Shep Hyken's Blog, page 241
May 20, 2013
5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of May 20, 2013
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 Service Tips from the Worst Employer by Mary Nestor-Harper
(Beyond.com) Winning loyal customers is about building honest, respectful, trusting relationships. Why should it be different when the customers are your employees? Drawing from lessons from Dan Sullivan, a business coach, he lists four principles as key to delivering excellent internal customer service. Not surprisingly, they are basic things you’d expect from an employee.
My Comment: This short article has some excellent ideas on how to treat your employees the way you want your customers treated. It really isn’t that difficult; show up on time, be polite, do what you say you will do and follow through. Isn’t that the way everyone (customers and employees) should be treated?
How Enterprise Leaders Like Bill Marriott Create Customer Loyalty by Robert Reiss
(Forbes) The quotes below reinforce that everything is about delivering for customers — and that starts with people focused organizations who use behind the scenes technology to make the customer experience seamless.
My Comment: When three leaders of three great organizations share their wisdom, I listen – or read – what they have to say. We can all learn a thing or two from this excellent article on creating customer loyalty.
Brands have been built on customer service: Jim Bush by Sudipto Dey
(Business Standard) Interview with executive vice-president (world service), American Express. When you move from customer servicing to customer engagement, you develop a value generating asset for the company, Bush tells Sudipto Dey.
My Comment: When Jim Bush talks about customer service, we should take notice. He has done amazing things at American Express, turning the company’s customer/member service reputation into one of the premier companies in the world. Great interview and great insights from one of the customer service icons in the business world.
Secrets for Exemplary Customer Service by Debbie Laskey
(Debbie Laskey’s Blog) I reached out to my 20 favorite customer service experts on Twitter and asked them, “If you could share one secret for creating exemplary customer service, what would it be?” Here are their insights.
My Comment: These 20 tips on creating exemplary customer service are… exemplary! Honored to have a tip included in this list of some very notable customer service experts. There is something here for everyone and every business.
What Zappos Taught Us About Creating The Ultimate Client Experience byBarry Glassman
(Forbes) Experience, they say, is the greatest teacher. So when the Glassman Wealth Services’ team gathered to talk about how we could improve our own clients’ experience, I wanted them to have an excellent example fresh in their minds.
My Comment: The idea in this article is brilliant. Be it Zappos or another company recognized for great service, let your employees experience amazing service first hand from a customer service and experience superstar. Then debrief the experience and take what you learned and implement into your own organization.
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 ©MMXIII, Shep Hyken)
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May 15, 2013
Customer Service Tool: Consistency
Consistency Isn’t Part-TimeIt’s the same every time, never changing. Day in and day out, it’s always the same. Sound boring? It’s not when it comes to consistency in delivering customer service – especially if it’s good customer service. It should always be the same. The customer should be able to count on it,
Customer loyalty is based on this concept. If you want to build intense customer loyalty, in addition to all of the customer service you deliver, you must also be predictably consistent.
Brand loyalty depends on three interrelated quality service experiences:
Brand Loyalty Prerequisite Number One – Product Quality: First and foremost, the product or service has to work. That’s really no surprise. If the quality isn’t there, you’re in trouble.
Brand Loyalty Prerequisite Number Two – Customer Service: This is about how well you deliver the product or service you sell. It doesn’t have to be an over-the-top WOW experience. It just needs to be above average – even just a little above average.
Brand Loyalty Prerequisite Number Three – Consistency: The customer has to have confidence that one and two will happen. In other words, there has to be consistency. Confidence comes when the customer knows what to expect, and gets it every time. Their experience becomes predictable.
All three of these are interrelated. No matter how good the customer service you provide, if what you sell doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, the customer will eventually find another place to do business. And, if the product is great, but the service is lousy, then the customer will eventually find a place that makes them feel better about their purchase. If there is inconsistency in product quality or customer service, the customer loses confidence because they don’t know what to expect.
Consistency doesn’t mean you never have a problem. It means your customers can count on you if there ever is a problem. The best companies aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. But they are excellent on their recovery.
The bottom line is that inconsistency, mismanaged, causes a lack of confidence. It’s a loyalty killer. The opposite however, is a brand booster.
There was an online review from a customer that did business at an Ace Hardware store in Washington, DC. What the customer wrote sums up exactly what you want your customers to say about you:
“I want to know how these guys hire their staff. I’ve been going there for three years, and every single time I’ve been in – about three dozen times – I’ve received excellent customer service.”
Consistency isn’t part time. It’s all-of-the-time. If you want to create customer loyalty you must… Amaze Every Customer Every Time.
NOTE: This article is based on one of the tactics from Shep Hyken’s upcoming book Amaze Every Customer Every Time: 52 Tools for Delivering the Most Amazing Customer Service on the Planet, which appears in stores everywhere in September 2013. Preorder the book and get valuable extras at www.AmazeEveryCustomer.com.
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 ©MMXII, Shep Hyken)
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May 13, 2013
5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of May 15, 2013
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.
Servicing the Internal Customer by Keren Peters-Atkinson
(Monday Mornings with Madison) Unfortunately, internal customer service is even more replete with bad service. Yet, the internal customer is as important as the external customer. Why is that and how does one go about improving a company’s internal customer service?
My Comment: Too many companies don’t think enough about the internal customer. It’s this simple: Treat employees the way you want your customer treated – maybe even better. What’s happening on the inside is being felt on the outside by the customer. This excellent article is a great reminder of the importance of serving your internal customer.
Journey Mapping Helps Organize Around Your Customers By John Abraham
(CMS Wire) Customer journey mapping is a straightforward but powerful tool to help companies organize around the customer. The core idea is to describe what the customer experiences when doing business with your company, from the customer’s point of view.
My Comment: Success doesn’t happen by accident. It takes planning, and one of the best ways to plan out a company’s success with their customers is with a journey map. The “map” analyzes all of the interactions the customers have with the company, and helps everyone in the company understand how they impact these customer interactions.
10 Things Every Customer Wants by Geoffrey James
(Inc.) Surprisingly, the best price and best value is at the bottom of the customer’s priority list. See what’s at the top.
My Comment: Depending on the type of business you are in, at least one – if not all – of these ten items are what your customers want. As a matter of fact, they are also what your employees want.
How to Calculate Customer Experience by Rob Carpenter
(Evergage) When you start measuring CX, you’ll notice something – your investments not only produce a return because they generate new business or bigger sales, but also because they save you money.
My Comment: Data from measurement gives you the information you need to make good decisions. This article give us some insight into how to measure customer experience.
Building Loyalty The Lady Gaga Way: Focus On 1% Of Your Customers by Jackie Huba
(Forbes) Companies focused on creating more customer loyalty are taking a page out of Gaga’s playbook.
My Comment: I’m enjoying Jackie Huba’s latest book “Monster Loyalty.” There are many lessons we can learn from how super-star Lady Gaga creates “monster loyalty” with her fans. A good start is with this article.
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 ©MMXIII, Shep Hyken)
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May 8, 2013
Customer Service Tool: One to Say Yes, Two to Say No
Empower your people to come up with a solution.It’s easy to say, “I’m sorry, we don’t have that… We can’t get it… We can’t do that… It’s not our policy” Blah, blah, blah. In other words, it’s easy to say, “No.”
But, that is not what amazing companies do. Amazing companies empower their employees to find solutions for their customers. They train, motivate, and praise their employees for coming up with“Yes” answers for their customers.
At Ace Hardware, the role model for my upcoming book Amaze Every Customer Every Time, one of the tactics that many of the retailers have adopted is a concept called “One to Say Yes and Two to Say No.” The concept is simple. At Ace, a single associate (employee) can’t just say “No” without exhausting all options. Furthermore, it takes two people to say “No” to the customer. In other words, “No” requires the approval of a manager.
For example, a customer wanted a Toro lawnmower that Ace didn’t stock. While the store carried Toro lawnmowers, they just never carried that particular model, and the customer was insisting on that one specific model. The store associate could have told the customer, “No, I’m sorry we don’t stock that model,” and the customer would have left to buy the lawnmower from a competitor. But that’s not what happened. Instead, the associate called the manufacturer and asked if he could place a special order for one of the store’s customers. Just a few days later that customer had the lawnmower she wanted. One other important point: the associate didn’t have to get the manager’s approval.
The idea of empowering the employee to say “Yes” to a customer seems natural. Yet to get the approval of a manager to say “No” to a customer is the opposite of what many of us, as customers, have experienced. We’ve all heard someone tell us, “Hold on while I get a manager to approve this.” Yet, you have probably never heard an employee say, “Hold on while I get a manager to confirm that I can say ‘no’ to you.” Of course an employee would never actually say that. With this strategy, the employee has been trained to come up with solutions that are customer focused. The idea of having to go to the manager for approval to say “No” to a customer is what empowers the employee to come up with a “Yes” solution for the customer.
In the process of writing about this concept I found that there were other companies that embraced this approach. However, it doesn’t seem to be the norm. But, the companies that do make this a regular practice a part of their customer-focused culture reap the rewards of happy customers, repeat business and more success.
NOTE: This article is a modified excerpt from Shep Hyken’s upcoming book Amaze Every Customer Every Time: 52 Tools for Delivering the Most Amazing Customer Service on the Planet, which appears in stores everywhere in September 2013. Preorder the book and get valuable extras at www.AmazeEveryCustomer.com.
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 ©MMXII, Shep Hyken)
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May 6, 2013
5 Top Customer Service Articles For the Week of May 6, 2013
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.
7 Customer Loyalty Lessons from Lady Gaga by Jackie Huba
(Convince & Convert) Lady Gaga didn’t become the success she is today based solely on her talent. She did so by engendering immense loyalty from her fans through her music, her message, and the community she has built around them. To anyone in the business community, this sounds like a classic case of loyalty marketing and customer cultivation. Here are seven lessons for building this kind of loyalty in any organization.
My Comment: Jackie Huba’s new book, “Monster Loyalty” arrived on my desk this week. This article is a very brief overview of what you can learn in the book. I enjoyed the book and using Lady Gaga as the role model is just brilliant. Every business should figure out a way to create “Monster Loyalty,” and here is a good place to start.
Value in Customer Service Creates Lasting Customer Loyalty by Flavio Martins
(WinThe Customer!) April is International Customer Loyalty Month, and what have you done to show your customers your appreciation for keeping you in business?
My Comment: April may be International Customer Loyalty Month, but it’s now May. So what? Loyalty shouldn’t be for just one month. It should be every month – actually every day and every hour of every day. This short article helps reinforce the importance of creating customer loyalty.
How to Avoid the Seven Sins of Customer Experience by Sharon Daniels
(ChiefExecutive.net) Exceptional customer service produces loyal customers who buy more, refer friends, resist special offers from competitors and forgive the occasional mistake. Our newest research report on customer experience sheds new light on the “seven sins” of customer experience – key missteps that make organizations stumble when it comes to customer interaction.
My Comment: Sometimes the best strategies and tactics in customer service (or any part of a business) is to not do something. These seven “sins” of the customer experience are exactly what you don’t want to do.
How to Create Customer Driven Employees by Service Quality Institute
(Service Quality Institute) There are six skills all employees need to master to improve the customer experience. Knowing these skills and execution is the difference between winning and losing.
My Comment: Here are some customer service basics. And, while the focus seems to be on frontline employees, there isn’t anyone in any company that couldn’t benefit from reading through these six “must have” skills.
ROI Revealed for Customer Experience Strategy by Ron Wince
(Peppers & Rogers Group) What will make senior management stand up, take notice, and empower customer-facing employees to get behind the concept of customer centricity? ROI, of course. So here is some financial ammunition around customer experience strategy that you can take with you to the next board meeting or frontline training session.
My Comment: Customer experience (and customer service) doesn’t cost. It pays! Be it an increase in business or an increase in the stock market price of a company, the companies who deliver the highest level of customer service win.
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 ©MMXIII, Shep Hyken)
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May 1, 2013
Trust Enhances Employee and Customer Experience
In a customer service culture, trust is of the upmost importance in the customer and employee relationship. In the perfect setting, management must trust employees, employees must trust management, and the customer must trust the company. This is the “Three Legged Stool” theory in action. For those not familiar with this concept it is simple. If you have a three legged stool and one of the legs is taken away, the stool falls over. If any one of these groups mistrusts any of the others, there is no chance for customer loyalty.
So, what is mistrust? A lie, of course, would cause mistrust, but this is more about confidence. Can people count on people? Does the system always work, or is there doubt, even the smallest amount, that something will go wrong?
From the customers’ viewpoint, is there confidence in the information or the service they get from someone at the company? Do they trust the company can do a good job? Do they trust that the value is there? And, of course, do they trust the integrity of the company?
From the managers’ viewpoint, is there – or trust – that the employees will do a good job?
From the employees’ viewpoint, do they believe their managers trust them?
Years ago I worked at an auto parts store. I didn’t know all that much about auto parts, but after a short period of time the owner trusted me enough to leave town for a weekend and put me in charge. Sure, I made mistakes, but he trusted me to use my best judgment. It was an incredible learning experience, not to mention a confidence booster. He took advantage of my mistakes and turned them into learning opportunities, so that I would do it right the next time. Then he trusted me enough to leave again.
John Venhuizen, Ace Hardware’s CEO summed it up well in an interview: “Every time a customer walks through our doors, that customer is trusting our associates (employees) to help them to solve a problem, and to buy the right product. Possibly, that solution we come up with involves the home where their kids sleep every night. Now, whenever you accept advice from someone about what you’re supposed to do in order to protect and take care of your home, that’s a significant leap of faith. That means the level of trust and emotional connection that associate needs to be able to build up with the customer is huge. By the same token, the trust and emotional connection the store owner builds up with the associates has to be pretty huge too. So, we know that in order to win that high level of trust with the consumer, we have to establish a trusting relationship with the employee first.”
In the perfect business relationship, trust abounds. Not just between the customer and the company, but also inside of the company. It enhances the customer experience. It enhances the employee experience. In business, trust is a must!
NOTE: This article is a modified excerpt from Shep Hyken’s upcoming book Amaze Every Customer Every Time: 52 Tools for Delivering the Most Amazing Customer Service on the Planet, which appears in stores everywhere in September 2013. Preorder the book and get valuable extras at www.AmazeEveryCustomer.com.
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 ©MMXII, Shep Hyken)
The post Trust Enhances Employee and Customer Experience appeared first on Shep Hyken.
