

Each week I read a number of customer service 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.

Developing a customer-experience vision by Brooke Boyarsky, Will Enger, and Ron Ritter

(McKinsey & Company) To provide a distinctive experience for customers, an organization must unite around the goal of meeting their true needs. Done well, the effort can power a vast amount of innovation.

My Comment: This is an excellent article about creating your customer experience vision, and most importantly, focusing on what’s important to the customer versus what you (and others in your company) think is most important. There are several great examples, but one that stood out was the case study of the airport to help us understand what needs to go into the process of creating the vision and the pitfalls we need to avoid.

How Consumers Are Changing the Face of Customer Service [Infographic] by Jana Barrett

(Bizness Aps) Self-service has become the name of the game for the modern consumer. People now prefer seeking answers on the web—it minimizes the interaction necessary to resolve an issue and fits in this era’s mold, moving us toward increased automation and reduced human contact. This evolution in service preferences raises important questions about the future of customer service and how the man and the machine both fit into it.

My Comment: This article/infographic shows how the customer’s role in customer service is growing. Yes, their voice is louder than ever before (thanks to social media), but they are also playing an important part in the customer service process which is shifting from traditional service to include technology and self-service models. That said, as the article clearly points out, there will always be a need for human contact.

75+ Actionable Insights and Resources To Customer Success for SaaS Startups by Tara Thomas

(Nudgespot) Whether you are bootstrapping or have a budget to spend, think of this as an essential reading list. Here, you will get an idea of the various ingredients involved in creating Customer Success magic for your SaaS startup. The best part? You can dip into and find use for every step of the way.

My Comment: More than an article, this is really an amazing resource of tools and strategies. While the title of the article indicates the focus is on SaaS startups, I believe it shares many tips and resources that can be used by many different types of businesses. I even saw a couple of recommended tools that we currently used or have considered using in our business. Definitely worth a look.

What is customer experience? 18 industry experts weigh in by Spencer Lanoue

(User Testing) Customer experience clearly has a big impact. But what is customer experience, exactly? It’s become a widely-used phrase in the last few years, but the problem is there’s no commonly accepted definition. Each person you ask will give you a different explanation.

My Comment: So many times I’m asked, “What is Customer Experience (CX)?” Well, our friends at User Testing have put together a great resource of 18 industry experts who weigh in on the definition. As CX becomes more and more important, this is a good place to start to define what CX means to you and your company.

How to Use Positive Communication in Customer Service by Olga Kolodynska

(LiveChat) In this post I want to help you perceive different situations in customer service in a better way which will help you create positive thoughts and phrases.

My Comment: I believe that communication is one of the cornerstones of customer service. It’s easy to fix the problem of a broken product, cold food, an errant invoice, a lost shipment, etc. But if there is a breakdown in communication, well that may be the toughest problem to overcome. Bad communication causes a lack of confidence. This article has some great tips on how to communicate effectively and positively to your customers (and internal customers).

Shep Hyken is a customer serv ice 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: Why You Need to Answer Customers Everywhere

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post my colleague, Jay Baer writes about how customer complaints are an opportunity for you to turn complainers into advocates of your business. In Jay’s new book, “Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers,” he explains his “hug your haters” concept and why you should respond to customers in every channel. – Shep Hyken

The Hug Your Haters approach is to answer every complaint, in every channel, every time. But that almost never happens. Very few businesses make that level of commitment to customer service, feedback acquisition, and hater embrace. Why?

Why do we only answer some complaints, in some channels, some of the time? My interviews with more than 40 companies uncovered that one of the primary reasons why businesses today are not hugging their haters they feel like customers are overwhelmed by the number of channels.

Let‘s examine this and demonstrate how businesses of all sizes are overcoming the ever-increasing landscape of complaint venues. Whether you are a solopreneur, a five-person business, a 1,000-person business, or a 100,000-person business, the same rules apply, anywhere in the world.

Go where the customers are

The Internet gives us many wonders, including real-time weather forecasts, live-streaming entertainment, and a cornucopia of cat and critter antics on video. It also provides your customers many more venues to give you feedback. And they use these new options and alternatives every day, selecting one—and often several—based on convenience and circumstance. Research from Ovum finds that 74% of consumers use three or more channels when interacting with big companies for customer service issues.

Google reviews. Yelp. Twitter. Facebook. Instagram. Industry-specific reviews sites and forums. Few of these were a customer service factor even five years ago, and none of them existed 20 years ago. And now, a new breed of specialized messaging applications. In combination, these relative upstarts have a major impact on how the public perceives you and on the success of your business.

The balance of power has shifted to the customer

If it feels like this proliferation of new channels and venues has caused customer service to spiral out of control, your instincts are correct. Businesses simply cannot dictate the terms of customer interaction and hope that consumers will fall in line. The balance of power in the relationship between company and consumer has forever shifted toward the customer.

Jennifer Larsen is the senior director of brand and reputation at MaritzCX, a customer experience software and research firm. She describes the shift like this: “It‘s not about forcing your customers to deal with you the way that you want to deal with them. It‘s about dealing with your customers in whatever way they choose to interact with you.”

You may think you can continue to only interact with customers in offstage, legacy channels because your competitors aren‘t even doing that much.

Every company is your competitor

But in this era of information fluidity and instant mobile transactions, your competition isn‘t just the other companies that sell whatever you offer. Every company is your competition. Once we experience a standard of excellence, we begin to expect that same standard, circumstances or company policies be damned.

Frequent travelers like me epitomize how customer experience impacts our expectations. The first few times I was upgraded to first class on a flight for accruing loyalty points, I was overjoyed. Given access to limitless snacks and beverages creates a must eat and drink all the things psychosis and a pervasive sense of satisfaction and privilege. That feeling fades, though. Now, with loyalty points on par with the GDP of a small, island nation, flying without an upgrade creates sadness and suspicion of the lucky souls that made the cut. “There‘s no way that guy has more miles than me,” I declare (in my head) as I slink back to the cheap seats.

Your customers are experiencing the same thing. Once they taste the snack-binging power of a 24-hour Taco Bell, your decision to close at 9pm can be a real let down. Once they get free shipping both ways from Zappos, it becomes increasingly difficult for your business to insist on charging for returns. If their complaint is answered on Twitter, in five minutes, by a big company like Discover, are they going to give your business a pass when you choose to ignore complaints in social media?

It doesn‘t matter what you and your direct competitors are doing, or prefer to do in the realm of customer experience. The greatest businesses in the world are training your customers what to expect, and they will eventually demand that you also meet that standard.

An imperative for the future of your business

Embracing complaints and engaging with your customers everywhere isn‘t just an item on your to-do list . . . it‘s imperative for the future of your business. Remember that by 2020, customer experience will be more important than price. The longer you wait to hug your haters across all channels, the harder the evolution will be, because as you delay, even more channels are emerging.

“The channel explosion will likely continue accelerating over the coming years with an ever-increasing number of concurrent channels expected to be made available in order to provide a world-class customer experience,” says Bassam Salem, Chief Operating Officer of MaritzCX.

Stay on top in 10 hours a week

Scott Wise from Scotty‘s Brewhouse has already made this shift, and is committed to soliciting and answering customer feedback in every possible venue. “We scrub the Internet for all messages and comments and complaints from everywhere. For us, it‘s Urbanspoon and Yelp, and TripAdvisor. Also, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. You have to stay on top of everything that gets posted about you, anywhere it‘s posted,” he says.

Wise is a visionary and an early adopter. He strives to be the first business in his area participating in each new channel, as it emerges. As a result, he will never fall short of customers‘ expectations. He is an exception, of course, especially because he handles much of the customer interactions himself, dedicating 10+ hours per week to it, personally. But even if you have another person, or many people, in your organization responding, the channel proliferation will impact you.

“The channel shift is coming,” says Katy Keim from Lithium. “It just hasn‘t come yet as quickly as required to move funding, and internal processes. The early visionaries see it, and are doing it. But there are a lot of other people who are like, ‘Really? How important are these channels?’ And those people are going to be caught really flat-footed, and eventually be at a competitive disadvantage.”
Companies of all sizes often struggle to staff and support a new channel for customer interaction. Richard Binhammer was one of the pioneers of Dell‘s initial forays into social media customer care, and remembers the friction well.

How Dell set up a SWAT team

“Michael [Dell], was very cognizant of the fact that customers had access to more and more platforms. We were being mentioned everywhere, and it needed to be addressed wherever the customer was. But the customer service department said, ‘What do you mean? We already offer customers chat, email, telephone, and online forums. We have enough channels.’”

Binhammer and Dell solved this dilemma by simply going around the legacy customer service infrastructure, at least at first.

“We pulled some of the best and brightest people in the company and set up a SWAT team that functioned outside of the customer service department. We associated the social media SWAT team with the communications team and formed a new group called ‘communities and communications’ that was charged with helping customers in the support forums, but also finding discussions about Dell in blogs and social media and solving those problems,” recalls Binhammer.

Eventually, as the social media program took root and became successful (dramatically reducing negative online mentions of Dell, according to Binhammer), the program was turned back over to the customer service department, where it was integrated and is still managed today.

Addressing new channels with a special, dedicated team is a fantastic way to prove the business value of broad hater hugging without putting the operational onus on an existing group that may be dubious and wary.

Answer feedback everywhere

Your goal should be to follow Wise‘s lead and answer feedback everywhere. Eventually, you will do just that. But until then, be strategic and purposeful about which channels you use. Be very careful if you decide to experiment with a new channel. When you answer a few complaints here and there to “see how it goes,” that experimental dabble can look like a commitment to a customer, and the expectation of future responses can be unwittingly set.

Large-scale complaints and feedback that indicate significant operations problems or a crisis should be answered everywhere, always. For routine customer feedback and day-to-day haters, if you do not have the internal commitments and resources necessary to do it right and do it well, don‘t do it at all. You are better off publicly stating that you “do not answer customer complaints on DealerRater.com” than you are participating in the venue in a scattershot, inconsistent fashion.

Public, onstage customer complaints are an opportunity for your business to harness the attention of a laser-focused, interested audience and transform them into advocates. Above all, hugging your haters makes business sense.

Drawn from Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers, about which Guy Kawasaki says: “This is a landmark book in the history of customer service.” Written by Jay Baer, Hug Your Haters is the first customer service and customer experience book written for the modern, mobile era and is based on proprietary research and more than 70 exclusive interviews.

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

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article:

Self-Service Revolution Ignites The Customer Experience

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When the Customer Can Do Your Job Better (Or At Least Think They Can)

My friend from South Africa, Marcel Oudejans, a fellow speaker (and magician), asked how I felt about this comment:

“If the customer you’re serving thinks that they can do your job better than you, then you have a customer service problem.”

My response was simple: “You get it. Spot on!”

You’ve been there, I’m sure. As a customer, have you ever felt as if you could do a better job than the customer service rep you’re talking to? Unfortunately, we sometimes encounter customer support reps, as well as salespeople and others with customer facing responsibilities, who aren’t properly trained, are new and don’t have the experience or knowledge to make good decisions, or are just having a bad day. The result is frustration. We may lose confidence in the business and their people. And, the worst case scenario, we may choose to stop doing business with the company.

But, let’s turn this around. Let’s say that you are the customer service rep, and you are knowledgeable, helpful and very qualified to take care of the customer and answer his or her questions. Yet you encounter a difficult customer who thinks they can do your job better than you do. What can you do?

Perhaps you’ve tried using the techniques you’ve been trained to use in difficult situations. You’ve acknowledged the problem, apologized for it (even if it wasn’t your fault), suggested different ways to resolve the problem and also of great importance, you’ve remained calm. What else can you do?

Well, here is an idea worth considering. I call it Letting the Customer Wear Your Shoes. It’s a role reversal. You ask the customer this simple question:

Mr. or Mrs. Customer, I want you to help me understand what you think a reasonable solution might be. Imagine the roles here are reversed. If I was your customer and came to you with this problem, what do you think we should do to resolve the problem?

This powerful technique is not meant to be used at the beginning of the conversation. This is when you are having a difficult time with the customer, and virtually everything you suggest isn’t good enough.

Now be warned that this technique has a little risk to it. Even though it is a hypothetical situation, you are putting control in the customer’s hands. That said, it can help defuse anger and sometimes it helps the customer realize that their demands may be a little extreme.

So, keep this technique in your “hip pocket” for the next time you feel like you’ve exhausted all reasonable responses to your unhappy customers. It may be just what you need to resolve your customer’s problem.

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 © MMXVI, Shep Hyken)

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Amazing Business Radio: Anna Liotta

Anna Liotta on Understanding What Makes the Generations Tick and What Ticks Them OFF

Shep Hyken interviews Anna Liotta, author, award-winning speaker, creator of Generationally Savvy™ Communication Solutions, founder of Generational Institute, & CEO of Resultance. Anna talks about the different generations, giving great insights on how to understand the differences and how to apply that knowledge to better serve your customers. Everyone can benefit from learning to communicate with different generations. So if you want to better understand your customers and your employees this episode is for you!





Click here to listen and subscribe to Amazing Business Radio on iTunes.

“When we’re thinking about generations, we have to understand the code that drives their expectation around customer service.” – Anna Liotta

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5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of March 7, 2016

Each week I read a number of customer service 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.

3 Myths about Employee Recognition by John Boccuzzi, Jr

(LinkedIn) Obviously, Edible Arrangements® believes in the power of professional gratitude. For us, this belief is rooted in the reason we exist as a company and brand (to help others Celebrate What’s Good In Life™), but it’s also based on some truly compelling facts about the impact of employee appreciation. In honor of Employee Appreciation Day which will be celebrated this year on March 4th, I’m sharing three myths about employee recognition that might make you think differently about the importance of celebrating your team.

My Comment: This is a short article about employee recognition, which has a direct impact on the customer. I’ve bee preaching that what happens on the inside of a company is felt on the outside by the customer. A recognized employee can become an engaged employee, which could lead to better engagement with customers.

The Ultimate Guide to Customer Retention by Shaun Buck and Emily Fisher

(The Newsletter Pro) Customer retention is one of the most critical challenges facing businesses today. From Fortune 500 companies to mom and pop storefronts, profits and profitability depend on the ability to create, and keep, customers for life.

My Comment: This is a great article on customer retention, service and loyalty. While it is a showcase for the work that The Newsletter Pro does for their clients, it’s filled with some valuable advice. Definitely worth a read.

An A to Z Customer Service Checklist from the Front Line by Doug Sandler

(Doug Sandler) Without customers, your business would go bust. What may not be as obvious, however, is what your customers are expecting when they walk in your “door.” Whether your business is online or big box, if you are not scoring an A+ grade for frontline service, it’s time to go back to school and learn the A to Z’s of frontline customer service.

My Article: This excellent article I filled with 26 common sense tips (that aren’t always so common) that anyone who interacts with a customer should know and understand. As simple as some of these are, they will make bug impact with your customers.

24 Data-Backed Reasons Why Great Customer Support is Your Most Important Marketing Strategy by Robbie Richards

(JitBit) In this post, we’re going to look at 26 statistics that explain why great customer support is now the most important marketing and growth strategy for any business.

My Comment: If this article doesn’t convince you of the importance of delivering good customer service and support, nothing will. And even if you don’t need convincing, it’s a great article that will remind you of the reasons why we focus on the customer. It’s filled with some of the classic stats and facts that make the case for why customer service doesn’t cost. It pays!

Overpromise by Josh Linkner

(Josh Linkner) We’ve heard it a hundred times. “Under-promise, and over-deliver.” It’s one of those truisms that appears indisputable, right up with “the customer is always right” and “the early bird gets the worm.” But as one who enjoys balking traditional approaches, I respectfully disagree.

My Comment: We’ve all heard the expression “under promise and over deliver.” This is a great way to exceed expectations. Taking this to the next level is to “over promise.” This takes exceeding expectations to the next level, and it can set a company apart from its competition.

Shep Hyken is a customer serv ice 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 Power of Empathy in the Healthcare Industry

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post my colleague, Dr. Thomas Lee shares a patient experience that exemplifies what it takes to provide an Amazing patient experience. Many of the components of the patient experience, including empathy and consistency, are the same for all of our customer experiences. – Shep Hyken

What can business learn from healthcare about customer service and the customer experience?

In 2008, Cleveland Clinic CEO Dr. Toby Cosgrove set out to improve the patient experience at every turn. He appointed Dr. James Merlino as chief experience officer (CXO), and they decided that the foundation of the makeover should be to inject empathy into every facet of the patient experience, just as service at every point in a customer’s stay is the key to the success of world-class hotels such as the Ritz-Carlton.

The message that the leadership at Cleveland Clinic sent to their colleagues is increasingly widespread. Technical excellence is not enough. Safety is not enough. Efficiency is not enough. Clinicians have to be reliable in every way, including delivery of care that is empathic. Excellence means consistency in delivering care the way it should be—for every patient every time.

Clinicians can improve their ability to recognize patients’ negative emotions, concerns, and inner experiences so that they can explore those issues with the patient. These key skills focus on cognition, understanding, and communicating. Training gives caregivers practice in recognizing when patients are offering an opportunity for an empathic interaction by expressing emotions or worries. The caregiver can then respond empathetically, explore the issues, and convey understanding.

Empathic care is something that happens between clinicians and patients and often with patients’ families as well. If it is more like dancing than running for clinicians, it is dancing with new partners every 15 minutes. Patients and clinicians vary in their temperaments, and the fact is that we all vary as individuals from day to day and even from hour to hour. The result is that empathic care can seem like snowflakes: when you look at relationships between clinicians and patients, no two are exactly the same.

When I talk to doctors and patients about their relationships, I am often startled at the descriptions of their interactions. “My doctor has empathy in spades,” one woman said. We’ll call her Gloria. She was referring to her primary care doctor, an internist who is well known among her colleagues for her directness, which sometimes comes off as bluntness.

We’ll call her Dr. Smith. Here is the example Gloria provided:

“Several years ago, Dr. Smith found what seemed to be a large fibroid during my annual pelvic exam. She didn’t seem too concerned but suggested I have an ultrasound. I had the test on a Friday morning a few weeks later and left that afternoon for a long weekend in New York. When I came home the following Tuesday, there was a voicemail from Dr. Smith’s office asking me to come in that afternoon. I knew immediately that the ultrasound had found something serious.

“When I got to her office I expected the usual 15-minute wait, but Dr. Smith was at the reception desk to meet me. ‘When I saw your ultrasound results, I almost threw up,’ she said as soon as we were alone. ‘It’s ovarian.’”

“And that was empathy?” I asked.

“Exactly,” Gloria said. “Because I felt like I was going to vomit, too.”

Somehow Dr. Smith sensed that this was just the thing to say to Gloria at that moment. Gloria loved Dr. Smith for saying it; she took that comment to mean that Dr. Smith completely understood what she was feeling and was going to be on and at her side every step of the difficult path ahead.

Blunt though she can be, Dr. Smith knows what empathy is: understanding what another person is feeling and conveying that understanding. Dr. Smith’s reciprocal expression of nausea was a visceral statement that she understood what Gloria was feeling. Dr. Smith also sensed how this particular patient wanted to be treated. She knew that Gloria would rather be given a direct bolus of bad news than have it spoon-fed to her in bits and pieces.

Dr. Smith has a large and diverse practice. I can’t imagine that all her patients would like hearing that their test results made her sick to her stomach. What do Dr. Smith’s other patients think of her? In fact, her ratings are superb, pretty much the equivalent of perfect SAT scores. Perhaps she attracts patients who all want care of a certain style, but it is more likely that she knows how to deliver empathic care differently for different patients.

Dr. Smith is constantly adjusting what she does for and says to her patients. What stays the same is her reliability in making the effort to tune in to the needs of the person in front of her. It’s work—draining work, in fact—to do that. It’s art as well. And when it goes well, it is part of what makes medicine such a fabulous field in which to work.

Dr. Thomas Lee joined Press Ganey as Chief Medical Officer in 2013. As CMO, Tom is responsible for developing clinical and operational strategies to help providers across the nation measure and improve the patient experience, with an overarching goal of reducing the suffering of patients as they undergo care, and improving the value of that care. Tom frequently lectures on the patient experience and strategies for improving the value of health care, and has authored more than 260 academic articles and three books, Chaos and Organization in Health Care and Eugene Braunwald and the Rise of Modern Medicine. In November 2015, Tom released his third book, An Epidemic of Empathy in Healthcare: How to Deliver Compassionate, Connected Patient Care That Creates a Competitive Advantage, published by McGraw-Hill.

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

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article:

There’s No Traffic Jam On The Extra Mile

 

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Customers Are People, Not Numbers

Customer Support

It sometimes frustrates me, and I’m sure it does you as well, when you call to get customer support and you hear that recording, “Your call is very important to us. Please hold for the next available agent.” And, then they make their customers hold for a length of time that would make most people wonder if their call really was important to them.

Or how about when you finally do get to the customer support rep and they don’t treat you like a person. They are impersonal and treat you like an account number. They answer the call with a stoic and less than enthusiastic tone of voice and follow with a series of impersonal questions about your account number, the last four digits of your social security and your mother’s maiden name, only then do they ask what they can help you with.

It frustrates me when the customer service people act with apathy. Don’t they care about us? After all, aren’t we the people that pay their salary? Don’t they know what their job is? Here is my thought. Even though they were hired to answer questions and solve problems, they actually have a number of very important responsibilities.

They are hired to solve customer problems. Isn’t that what customer service people usually do?


They are role models for others to emulate. Good behavior leads to more good behavior. Unfortunately the opposite is also true. So, when employees step up and deliver a great service experience for their customers, it sets the example for others in the company. It has a contagious effect as others catch the passion that these excellent employees have for helping their customers.


They are brand ambassadors for the company they work for. This goes beyond the hours that employees spend at work. A brand ambassador is a 24/7 job. Never speaking badly of the company, these excellent customer-focused employees always take advantage of opportunities to talk up their employer.


They make their customers feel like customers. While any given customer may not be the biggest or most important customer that they have, they should never make the customer feel as if they are anything less than important. And for the few minutes they are interacting with their customer, they may make that customer feel like he or she is their most important.


They must restore confidence. This one may be the most important of all. Solving their customers’ problems is expected. The key is to do it in such a way that also restores confidence. That means with the right attitude, a sense of caring, empathy and urgency.

I spoke with Janet Poklemba, a customer experience manager for a home warranty company at a recent conference.  The company sells home warranty programs and when something breaks, customers call in to place a claim for service.  Her customer service mantra for her employees is simple and effective, and is the perfect way to sum up this short article:

We are people helping people, not people processing claims.  

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 © MMXVI, Shep Hyken)

 

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Amazing Business Radio: Neen James

Neen James Explains How Paying Attention Pays Off

Shep Hyken speaks with author, attention expert and keynote speaker, Neen James. They discuss the importance of paying attention, and how paying the right amount of attention to the right things can actually save both time and money. Learn how to disconnect when necessary and apply your attention appropriately to succeed in both your business and personal life. So stop multitasking and pay attention to this show!

Click here to listen and subscribe to Amazing Business Radio on iTunes.

“Attention is the evolution of productivity.” – Neen James

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5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of February 29, 2016

Each week I read a number of customer service 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.

Lexus – a beacon of customer centricity by Christopher Brown

(MarketCulture) Traditionally auto dealers have focused on each transaction – just getting a sale – and not on nurturing the long term relationships with their customers that will make them lifetime brand loyalists.

My Comment: Lexus is a great role model as a company that focuses on the customer and not the money from a sale. When you focus on the customer, the money follows. This article shows how Lexus is focused on the long-term relationship – the customer’s process – more than anything else. And, it pays off.

CMO Surveys: Customer Experience, Social and Technology Top of Mind by Mark J. Miller

(Brand Channel) When 723 CMOs talk, IBM listens. In its annual survey, “Redefining Markets: Insights from the Global C-suite Study—The CMO Perspective,” the company found that 63 percent of CMOs are sinking more dollars into customer experience this year. About that same number see industry convergence as the biggest business challenge they currently face. The latter is due to shifts in technology that allow entry into industries and audiences that weren’t easy to access before.

My Comment: Most C-level executives are in agreement that customer experience is going to be (and in many cases already is) the competitive differentiator – even more so than price. This study has some excellent information. Read the short article and then be sure to download the actual survey.

Customer loyalty 101: How small businesses can retain more loyal customers by Lauren Licata

(GoDaddy) There’s nothing quite like the rush of seeing new customers walk through your door. But without a strategy to retain these fresh faces, up to 50 percent of new customers will never return to your business. Considering that it costs five to seven times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, one-time customers, like one-hit wonders (Blue (Da Ba Dee), anyone?) are not very lucrative.

My Comment: The first stat in the first two sentences sums up the importance of this article: “There’s nothing quite like the rush of seeing new customers walk through your door. But without a strategy to retain these fresh faces, up to 50 percent of new customers will never return to your business.” The satisfied customer is not a loyal customer. This article has some stats, facts and ideas that every company (small or big) to pay attention to.

Four ways to treat your internal customers as well as your external ones by Sidharth Suri

(CustomerThink) It’s easy to streamline your process and cultivate company culture – by offering the same easy to use systems that you’d extend your front facing customers. Check out these four ways to treat your internal customers as well as your external ones.

My Comment: Too many times people (and companies) forget about their internal customer. Some people don’t always realize that other people depend on you to do their job, which may be to take care of a customer – or another internal customer. Either way, don’t forget that your internal customers are just as important as external customers. Maybe more so!

How To Become The Head Of Customer Experience by Jeanne Bliss

(Customer Bliss)There has been much talk in recent years about a C-Suite role for head of customer experience, or CCO — Chief Customer Officer. Even B2B brands, which traditionally focuses on sales rather than organic customer growth, are starting to adopt this head of customer experience role in droves. But how does someone become a head of customer experience? What makes them ideally qualified for the role?

My Comment: Jeanne Bliss is a customer experience rock star. She understands customer experience better than most. This short article showcases the top five traits of a good customer service expert.

Shep Hyken is a customer serv ice 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: Customer Service Begins With Teamwork At the Point of the Sale

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post my colleague, Tim Sanders introduces us to the concept of dealstorming, a secret weapon that can solve your greatest sales challenges. It’s important to listen to every member of your team, from every department, to provide excellent customer service which helps boost sales. – Shep Hyken

For the last fifteen years, I’ve been helping companies solve big sales challenges of all types: Winning new business, renewing accounts and retaining them when there is a crisis. My method of operation was always to create cross-departmental teams that harnessed the power of “group genius” through collaboration.

More than ever, it’s critical to put together what I call Dealstorm teams to answer the complexity of today’s business-to-business sale. Often there are many decision makers and influencers weighing in on the decision. Our products and services are laced with all kinds of technology, leading to a high learning curve and risk-of-failure.

In too many situations, sales organizations are insular: Conducting the entire sales process without conferring with service, marketing, operations, finance, etc., unless they need to have a question answered or gain permission for an exception to the rule. But this is not the way to win! Research by MHI Global found that the world class organization (which sells 20% more than their competition) have the habit of conscious collaboration across departments in pursuit of quality business deals.

When we put together a dealstorming team, we invited everyone who had a stake in the outcome or expertise about the problem we were facing. And in many situations, we invited the delivery and service team to help us frame the situation as well as the proposal. Not only did this approach triple our closing ration and reduce the sales cycle by 25%…it lifted long-term customer satisfaction.

You see, when sales brings in the operations and service team early on, they gain better insights about what the company can really do for the customer. By involving them in collaboration, it increases their engagement level, which can only lead to a more satisfied customer!

In several of my consulting arrangements, I was brought in to the company by the leaders in marketing, operations and customer service to use a stuck-deal or an account-in-danger as a crucible moment to reshape the corporate culture into true teamwork and not just silo-by-silo work. For many of them, it would take a game changing victory to help everyone in the organization learn that true sales genius is a team sport!

Tim Sanders is the author of the newly published, Dealstorming: The Secret Weapon That Can Solve Your Greatest Sales Challenges. You can download a free chapter here.

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

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article:

Love Your Customers, Hug Your Haters

The post Guest Blog: Customer Service Begins With Teamwork At the Point of the Sale appeared first on Shep Hyken.