Shep Hyken's Blog, page 218

5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of November 24, 2014

TOP CUSTOMER SERVICE AND BUSINESS ARTICLES

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.

6 Fashion Startups That Put Customers First by Nicole Fallon

(Business News Daily) Consumers are connecting with each other on social media and fashion blogs, drawing from various sources to find a look that’s literally and figuratively tailored just for them — and they expect retailers to deliver what they want.

My Comment: What can we learn about customer service from the fashion industry? Quite a bit! Love how there are six companies and how each of them share their “customer first” approach. From product quality, to feedback, to managing touch points and more, there are some good reminders of what most of us should do in our organizations.

With Customer Loyalty, It’s All About Customer Service by Susan Adams

(Dittman Incentive Marketing) Customer service and product quality are the two most important contributors to customer loyalty.  If a customer doesn’t feel they have been treated well or that the product or service did not live up to expectation, the relationship is broken. And it really does come down to just that: a relationship.

My Comment: I always love a good story that has a good customer service lesson. And, the travel industry provides us with a wealth of examples to learn from. Quality and customer service combined help to create loyalty, but the way someone (or an organization) recovers can take that loyalty to an even higher level.

Wow Your Customers With Killer Customer Service by Julie Bawden Davis

(OPEN Forum) Small businesses have a distinct advantage over larger ones when it comes to customer service. These 10 smart strategies will help you attract and keep your customers loyal.

My Comment: While this article focuses on ten ways that small business can compete (and win) against big business competition, just about any of these ten ideas will work for any business. Two of the ten that stand out may seem obvious, but we must constantly remind ourselves to put the customer first and make it easy to do business with you. Then surround that with a few of the other strategies and tactics and you’ll start to reap the rewards of repeat business from happy and loyal customers.

10 Ways Social Media Can Improve Your Customer Service by Vishal Pindoriya

(Sendible Insights)  Great customer service almost always leads to greater loyalty and more sales, so let me help you out and give you ten best practices that can improve your company’s customer service skills using social media.

My Comment: I’m still amazed at the number of companies that don’t take advantage of what social customer service has to offer. A company can react and fix a customer’s issue, get great feedback, share value added ideas and suggestions, see what the competition is doing for their customers and more. The first step is to accept that social customer service is a viable customer service strategy. The next step is to go beyond just reacting to customer comments and take advantage of what social service can offer. It’s a relatively inexpensive business strategy that returns big dividends for the time and money that is invested.

15 for 2015 – Customer Service Trends by Richard Shapiro

(Richard R. Shapiro) A new year is approaching and time to tap into what’s here and now.  What should your company focus be to make it the best?  All businesses, any size, any industry should examine some of the trends I see.

My Comment: There will be a lot of lists that have fifteen ideas, strategies, concepts, etc. for 2015. This is the first one I’ve read as we approach the end of the year, and there are some excellent ideas here about what lies ahead in the world of customer service.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact (314)692-2200 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: Two Ways to Improve Customer Service

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post, my colleague John Smart shares reasons why your customer service may not be working. I especially like the idea of customers and employees having a sense of ownership.  - Shep Hyken

If I was asked to choose the top two tips from all the, ‘10 of the…’, ‘8 Ways…’, ‘The 12 absolute…’ lists, guides, acronyms that you come across within Customer Service I would choose:

Apply the message within Maya Angelou’s (American Poet, 1928-1914) quote: ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’  Hear lies the key within customer service: it’s how you make people ‘feel’.  We always remember good and bad customer experiences through our memory, and these recalls invoke the feelings we felt at the time.  So, to ensure a good, positive customer experience we have to ensure that our behaviours, attitude and environment provide a pleasant experience for the customer.
‘Seek first to understand, then be understood’ – Stephen R. Covey, 5th Habit of his ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’. Ensure you know what the customer wants, by understanding their perception, expectation and reality. Only having understood these can you then go onto deliver on their expectation, or manage their expectation.

5 Reasons Why Your Customer Service is Failing

The 5 key areas that I have come across when speaking to clients, as well as running customer service workshops with regards to failing customer service would be:

By not applying the top two tips above!
Becoming over complacent, and not respecting your customer.
Not delivering, or not following up, or explaining why you couldn’t deliver.
Rudeness, bad manners and being un-professional.
Not taking ownership of the issue, which is, leaving the customer with the feeling that they are on their own or the problem is theirs entirely. We have to remember that the key word in customer service is ‘service’ – i.e. ‘’the action of helping or doing work for someone’.  Somehow, this message in some organisations seems to have crossed purposes in training! In some situations you are often made to feel that the person providing the service is doing you a favour – and that should be eternally grateful! Again, we can see how strong Maya Angelou’s message is – because this is all about how you make people feel. By showing willing, eagerness to help or just easing their mind makes their experience so much better.

In essence, the principles within the book: ‘PROUD: Achieving Customer Service Excellence’, encapsulates all the above.

John Smart is the author of ‘PROUD – Achieving Excellent Customer Service’. He is a development consultant, running his own consultancy, through which he has gained many years of customer service development and delivery within a diverse array of industries.

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

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One of the Secrets to Amazing Customer Service: Attitude

Customer Experience

Just recently I was asked to come into a small executive meeting with just twelve people to talk about customer service. With this intimate group, I wanted to be a little more interactive; a dialogue with the audience, versus a monologue or speech. At one point I had the executives split into two groups of six. One group was asked to discuss the best customer service experiences they had ever received. The other group would discuss the worst experiences.  After ten minutes, each group would share one example; the best of the best and the best of the worst.

Coincidently, both examples came from restaurants.  The group with the great example of customer service shared the story about the server who went above-and-beyond. Apparently a guest wanted a particular brand of beverage that the restaurant didn’t have. The server called his wife and asked her to go to the grocery store and bring it to the restaurant. The guest was surprised and delighted, not only to get the drink of choice, but with the effort the server went through to take care of her.

The other example, as mentioned, also took place in a restaurant. This server wasn’t at all engaged with the guests. He was just going through the motions. It appeared that he didn’t really want to be there. There were several examples shared about how bad his customer service was. He didn’t seem to care that the guests had to wait. There was a problem with one of the meals and he showed no urgency in getting it taken care of. Everyone was finished with their dinner when the problem entrée finally came out. And, then it was still wrong. There was no sincere apology or an offer to buy the guest a drink or dessert, let alone take the meal off of the check. The person sharing the example was so frustrated that he didn’t even care to argue about taking the meal off of the check. He just wanted to leave.

After both stories were told, I emphasized that there was something in common between these two stories and asked them if they knew what it was. I said it all came down to one word. It didn’t take long before everyone realized what that one commonality was… Attitude.

In the example of the good service, it really was the attitude of the server. The server had a what-ever-it-takes attitude. He was pleasant and happy to serve his guests.

In the example of bad service, even though one of the meals was wrong, the problem really started with a bad attitude from the moment the guests sat down. Disengagement, apathy and no sense of urgency contributed to the guests’ bad experience.

Sometimes customer service is simply about attitude; a good one and a bad one. Situations can be saved or ruined by the right or wrong attitude. It’s simple. Attitude is a choice.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact (314)692-2200 or  www.hyken.com . For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to  http://www.thecustomerfocus.com . Follow on Twitter:  @Hyken

(Copyright ©MMXIV, Shep Hyken)

 

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5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of November 17, 2014

TOP CUSTOMER SERVICE AND BUSINESS ARTICLES

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.

Customer Experience and Customer Loyalty – So Close – Yet So Far Away by Nicole Hamilton

(Loyalty 360) When it comes to customer experience and customer loyalty, the two are closely connected and yet brands often struggle with how to integrate them effectively.

My Comment: The customer experience drives customer loyalty. It’s not rocket science. The reason you want to provide better customer service and a better customer experience is that you hope the customer comes back and tells others about their experience. The stats and facts in this article support the case to increase the customer’s rating of the CX, which in turns, increases loyalty, reduces defection and more.

How to turn your visitors into brand ambassadors by Kevin Allen

(Ragan’s PR Daily)  In just four easy steps you take someone from casual visitor to your online properties to a bona fide brand ambassador who inspires others to share in their love of your brand. What are those four easy steps? It’s in the infographic from Seychelle Media.

My Comment: It is said that customer service and experience is the new marketing. I agree. This great infographic breaks down the concept of creating word-of-mouth marketing and brand ambassadors into four basic steps. Looks simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy – but so worth the effort!

How to redesign your organisation around excellent customer experience by Ben Davis

(Econsultancy) Here’s how you can take a fresh look at customer experience in your organisation.

My Comment: The success of your customer experience shouldn’t happen by accident. It should be planned and designed. This article has some excellent points about the process of designing a purposeful customer experience.

Focus On Keeping And Growing Your Existing Clients by Kevin McKeown

(Above the Law) Here are some practical strategies from client-retention expert Ross Beard that will help you improve client retention and raise your bottom line.

My Comment: I love this article, as it is filled with plenty of stats and facts that support the important strategy of growing your business by creating customer loyalty.

How Winning Brands Define Customer Experience by Lori Alcala

(CMSWire) Although many companies are still struggling to define and measure customer experience (CX), those that spread responsibility for CX across the organization, as well as concentrate on measuring long-term strategies, see a significant jump in sales and revenue, new research reveals.

My Comment: The old saying in business that you can’t manage what you don’t measure comes to mind. The companies who focus on customer experience have a clear definition of CX and measure. If you’re not already doing this (or working toward it) you will end up playing catch-up with your competition.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact (314)692-2200 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: Navigating the Weeds

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post, my colleague Steve Curtin talks about what to do when we feel overwhelmed with customers who demand immediate attention. He shares some great tips to handle these delicate situations.  - Shep Hyken

Sometimes, through no fault of your own, you find yourself overwhelmed by demanding customers who may feel entitled to immediate attention. Maybe a large tour group just arrived at your hotel or restaurant, or you are short-staffed due to job vacancies, call-offs, or lean scheduling – and a line is starting to form…

In these instances, even careful planning and preparation may not result in the seamless service you would like to provide to all of your customers. But there are ways to achieve stellar service even when faced with long lines and impatient customers:

Acknowledge the customer. Make eye contact and nod. A customer may feel anxious if you don’t acknowledge his presence, especially if other customers are also waiting to be served. Many delicatessens and service counters alleviate this anxiety by issuing numbers and serving customers in order.

Smile – a lot! Customers can easily detect tension in your body language. When they do, it may make them feel anxious and uncomfortable. A perennial UCLA communications study suggests that 55 percent of one’s likeability comes from the visual effect: her body language. Saying “I’ll be with you in just a minute” with a serious or critical expression on your face sends a far different message than if the same words were said through a smile.

Communicate early and often. Most customers will understand delays and other setbacks if there is adequate communication during the wait. Flight delays are a classic example. When there is adequate and reliable communication between gate agents and passengers, then passengers can make use of the delay to work, shop, dine, etc. It’s when the communication is inadequate that passengers become restless and upset because they are unable to venture from the gate area for fear that the plane will leave without them.

Re-deploy and cross-utilize staff. Apple Stores do a great job with this. If you need help on the sales floor, reps are there. When you are ready to buy, there is no line to wait in because the same rep can complete the purchase transaction with his hand-held payment device. Is your product stocked in the backroom? Don’t worry about a lengthy wait in some line. He will retrieve it for you personally.

Entertain. Disney does a magical job of entertaining its customers while they wait in long lines to experience rides or other attractions. By having characters interact with park guests or providing overhead flat screen television sets designed to entertain, prepare, and engage the guest while they wait, Disney effectively reduces the perceived wait time for its guests.

Freebies. I once waited in a long line at a Starbucks store in Virginia. When I finally received my latte, the barista also handed me a free drink coupon. It was a nice touch. Most often, when customers wait in long lines, they feel helpless and taken for granted. In this case, I felt appreciated that my wait had been recognized and deemed unacceptable by the staff.

While it is impossible to anticipate every variable that contributes to an operation being “in the weeds”, there are times when planning is the difference between exceptional and poor service quality. For instance, if you are expecting a large group because of an advance reservation then staff accordingly – even when this requires some creativity (e.g., reallocating staff from other departments or locations, utilizing temporary labor, etc.).

Maybe it’s not a staffing issue. Perhaps it’s a logistical issue. If so, anticipate the processes that you will need to address before the group arrives. In the hotel industry, that may be the arrival process (i.e., guest registration, baggage handling, etc.). A restaurant may suggest a prix fixe menu that will streamline the ordering process, resulting in more efficient table service during the event.

Most businesses benefit from receiving lots of customer traffic. When the traffic comes, remember to apply these useful tips. Whether the volume is anticipated or not, you must be prepared to address and serve your customers in ways that reflect the service priorities of your business.

After a 20-year career with Marriott, Steve Curtin now speaks, consults, and writes about raising customer service quality from ordinary to extraordinary. Learn more: www.stevecurtin.com

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

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How to Manage Hold Times During the Customer Experience

Customer Service Solutions

One of the worst friction points in a customer service experience is when a customer is put on hold. This is the exact point I wanted to convey to an audience at a recent meeting at which I was asked to speak. My client asked me to include a piece on hold times and transfers. I tried an interesting experiment. I invited the vice-president of marketing to the stage in the middle of the speech to deliver a special message. He walked on stage to a nice round of applause. He took center stage and looked at the audience. Once the applause ended, he just stood there in silence, and that silence was, as they say, deafening. He continued to look out into the audience, not uttering a single word, for 90 seconds. The audience became very uncomfortable. I then came back on stage, thanked him and asked the audience to give him a round of applause as he walked off stage.  The audience wasn’t sure what had just happened.

I asked the audience how long he had been on stage. Many of them said three or four minutes.

No, it was just 90 seconds. It just seemed longer. I then informed the audience that 90 seconds is the average hold time the customer experiences when they call in. Point made. They got it. Even just 90 seconds is way too long to wait, especially for a company that prides themselves on an excellent customer service experience.

In preparing for this article, we connected with Steven Coufel of Software Advice who shared some stats and facts that one of his colleagues, Craig Borowski, included in the article You Need to Offer Callback-Here Are 3 Ways to Get It. They surveyed more than 1,100 customers to get their take on being put on hold or being called back.

60% of customers feel that waiting on hold for just one minute is too long.
63% of consumers prefer a callback option instead of waiting on hold.
43% expect a callback from the company within 30 minutes.
28% would prefer a callback rather than even spend a minute on hold.

With all of that info, what are we to do? Fear not, there are solutions. While they still place the customer on hold, they help manage the experience and mitigate, if not even eliminate, the angst and anger. Here are a few:

Let the customer know how long they will have to hold. Technology has the capability of letting the customer know how long the wait will be.
Give the customer an option to be called back. I like this one. The technology will actually tell me how long before I’ll get the call-back.
And, the Holy Grail of call backs; letting the customer choose when they want to be called back. Cool technology.

I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to waste time on hold. I appreciate the callback feature and am typically disappointed when I have to hold and there isn’t a callback option when I call for help or support. The technology is there. And it’s not that expensive. There are no more excuses. Either answer the phone or call me back.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact (314)692-2200 or  www.hyken.com . For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to  http://www.thecustomerfocus.com . Follow on Twitter:  @Hyken

(Copyright ©MMXIV, Shep Hyken)

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5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of November 10, 2014

TOP CUSTOMER SERVICE AND BUSINESS ARTICLES

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.

Top 20 Sales Tips for Happy Customers, Management and Staff by Patrick Avenell

(Appliance Retailer) Most of the following ‘tips’ I’ve learned first-hand, from the many wonderful owners and managers with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working, and quite a few came to me via a kind of osmosis. And, yes, sometimes I have taken a tip from poor managers, by doing the complete opposite!

My Comment: I love a good list of business tips. And, you don’t need to be in sales to reap the benefit of this wisdom. These practical and common sense tips apply to just about anyone that wants to take great care of their customers.

How Olark manages to get their entire team involved in customer support by Alice Default

(Front) You must know we’re big fans of customer support here at Front. And since we’re always curious about the subject, we went to ask our friends at Olark how they managed to pull off a kick-ass customer support all around. Their secret: all-hands support.

My Comment: Olark is a great example of how customer service becomes engrained into the culture of the company. I love their story and their concept of “All Hands Support,” which gets everyone involved in supporting the customer.

B ike shop service aids author’s trip by Mark Ambrogi

(Current in Carmel) What started as Jim Serger wanting to get back on a bicycle for a good cause turned into writing a book about a store’s exemplary customer service en route to his journey.

My Comment: I love a good customer service story, and this story reminds us of the importance and the power of putting the customer first – ahead of the sale!

Customer Service is Everyone’s Job by Tricia Morris

(Parature) A continuing problem with customer service today is that many view it as a job for the few (the customer service department), when in fact it is a role for all.

My Comment: Customer service is not a department. It is a philosophy, and should be embraced by every person in a company from the CEO to the most recently hired. The best companies are now embracing the “All for One (Customer)” strategy. This article from my friends at Parature remind us how important it is to recognize that customer service is everyone’s job.

3 Simple Alternatives To Saying No by Jeremy Watkin

(Communicate Better) I recently ordered some of my favorite Clif brand energy gels from one of my favorite running supply websites.  They are always extremely quick at delivering my shoe orders so I figured I might as well order my fuel and other accessories from them. Price being the same, I actually gave them the nod over Amazon—a company I have a major crush on.

My Comment: Sometimes you have to say no. You can be out of stock, the request can be illegal (yikes), or you just can’t do it. That said, here are three great ways to deal with having to say no.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact (314)692-2200 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 New Customer Service Talent Show

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post, my colleague Barry Dalton writes about a shift from reactive customer service to proactive customer engagement. I have always believed that proactive service has been a good strategy – providing great service before you are asked to do so.  - Shep Hyken

Many of the most progressive companies are blazing a path forward with new business models and technology to support a shift from reactive customer service (solve my problem) to proactive customer engagement (insure I don’t have any problems…or at least anticipate and minimize them).

This shift to proactive customer engagement has far-reaching implications across the enterprise. Too many to explore with any meaning in one blog post. So, since I’m sitting here in a contact center, lets dive into what that means here. For one, just when some of us old-schoolers have started to get their arms around the shift in terminology from “call center” to “contact center”, we now need to focus on this transition to the customer engagement hub. Yes. In this case, a name is not just a name. It is a vital element in supporting the enterprise shift to proactive customer engagement.

Proactive, predictive, multi-channel, cross-channel, omni-channel. In this human-capital intensive function within the enterprise, I’m wondering how all this is impacting your customer service human capital strategy? The skill profile of the omni-channel customer engagement center representative is certainly different from that of the single-channel phone or email agent. So too are the methods by which the customer engagement hub will acquire these human capital assets. The days of recruiting, staffing and deciding whether or not to outsource this function based solely on cost are long past. Customer and enterprise stakeholder demands of the engagement hub are rising at a steady rate.

The complexity of this environment is not the only contributor to the need for a broader and deeper set of skills. The ever-increasing public exposure of both service successes and epic service failures leaves no place for poor service to hide. No longer is it even nimally acceptable for customer service agents to mechanically read from a script, capture some call notes and insure that the 53 elements of the quality form have been adhered to. Customer service representatives have to be effective communicators. Be able to think on their feet. Be analytical. And, possess sound judgment in order to do the right thing for the customer and the company. Oh, and the organization needs to create a culture that empowers these front line troops to do all this. But that’s another story.

In addition, the customer engagement hub, through this lens, is fast becoming one of the focal points in the enterprise for not only collecting, but aggregating and analyzing the exponential growth in customer data. Customer engagement professionals will need the skills to analyze and deliver actionable insights to various data consumers across the enterprise. No longer is it sufficient to produce a static call reason report and blast it out in email. Not if customer service is to rise to a strategic level on par with finance, sales, marketing, product development or other more traditional “knowledge capital” functions.

So, where is this new breed of customer engagement professional going to come from? What does that hiring profile look like in your organization? How are you going to identify those current customer service reps with the potential to take on this new role? What are the new training requirements? Methods? Compensation models? What does this do to the financial justification for customer service? It is certainly a different justification process.

Is customer service the new marketing? Or is it marketing is the new customer service? Perhaps this is how marking and customer service finally get engaged…and tie the knot.

Barry Dalton is consumed with anything customer experience, loyalty, CRM, social business and technology. In his current day job, he works with clients to transform their multi-channel customer experience into a competitive differentiator. As an open networker, you can reach out to him on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook. Barry blogs regularly on these topics at his site BarryDalton.com

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

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Use Self-Service Technical Support to Get Great Answers to Tough Questions on Your Own

Frequently Asked Questions

Recently I wrote about the self-service concept of customer service. The article focused on self-serve check-out at retail stores, purchasing airline tickets online, and more. This time we cover a related topic, which is self-service support. 

Last year I bought a Ping-Pong table and had the hardest time putting it together. After several frustrating hours I tried calling the phone number on the instructions. Bad news. Their help hours are typical business hours; 9-5 Monday through Friday. When do most consumers purchase and build their Ping-Pong tables? On evenings and weekends. Not during the typical work day. So, on a whim, I turned on my computer, went to YouTube and typed in the name and model number of my Ping-Pong table, and lo and behold, there was a video of how to put it together. An hour later, the project was done.

Self-Service Support is becoming more and more wildly accepted. Not just accepted, in some cases it is preferred. This is especially true with technical support issues. It’s easier to do a quick online search, either via Google, Bing, YouTube – or even on the company’s own website. Some companies have created a “knowledgebase” for customers to search and get quick answers to their questions.

I recently talked with Ben Puzzuoli of Cayzu Helpdesk who shared some interesting stats and facts about self-service support. For companies that use his solution, 50% of customers opt out of the traditional help-ticket request because their auto-suggest technology matches the user’s question to a solution in the knowledgebase. That saves the company a lot of money. How much? According to McKinsey & Company, the average cost of a phone interaction is $6.00, an email is $5.00 and Live Chat is $5.00. Those dollars add up.

So a good knowledgebase self-service support system can save a company money, is many times faster for the customer, and is available to that customer 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Just about any company can create a knowledgebase of frequently asked questions. Prominently display the link to the knowledgebase wherever appropriate, especially the website, with the goal of moving customers away from the phone or other labor and cost intensive channels.

All of this is great, until the customer doesn’t feel the question is being answered or the problem isn’t getting resolved. Then, it’s back to the more traditional support methods; phone, support tickets, email, etc. And you had better be good at it, because by the time the customer gets to you, they are ready for answers, not long wait times.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact (314)692-2200 or  www.hyken.com . For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to  http://www.thecustomerfocus.com . Follow on Twitter:  @Hyken

(Copyright ©MMXIV, Shep Hyken)

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5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of November 3, 2014

TOP CUSTOMER SERVICE AND BUSINESS ARTICLES

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.

Track Customer Experience, but Don’t Forget the Financials by Bill Fotsch

(HBR) Businesses are always on the hunt for customer feedback. They e-mail us surveys. They ask us to stay on the phone after a service call to rate the interaction. Many rely on metrics such as the Net Promoter Score to track how customers feel about them. The most disciplined firms not only exploit the data to identify problems with their products and services but also get everyone on staff involved in fixing them.

My Comment: There’s an old saying that customer service doesn’t cost. It pays. No doubt that customer focused companies enjoy repeat business and loyal customers spend more on average, so it’s worth spending time, effort and dollars on customer service. Let the people in charge of the numbers (finance) prove it to the rest of the company.

Exceptional Customer Service Affects Small Business Profitability by Scott Moyer 

(Huffington Post) Creating positive customer service experiences will inspire emotional responses toward a business, including trust, gratitude and loyalty, and through word-of-mouth, every customer has the potential to become a brand advocate and increase profitability.

My Comment: Training, employee appreciation, measurement, customer care/empathy and the personal touch; these are a few of my favorite customer service strategies! Big company or small, these strategies and tactics are paramount to any company’s customer service strategy.

Steve Jobs Said it Best, Start with the Customer Experience by Oliver

(Surveypal) I was reminded of the importance of the customer experience while I was watching this video of Steve Jobs at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in 1997. In the video, Jobs appears to be responding to an attack, but is actually doing something much more interesting. He thinks carefully and makes a critical philosophical point about his – and Apple’s – approach to creating new products.

My Comment: Steve Jobs was the master at understanding what the customer wanted – even before the customer knew he or she wanted it. This short article and great video are an excellent reminder to some of what Steve Jobs taught us about how to be successful in business.

Want to Keep Your Customers? Be Proactive by Nicole Fallon

(Business Daily News) What happens when you lose a customer? If you think you can just ramp up lead generation to compensate, you may want to reconsider. According to research by client engagement tool CLIENTpulse, it costs five times less to keep an existing customer than it does to gain a new one.

My Comment: All the stats indicate that it is far less expensive to keep customers than to acquire new ones. So, why don’t more companies remember this? This article is a great reminder of this very important concept.

16 questions every true customer-driven startup should be able to answer by Aki Kalliatakis

(Ventureburn) The evidence is in: Customer-driven companies are far more successful than those that neglect their customers. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the ROI of customer management is that your business will still be around in five years to talk about it. But what is it that makes one company stronger than its rivals? Is there a checklist of factors that can be used to benchmark your startup?

My Comment: These questions are great. And, while the title of the article infers that the questions are good for customer focused start-ups, I can’t think that any company – start up or mature – couldn’t use these questions to remind themselves of the importance of being customer focused.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact (314)692-2200 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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