Shep Hyken's Blog, page 33
November 14, 2023
The Employee Hierarchy of Needs
Last week, I introduced you to
The Customer Hierarchy of Needs
based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This week, we focus on our employees. Before you can have a strong customer experience, you must have a good employee experience. So, here are the five levels of the pyramid that make up The Employee Hierarchy of Needs. The Paycheck: At the base of the pyramid is an employee’s primary need: money. Money is generally the reason people go to work. Without money, employees can’t pay their rent or mortgage, put food on the dinner table, send their kids to college, and more. And often, money is just part of the compensation. Other benefits include insurance, retirement contributions, and other less tangible, yet still important, reasons related to the paycheck.
Alignment with Beliefs and Vision (The Culture): While money may be a basic need, the culture of the organization must meet the employee’s needs and what they value. This motivates them to come to work and helps keep them employed with you. Employees want to feel excited about going to work.
Uniqueness: This is often an overlooked opportunity. One way to get more engagement and productivity out of employees is to recognize and appreciate their individuality and make it part of their jobs. For example, an employee may speak a foreign language. If one of your customers speaks the same language, doesn’t it make sense to let that employee talk to the customer? Whatever skill or talent the employee has, find a way to incorporate it into their job, even if just for a small percentage of the time.
Growth Opportunities: Most employees want to advance their careers. They want to know there will be opportunities to grow, learn, and feel better about themselves. Early in the interview process, there should be discussions about opportunities to grow.
Fulfillment: At the tip of the pyramid model is fulfillment. When employees are fulfilled, it usually means they love their job, who they work with, and even their boss. This corresponds to Emotional Connection on the Customer Hierarchy of Needs. Other words to describe fulfillment include satisfaction, happiness, and completeness – all emotions that potentially drive employee loyalty.
Nobody wants to work in a place that doesn’t emotionally fulfill them. Employees may tolerate a work environment that doesn’t meet their needs beyond a paycheck, but there is little incentive to stay when something better comes along. If you want to create a powerful and positive customer experience, work on the employee experience. Remember, what’s happening inside the organization with employees is felt on the outside by the customer.
Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.
November 13, 2023
How Generative AI is Disrupting the Call Center World
Top Takeaways:
The future of customer service is being transformed by AI-powered technologies that can automate and enhance customer interactions. Technologies, such as ChatGPT and generative AI, are revolutionizing how businesses interact with their customers.
AI is redefining customer support. While there will still be a need for human agents in certain high-touch situations, the majority of customer interactions will be handled by AI-powered systems.
The future of customer service is heading toward self-service and personalized experiences. By providing intuitive and easy-to-use interfaces, businesses can guide customers toward the desired outcome without human intervention.
Companies that embrace AI in their customer service operations are not necessarily reducing their workforce. Instead, they are using AI to augment human agents and improve customer service experiences.
According to Martec’s Law, technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically. The longer organizations delay their adoption and experimentation with technology, the greater the gap will be, and ultimately, they’ll never catch up.
Plus, Shep and Richard share their predictions on how generative AI will transform customer service and what happens to businesses that fail to adapt. Tune in!
Quotes:
“In three to five years, I don’t believe that I’m still going to phone a call center except for very high touch, high value, emergency type of situations that need that human interaction on the other end.”
“Organizations may not see a reduction in headcount if they are using AI to augment humans, not replace them.”
“AI uses all the available data to create personalization and make a much more meaningful recommendation for the end user.
“The customer is not going to believe that they are building a relationship with the AI. They are going to believe that they are building a relationship with the business that happens to be using AI. That level of connectivity and personalization that AI can help a business provide is what is going to drive loyalty.”
Richard Smullen is the founder and CEO of Pypestream, an AI-powered automation platform. Pypestream connects businesses to customers through self-service automation and smart messaging.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio .
This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:
How is generative AI disrupting the customer service world?
How are AI and technology affecting customer support employees?
Will companies hire fewer employees because of AI implementation?
How can AI be used to augment human agents in call centers?
What is the impact of generative AI and immersive digital experiences on cost and operations?
The future of customer service is being transformed by AI-powered technologies that can automate and enhance customer interactions. Technologies, such as ChatGPT and generative AI, are revolutionizing how businesses interact with their customers.
AI is redefining customer support. While there will still be a need for human agents in certain high-touch situations, the majority of customer interactions will be handled by AI-powered systems.
The future of customer service is heading toward self-service and personalized experiences. By providing intuitive and easy-to-use interfaces, businesses can guide customers toward the desired outcome without human intervention.
Companies that embrace AI in their customer service operations are not necessarily reducing their workforce. Instead, they are using AI to augment human agents and improve customer service experiences.
According to Martec’s Law, technology changes exponentially, but organizations change logarithmically. The longer organizations delay their adoption and experimentation with technology, the greater the gap will be, and ultimately, they’ll never catch up.
Plus, Shep and Richard share their predictions on how generative AI will transform customer service and what happens to businesses that fail to adapt. Tune in!
Quotes:
“In three to five years, I don’t believe that I’m still going to phone a call center except for very high touch, high value, emergency type of situations that need that human interaction on the other end.”
“Organizations may not see a reduction in headcount if they are using AI to augment humans, not replace them.”
“AI uses all the available data to create personalization and make a much more meaningful recommendation for the end user.
“The customer is not going to believe that they are building a relationship with the AI. They are going to believe that they are building a relationship with the business that happens to be using AI. That level of connectivity and personalization that AI can help a business provide is what is going to drive loyalty.”
About:
Richard Smullen is the founder and CEO of Pypestream, an AI-powered automation platform. Pypestream connects businesses to customers through self-service automation and smart messaging.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio .
This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:
How is generative AI disrupting the customer service world?
How are AI and technology affecting customer support employees?
Will companies hire fewer employees because of AI implementation?
How can AI be used to augment human agents in call centers?
What is the impact of generative AI and immersive digital experiences on cost and operations?
Top 5 Customer Service & CX Articles for Week of November 13, 2023
Each week, I read many customer service and customer experience articles from various 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.
The Pinnacle of CX: Community in Three Layers by Nate Brown
(LinkedIn) You’ve likely already seen the new U.S. Surgeon General report. The “Epidemic of Loneliness” has the nation fully in its grip. It may be the least surprising and yet the most important news of 2023.
My Comment: We kick off this week’s Top Five roundup with Nate Brown’s article introducing us to a new way to look at the importance of customer communities. In my book, The Amazement Revolution, I stress the importance of customer communities enhancing the customer experience. Nate introduces us to an important reason to create customer communities: loneliness. The U.S. Surgeon General says loneliness is an epidemic sweeping the nation, and believe it or not, customer communities can help.
6 Steps to Crafting a Signature Brand Experience That Delights Your Customers by Guest Author
(The Dijulius Group) Creating a signature brand experience isn’t just about what you do; it’s about how you make your customers feel. It’s the difference between a one-time transaction and a lifelong memory.
My Comment: This is an excellent article using CX to enhance your brand. Two of my favorite suggestions from the article are to create a brand promise (and keep it) and to focus on consistency. Consistency builds trust and confidence. All six of these ideas are valid. There’s something here for everyone and every company.
4 Surefire Ways to Be Exceptional With Your Customer Care by Emily Reynolds Bergh
(Entrepreneur) Being kind is not something you necessarily associate with the business world, but remember, at the end of the day, your clients are people, too.
My Comment: Show your clients a little love by truly caring for them. This excellent article has nothing new, but it gives us four reminders that will enhance any customer and/or client relationship.
11 Tips for Building and Nurturing Positive Client Relationshipsby Rolling Stone Culture Council
(Rolling Stone) Making your clients feel seen can go a long way toward creating relationships that last.
My Comment: Here’s another list (I love lists!), and this time it’s eleven tips from eleven Rolling Stone’s Culture Council members commenting on different ways to nurture your customer and client relationships. I’m a big fan of lists with great tips and suggestions to discuss at our next team meeting. This one won’t let you down.
The death of the customer survey… and what comes next by Tethr
(Tethr) Between survey fatigue, low response rates, and sampling bias, businesses are struggling to understand and improve the customer experience. Download this ebook to discover why surveys are dying, and how AI can help to replace them now.
My Comment: We wrap up this week’s roundup with an eBook on surveys. Be prepared to spend time reading this. There are plenty of great ideas that will help you get better participation from your customers. Warning: This is an eBook with 13 pages. That’s longer than the typical articles shared in this column. And to get the eBook, you won’t have to share your contact information.
Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.
The Pinnacle of CX: Community in Three Layers by Nate Brown
(LinkedIn) You’ve likely already seen the new U.S. Surgeon General report. The “Epidemic of Loneliness” has the nation fully in its grip. It may be the least surprising and yet the most important news of 2023.
My Comment: We kick off this week’s Top Five roundup with Nate Brown’s article introducing us to a new way to look at the importance of customer communities. In my book, The Amazement Revolution, I stress the importance of customer communities enhancing the customer experience. Nate introduces us to an important reason to create customer communities: loneliness. The U.S. Surgeon General says loneliness is an epidemic sweeping the nation, and believe it or not, customer communities can help.
6 Steps to Crafting a Signature Brand Experience That Delights Your Customers by Guest Author
(The Dijulius Group) Creating a signature brand experience isn’t just about what you do; it’s about how you make your customers feel. It’s the difference between a one-time transaction and a lifelong memory.
My Comment: This is an excellent article using CX to enhance your brand. Two of my favorite suggestions from the article are to create a brand promise (and keep it) and to focus on consistency. Consistency builds trust and confidence. All six of these ideas are valid. There’s something here for everyone and every company.
4 Surefire Ways to Be Exceptional With Your Customer Care by Emily Reynolds Bergh
(Entrepreneur) Being kind is not something you necessarily associate with the business world, but remember, at the end of the day, your clients are people, too.
My Comment: Show your clients a little love by truly caring for them. This excellent article has nothing new, but it gives us four reminders that will enhance any customer and/or client relationship.
11 Tips for Building and Nurturing Positive Client Relationshipsby Rolling Stone Culture Council
(Rolling Stone) Making your clients feel seen can go a long way toward creating relationships that last.
My Comment: Here’s another list (I love lists!), and this time it’s eleven tips from eleven Rolling Stone’s Culture Council members commenting on different ways to nurture your customer and client relationships. I’m a big fan of lists with great tips and suggestions to discuss at our next team meeting. This one won’t let you down.
The death of the customer survey… and what comes next by Tethr
(Tethr) Between survey fatigue, low response rates, and sampling bias, businesses are struggling to understand and improve the customer experience. Download this ebook to discover why surveys are dying, and how AI can help to replace them now.
My Comment: We wrap up this week’s roundup with an eBook on surveys. Be prepared to spend time reading this. There are plenty of great ideas that will help you get better participation from your customers. Warning: This is an eBook with 13 pages. That’s longer than the typical articles shared in this column. And to get the eBook, you won’t have to share your contact information.
Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.
November 9, 2023
Guest Post: What it Takes to Be an Effective Customer Service Manager
This week, we feature an article by Natasha Thakkar, Content Marketing Manager at Oleeo. She writes about the five ways to become an effective and efficient customer service manager.
Perhaps you’re thinking of trying to move up the ranks of your organization to become a customer service manager, or perhaps you already are one but want to hone your skills. Either way, this article is for you. We will guide you through 5 key ways that you can become an effective and efficient customer service manager.
What does a Customer Service Manager do?
A customer service manager’s main priority is to retain customers. They do this by ensuring that the customer experience is consistent throughout the customer lifecycle. A good customer service manager will not only be able to get the customer’s needs but also act as a path between customer service agents on the frontline dealing with customers firsthand and colleagues working behind the scenes in marketing and other fields.
Here’s a list of key responsibilities expected of a customer service manager:
Hire and maintain a stellar customer support team with the appropriate skill set for resolving customer queries quickly and efficiently.
Use a diversity recruiting platform to grow a diverse team
Encourage the use of a CRM tool.
Help resolve more complicated issues.
Learn all about the company’s products/ services
Identify actions to be taken from customer feedback
Share feedback and action with parallel teams to nurture customer relationships
Carry out regular evaluations to gain insight into the abilities of the customer service department
Ensure tools used are compliant with company policies and be open to implementing state-of-the-art customer service tools, like a customer service chatbot, to reduce the workload of the team.
Along with the responsibilities we have outlined, a customer service manager needs a certain mixture of skills in order to align with and contribute to the company’s goals.
The Five Skills It Takes to Be a Great Customer Service Manager
You likely already have the necessary work experience for the role of customer service manager, but there are a few key skills that can help you stand out from the crowd. Below, you can find a list of some of the most important soft skills that you should make sure to include in your CV as well as hone at the office.
Leadership Skills
We’ve put this in the first place because it is certainly the most vital skill any manager should have, regardless of their industry. Leadership might sound elusive, so we’ll break down what we mean. Good leaders are able to work flexibly and keep their team inspired and feeling motivated.
A good leader will notice, acknowledge, and encourage their customer service agents’ strengths and turn weaknesses into positives. Having the right attitude is vital in this endeavor. A great leader doesn’t just boss people around – they guide their team and offer crucial support. By showing support for your team members and trust in them, you can cultivate a happy and well-balanced team.
Team Training
If you brought home a puppy and got mad at it every time it peed inside, never praising it for doing the right thing or showing it where it should pee, that would be madness. Your team is not that different. Team members need to be shown what is expected of them and how they can do it – they deserve a fair shot at excelling in their roles.
Without customer service training, you would be sending them in blind. It’s a continual process of learning and growth that happens throughout a person’s career. You’ve never learned it all, and you never stop learning!
By monitoring your team and offering useful and time-sensitive feedback on things like how to promote internet phone services, you can help your agents grow in a way that suits the company and reduces staff turnover rates. You should also be prepared to equip them with the necessary training materials, certifications, and tools to help them excel, as well as nip any potential issues immediately.
Communication Skills
Communication is regarded as the top soft skill in the workplace. It sounds like a simple task, but most of us are not naturally fantastic at it – at least, we don’t realize that we have this ability within us. We might label ourselves as “shy” or “awkward” or decide that we’re introverts and therefore exempt from having to overly exercise this muscle.
However, as a customer service manager, you need to hold meetings, get your team on the same page, find quick solutions to issues, improve customer service with your ideas, and generally be a support for everybody on your team.
That means you need to get comfortable with talking to people, seeing things from their perspective, and managing their feelings and expectations – even when a customer is being abusive. Communication skills are also vital in all collaborative environments, especially when it comes to finding solutions to complex issues as a team.
Problem-Solving Skills
Whether it’s an unhappy customer demanding to speak to the manager or team members not feeling happy at work, you will have to deal with a variety of problems as a manager. Whatever the situation, a calm and grounded approach will be necessary in order to understand what the individual needs and find the appropriate response.
You may also need to find creative solutions to problems that require outside-the-box thinking, such as using candidate management software to choose the best team members. These solutions need to be in line with your company policies. Exercising your creativity and problem-solving skills is essential to developing the confidence to handle different situations.
Strategic Thinking
As a customer service manager, it is part of your job to come up with strategies to help your team and your brand stand out from the crowd, such as deciding to register an AI domain. Many companies these days rely greatly on good customer service to rake in stellar reviews, so that means you have some work cut out for you.
You will need to learn what kind of customer service strategy retains customers well as well as offers an amazing customer journey and experience. Whether you’re personalizing your customer service or adding the human touch through a warm and welcoming presence, you can experiment with different techniques to see what works.
Final thoughts
If you’re thinking about becoming or already enjoying the role of Customer Service Manager, we hope that this article has given you some useful ideas about areas to work on in order to succeed in this field.
It is by no means an easy role – you have to manage both customer expectations and your team. By honing the skills of communication, problem-solving, strategizing, team training, and leadership, you can set yourself up for success.
Natasha Thakkar brings over a decade of marketing expertise as Content Marketing Manager at Oleeo, a tech company specializing in producing recruitment software solutions. Skilled in lead generation and communication, Natasha shapes content that enhances Oleeo’s brand and resonates with audiences.
Read Shep’s latest Forbes article: The Question To Ask Your Next Employee: What Keeps You Up At Night?
Perhaps you’re thinking of trying to move up the ranks of your organization to become a customer service manager, or perhaps you already are one but want to hone your skills. Either way, this article is for you. We will guide you through 5 key ways that you can become an effective and efficient customer service manager.
What does a Customer Service Manager do?
A customer service manager’s main priority is to retain customers. They do this by ensuring that the customer experience is consistent throughout the customer lifecycle. A good customer service manager will not only be able to get the customer’s needs but also act as a path between customer service agents on the frontline dealing with customers firsthand and colleagues working behind the scenes in marketing and other fields.
Here’s a list of key responsibilities expected of a customer service manager:
Hire and maintain a stellar customer support team with the appropriate skill set for resolving customer queries quickly and efficiently.
Use a diversity recruiting platform to grow a diverse team
Encourage the use of a CRM tool.
Help resolve more complicated issues.
Learn all about the company’s products/ services
Identify actions to be taken from customer feedback
Share feedback and action with parallel teams to nurture customer relationships
Carry out regular evaluations to gain insight into the abilities of the customer service department
Ensure tools used are compliant with company policies and be open to implementing state-of-the-art customer service tools, like a customer service chatbot, to reduce the workload of the team.
Along with the responsibilities we have outlined, a customer service manager needs a certain mixture of skills in order to align with and contribute to the company’s goals.
The Five Skills It Takes to Be a Great Customer Service Manager
You likely already have the necessary work experience for the role of customer service manager, but there are a few key skills that can help you stand out from the crowd. Below, you can find a list of some of the most important soft skills that you should make sure to include in your CV as well as hone at the office.
Leadership Skills
We’ve put this in the first place because it is certainly the most vital skill any manager should have, regardless of their industry. Leadership might sound elusive, so we’ll break down what we mean. Good leaders are able to work flexibly and keep their team inspired and feeling motivated.
A good leader will notice, acknowledge, and encourage their customer service agents’ strengths and turn weaknesses into positives. Having the right attitude is vital in this endeavor. A great leader doesn’t just boss people around – they guide their team and offer crucial support. By showing support for your team members and trust in them, you can cultivate a happy and well-balanced team.
Team Training
If you brought home a puppy and got mad at it every time it peed inside, never praising it for doing the right thing or showing it where it should pee, that would be madness. Your team is not that different. Team members need to be shown what is expected of them and how they can do it – they deserve a fair shot at excelling in their roles.
Without customer service training, you would be sending them in blind. It’s a continual process of learning and growth that happens throughout a person’s career. You’ve never learned it all, and you never stop learning!
By monitoring your team and offering useful and time-sensitive feedback on things like how to promote internet phone services, you can help your agents grow in a way that suits the company and reduces staff turnover rates. You should also be prepared to equip them with the necessary training materials, certifications, and tools to help them excel, as well as nip any potential issues immediately.
Communication Skills
Communication is regarded as the top soft skill in the workplace. It sounds like a simple task, but most of us are not naturally fantastic at it – at least, we don’t realize that we have this ability within us. We might label ourselves as “shy” or “awkward” or decide that we’re introverts and therefore exempt from having to overly exercise this muscle.
However, as a customer service manager, you need to hold meetings, get your team on the same page, find quick solutions to issues, improve customer service with your ideas, and generally be a support for everybody on your team.
That means you need to get comfortable with talking to people, seeing things from their perspective, and managing their feelings and expectations – even when a customer is being abusive. Communication skills are also vital in all collaborative environments, especially when it comes to finding solutions to complex issues as a team.
Problem-Solving Skills
Whether it’s an unhappy customer demanding to speak to the manager or team members not feeling happy at work, you will have to deal with a variety of problems as a manager. Whatever the situation, a calm and grounded approach will be necessary in order to understand what the individual needs and find the appropriate response.
You may also need to find creative solutions to problems that require outside-the-box thinking, such as using candidate management software to choose the best team members. These solutions need to be in line with your company policies. Exercising your creativity and problem-solving skills is essential to developing the confidence to handle different situations.
Strategic Thinking
As a customer service manager, it is part of your job to come up with strategies to help your team and your brand stand out from the crowd, such as deciding to register an AI domain. Many companies these days rely greatly on good customer service to rake in stellar reviews, so that means you have some work cut out for you.
You will need to learn what kind of customer service strategy retains customers well as well as offers an amazing customer journey and experience. Whether you’re personalizing your customer service or adding the human touch through a warm and welcoming presence, you can experiment with different techniques to see what works.
Final thoughts
If you’re thinking about becoming or already enjoying the role of Customer Service Manager, we hope that this article has given you some useful ideas about areas to work on in order to succeed in this field.
It is by no means an easy role – you have to manage both customer expectations and your team. By honing the skills of communication, problem-solving, strategizing, team training, and leadership, you can set yourself up for success.
Natasha Thakkar brings over a decade of marketing expertise as Content Marketing Manager at Oleeo, a tech company specializing in producing recruitment software solutions. Skilled in lead generation and communication, Natasha shapes content that enhances Oleeo’s brand and resonates with audiences.
Read Shep’s latest Forbes article: The Question To Ask Your Next Employee: What Keeps You Up At Night?
November 7, 2023
The Customer Hierarchy of Needs
Recently, I wrote two articles for my weekly Forbes column that paid homage to Abraham Maslow, the American psychologist who created what is referred to as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The articles were so well received that I wanted to share shorter versions here with our Shepard Letter subscribers. Over the years, I’ve observed customer behavior, and some of my conclusions were confirmed by my customer service and CX research, known as the Achieving Customer Amazement Study (sponsored by Five9). In one of my podcast interviews, someone mentioned Maslow’s model and thought a similar model could be created for customers.
So, here is the Customer Hierarchy of Needs:
Products that Work: We start at the base of the pyramid with a basic need: whatever the customer buys from you must do what it’s supposed to do. Even if you deliver an amazing customer experience, if the product fails, your customers will find someone else to do business with.
Trust and Safety: Is your reputation helping or hurting you? Customers don’t consciously realize it, but the first time they do business with you, they have uncertainty. We must eliminate uncertainty with predictability and consistency. A good customer experience creates trust. Written policies, such as how you handle your customers’ data, return policies, guarantees and more build trust and safety.
Alignment: Your mission, vision and values statements are the foundation of what you and your company stand for. Are they in alignment with your customers’ expectations? If you publish any of these or have brand promises, you must live up to them. In addition, your organization may have principles or causes it stands behind. When they align with what’s meaningful to your customers, you potentially create a stronger connection.
Appreciation: Your customers want and expect to feel appreciated for their willingness to pay you for the goods and services you sell. Never forget to demonstrate your appreciation for their business.
Emotional Connection: This is where loyalty is created. Customers know your products work, trust you, align with your beliefs and what you stand for, and feel appreciated. In short, they like the way you make them feel. Maintain that feeling and build on it. Move them to feel good about your company, not just what you sell. This is what helps drive customer loyalty.
Is your organization meeting your customers’ needs?
These five levels of the pyramid may be common sense, but when is the last time you thought about them in this way? This is meant to be a conversation starter. Look at each of these “levels” and determine if your organization is meeting your customers’ needs, and if appropriate, feel free to add to the list.
Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.
November 6, 2023
Are Your Customers Happy Or Not?
Top Takeaways:
Customer feedback is crucial for businesses of all industries. By actively seeking and analyzing feedback, businesses can identify areas of improvement, make informed decisions, and ultimately enhance their overall customer experience.
Technology, such as feedback kiosks and tablets, provides a simple and non-intrusive way for customers to provide feedback. These devices allow businesses to gather real-time insights and track customer satisfaction on a regular basis. Customers appreciate the convenience of these devices, as it takes just a few seconds to indicate their level of satisfaction. This encourages more customers to participate, providing a representative sample of feedback.
The value of customer feedback lies not just in data collection but in taking action. By identifying trends and patterns in feedback, businesses can make the necessary adjustments to enhance their operations, increase revenue, and improve customer loyalty.
Feedback devices with open-ended feedback options can provide even more valuable information for businesses. By allowing customers to provide specific comments or suggestions, businesses gain deeper insights into the reasons behind their satisfaction or dissatisfaction, enabling them to address specific issues and make targeted improvements.
Feedback devices can be especially beneficial for retail, healthcare, and industries where customer experience directly impacts revenue. Implementing customer feedback strategies can increase sales and profits as businesses make data-driven decisions to optimize operations and meet customer expectations.
Real-time feedback enables businesses to address issues immediately, whether a dirty restroom in an airport or a staffing gap in a retail store. Monitoring feedback in real-time allows businesses to promptly rectify any problems, ensuring a positive customer experience.
Businesses can benefit from comparing feedback across different locations or time periods. By identifying differences in customer satisfaction levels, businesses can assess the impact of various factors, such as staffing or operational changes, and make effective adjustments accordingly.
Plus, Mikka shares how much revenue a business can gain from investing in easy-to-use, real-time feedback devices. Tune in!
Quotes:
“In today’s world, the customer is king, and retaining them is so important. It is vital for every organization, whether it is a business or a nonprofit, to measure their customer experience and think about what they could do better.”
“Through traditional channels, like email, a dissatisfied customer might leave the store furious and write to the company when they get home. But you can’t make massive changes based on one customer’s comments. When the way you ask for feedback is fast and frictionless, with a click of a button, you can collect so much more data you can use to improve service.”
“For business owners, it is vital to react as quickly as possible to customer issues. When you fail to take action, customers will get the impression that you don’t really care.”
“Employee experience reflects the customer experience. Empower your employees so that they love what they are doing and they have a mastery of their jobs, because that’s what it takes to deliver outstanding customer service.”
Miika Mäkitalo is the CEO of HappyOrNot. He is an entrepreneurial business strategist who has a deep understanding of data analytics and its application in various industries, especially customer service and CX.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio .
This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:
Why is measuring customer experience important for businesses?
How does real-time feedback help businesses increase their revenue?
How can analyzing customer feedback data help companies to improve their operations?
What role does customer satisfaction play in increasing revenue and profits?
What types of businesses can benefit most from measuring and acting on customer feedback?
Customer feedback is crucial for businesses of all industries. By actively seeking and analyzing feedback, businesses can identify areas of improvement, make informed decisions, and ultimately enhance their overall customer experience.
Technology, such as feedback kiosks and tablets, provides a simple and non-intrusive way for customers to provide feedback. These devices allow businesses to gather real-time insights and track customer satisfaction on a regular basis. Customers appreciate the convenience of these devices, as it takes just a few seconds to indicate their level of satisfaction. This encourages more customers to participate, providing a representative sample of feedback.
The value of customer feedback lies not just in data collection but in taking action. By identifying trends and patterns in feedback, businesses can make the necessary adjustments to enhance their operations, increase revenue, and improve customer loyalty.
Feedback devices with open-ended feedback options can provide even more valuable information for businesses. By allowing customers to provide specific comments or suggestions, businesses gain deeper insights into the reasons behind their satisfaction or dissatisfaction, enabling them to address specific issues and make targeted improvements.
Feedback devices can be especially beneficial for retail, healthcare, and industries where customer experience directly impacts revenue. Implementing customer feedback strategies can increase sales and profits as businesses make data-driven decisions to optimize operations and meet customer expectations.
Real-time feedback enables businesses to address issues immediately, whether a dirty restroom in an airport or a staffing gap in a retail store. Monitoring feedback in real-time allows businesses to promptly rectify any problems, ensuring a positive customer experience.
Businesses can benefit from comparing feedback across different locations or time periods. By identifying differences in customer satisfaction levels, businesses can assess the impact of various factors, such as staffing or operational changes, and make effective adjustments accordingly.
Plus, Mikka shares how much revenue a business can gain from investing in easy-to-use, real-time feedback devices. Tune in!
Quotes:
“In today’s world, the customer is king, and retaining them is so important. It is vital for every organization, whether it is a business or a nonprofit, to measure their customer experience and think about what they could do better.”
“Through traditional channels, like email, a dissatisfied customer might leave the store furious and write to the company when they get home. But you can’t make massive changes based on one customer’s comments. When the way you ask for feedback is fast and frictionless, with a click of a button, you can collect so much more data you can use to improve service.”
“For business owners, it is vital to react as quickly as possible to customer issues. When you fail to take action, customers will get the impression that you don’t really care.”
“Employee experience reflects the customer experience. Empower your employees so that they love what they are doing and they have a mastery of their jobs, because that’s what it takes to deliver outstanding customer service.”
About:
Miika Mäkitalo is the CEO of HappyOrNot. He is an entrepreneurial business strategist who has a deep understanding of data analytics and its application in various industries, especially customer service and CX.
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio .
This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:
Why is measuring customer experience important for businesses?
How does real-time feedback help businesses increase their revenue?
How can analyzing customer feedback data help companies to improve their operations?
What role does customer satisfaction play in increasing revenue and profits?
What types of businesses can benefit most from measuring and acting on customer feedback?
Top 5 Customer Service & CX Articles for Week of November 6, 2023
Each week, I read many customer service and customer experience articles from various 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.
How Removing the Mental Load for Customers Can Improve the Customer Service Experience by Brad Birnbaum
(Fast Company) By alleviating the mental burden for your customers, you can not only enhance their satisfaction but also strengthen your brand’s reputation and customer loyalty.
My Comment: The “mental load” referred to in this article is about frustration, anxiety, and fatigue over a customer service/support experience. Consider this finding cited in the article: “48% of consumers become angry while communicating with customer service.” I have a concept I refer to as the Speed To Happiness. When a customer is upset and calls customer support, the problem happens long before the customer decides to contact the customer. The goal is to move as fast as possible to eliminate the anger or frustration, or as the author of this article calls it, the “mental load.”
The Latest Trends in CX Self-Service by Jeremy Watkin
(Call Centre Helper) As more and more people isolate themselves into the post-pandemic, virtual world of social media, the backlash when they can’t quickly solve their issues increases in severity. These situations are relatively easy to defuse with a caring and competent human connection, but they require more patience and emotional intelligence from contact centre agents than ever before.
My Comment: Self-service is great until it doesn’t work. The best companies are creating self-service options that are easy and intuitive to use, but if they don’t work, there is always a human to help. This excellent article includes commentary from some customer service and CX experts (myself included) and reinforces that this tool, while a good option, sometimes has room to improve.
How to Boost Customer Loyalty in a Tough Economy by Ricardo Gulko
(Eglobalis) Economic forecasts are subdued for 2024. There are some shards of light. But, uncertainty remains high in Americas, Europe, the UK and beyond. B2B leaders know their continued resilience, and recovery from the shocks of the past few years, is rooted in their customers.
My Comment: When the economy is down, customers want more value for their dollar. Sometimes, they will trade a better customer experience for a better price. This article tackles the topic of how to get and keep loyal customers despite the economy. There are plenty of examples and tips to get you thinking.
Key Contact Center Metrics You Should Be Tracking by Foundever
(Foundever) There are myriad metrics and indicators that an organization can monitor to measure contact center performance. And while each has its place and can add more detail to a big picture view, the following five are the best for signaling if contact center operations are aligned with customer expectations and that the levels of service being provided by your agents is helping to move the needle positively in terms of customer loyalty and advocacy.
My Comment: Business is numbers. Peter Drucker is known for saying, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” This article shares the top customer support center metrics to pay attention to. I could add to this list, but if all you did was consider these, you would be on your way to measuring and managing for success.
How to Create Effective Customer Surveys and Obtain Actionable Insights by Scott Clark
(CMSWire) When it comes to customer experience and marketing strategies, being able to create effective customer surveys is a pivotal skill. These surveys serve as valuable touchpoints for businesses to gather insights, gauge satisfaction and refine their strategies. In this article, we’ll delve into the art of creating customer surveys, examine the reasons that surveys matter, discuss how to optimize questions and take a close look at the top four survey platforms.
My Comment: This article starts by giving us the “gist” of what it is about. In other words, you get a summary of what you’re about to read. I’m a fan of surveys, but only if they are done correctly. Here, you will find compelling reasons to survey your customers, tips on how to do it well, and some resources to help. Consider the first “gist” the author serves up: “Customer surveys are more than just feedback tools; they’re strategic assets for brands.” Boom! Surveys should be part of your customer experience strategy.
Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.
How Removing the Mental Load for Customers Can Improve the Customer Service Experience by Brad Birnbaum
(Fast Company) By alleviating the mental burden for your customers, you can not only enhance their satisfaction but also strengthen your brand’s reputation and customer loyalty.
My Comment: The “mental load” referred to in this article is about frustration, anxiety, and fatigue over a customer service/support experience. Consider this finding cited in the article: “48% of consumers become angry while communicating with customer service.” I have a concept I refer to as the Speed To Happiness. When a customer is upset and calls customer support, the problem happens long before the customer decides to contact the customer. The goal is to move as fast as possible to eliminate the anger or frustration, or as the author of this article calls it, the “mental load.”
The Latest Trends in CX Self-Service by Jeremy Watkin
(Call Centre Helper) As more and more people isolate themselves into the post-pandemic, virtual world of social media, the backlash when they can’t quickly solve their issues increases in severity. These situations are relatively easy to defuse with a caring and competent human connection, but they require more patience and emotional intelligence from contact centre agents than ever before.
My Comment: Self-service is great until it doesn’t work. The best companies are creating self-service options that are easy and intuitive to use, but if they don’t work, there is always a human to help. This excellent article includes commentary from some customer service and CX experts (myself included) and reinforces that this tool, while a good option, sometimes has room to improve.
How to Boost Customer Loyalty in a Tough Economy by Ricardo Gulko
(Eglobalis) Economic forecasts are subdued for 2024. There are some shards of light. But, uncertainty remains high in Americas, Europe, the UK and beyond. B2B leaders know their continued resilience, and recovery from the shocks of the past few years, is rooted in their customers.
My Comment: When the economy is down, customers want more value for their dollar. Sometimes, they will trade a better customer experience for a better price. This article tackles the topic of how to get and keep loyal customers despite the economy. There are plenty of examples and tips to get you thinking.
Key Contact Center Metrics You Should Be Tracking by Foundever
(Foundever) There are myriad metrics and indicators that an organization can monitor to measure contact center performance. And while each has its place and can add more detail to a big picture view, the following five are the best for signaling if contact center operations are aligned with customer expectations and that the levels of service being provided by your agents is helping to move the needle positively in terms of customer loyalty and advocacy.
My Comment: Business is numbers. Peter Drucker is known for saying, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” This article shares the top customer support center metrics to pay attention to. I could add to this list, but if all you did was consider these, you would be on your way to measuring and managing for success.
How to Create Effective Customer Surveys and Obtain Actionable Insights by Scott Clark
(CMSWire) When it comes to customer experience and marketing strategies, being able to create effective customer surveys is a pivotal skill. These surveys serve as valuable touchpoints for businesses to gather insights, gauge satisfaction and refine their strategies. In this article, we’ll delve into the art of creating customer surveys, examine the reasons that surveys matter, discuss how to optimize questions and take a close look at the top four survey platforms.
My Comment: This article starts by giving us the “gist” of what it is about. In other words, you get a summary of what you’re about to read. I’m a fan of surveys, but only if they are done correctly. Here, you will find compelling reasons to survey your customers, tips on how to do it well, and some resources to help. Consider the first “gist” the author serves up: “Customer surveys are more than just feedback tools; they’re strategic assets for brands.” Boom! Surveys should be part of your customer experience strategy.
Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.
November 2, 2023
Guest Post: How to Align Customer Service and Sales
This week, we feature an article by Jessica Collier, VP of Growth Marketing at Assembly Software. She writes about how you can align customer service and sales in your organization.
More often than not, when we think of customer service, we tend to picture post-purchase tasks and activities, such as returns, refunds, exchanges, delivery information, and the like. But what if we told you that, in fact, customer service and sales are much more interlinked than you may think?
And because of this natural synergy, it’s vital to keep these two areas of your operations as aligned and harmonized as possible. Are you interested to find out how you can achieve this? Keep reading our brief guide packed with excellent tips on aligning customer service and sales for top-notch results across the board.
Aligning Customer Service and Sales: The Benefits
Whether you are a company providing law firm SEO marketing services or an eCommerce store selling outdoor living products, aligning customer service and sales can yield various benefits. Let’s find out more about the most impressive ones.
Build Trust
To inspire trust in your customers, you are probably already focused on keeping all your channels as coherent and cohesive as possible. This helps reinforce your brand image and reputation, presenting you to your customers as a reliable, professional, and trustworthy company.
Therefore, it only makes sense to ensure that your sales operations are as harmonized with your customer service as possible.
Keep Customers Happy
When your sales and customer service areas are aligned, the chances are that all the operations you perform across these are smooth, accurate, and streamlined. And who loves smooth, accurate, and streamlined sales and services operations?
You’ve guessed it: your customers. Therefore, aligning these two crucial parts of your company should be one of your priorities if you are serious about keeping your customers happy and satisfied.
Optimize the Use of Resources
Aligned sales and customer service don’t just benefit how you interact with your customers but also prove advantageous to your internal operations. One of the main advantages you can expect is the ability to optimize your resources, including at the point of sales.
This happens because, despite working in different departments, your sales and customer service teams will focus on accomplishing the same set of goals instead of obsessing over department-specific KPIs and other things.
When both these teams work in synergy, you can reuse and repurpose resources in a smarter and more efficient way. For example, you could encourage your sales rep to share a pitch deck with a customer service rep or ask a service rep to show a customer satisfaction report to their sales counterpart.
Best Ways to Align Customer Service and Sales
Let’s delve into how you can achieve the all-important alignment of customer service and sales.
Get Clarity on Your Vision…
Unless you know exactly what your goals are, it’s almost impossible for your customer service and sales teams to reach that level of alignment that you are seeking. Therefore, it’s crucial that you spend some time zooming into your vision, getting clarity over it, and sharing it with the relevant people within your customer service and sales teams.
The next step? You’ll want to share that well-thought-out vision with the relevant people within your customer service and sales team.
… and Share It With Your Teams
Even the best and most detailed company vision won’t do much if it sits at a metaphorical corner of your desk gathering dust. Think of your vision as a living and breathing document: for it to make sense and to spur change, you’ll need to share it with the right people.
Ensure that both your customer service and sales team have access to any materials relating to your vision and goals – from written documents to videos, graphics to audio files – and you’ll be ready to move on to the next step.
Keep Your Teams Connected
Ensuring that your customer service and sales team work in synergy also means helping them to communicate and interact easily and seamlessly. This can become even more of a challenge if you run a remote or hybrid company where staff is scattered across different physical locations (and, sometimes, time zones).
For this reason, you’ll need to rely on advanced software tools that enable your teams to communicate whenever and wherever, at the touch of a button. Solutions like Slack and Discord are some of the most common for this intent but also remember to implement a unified CRM solution that allows your teams to access the most up-to-date customer data quickly and securely.
Similarly, it can be useful to deploy one of the best email finder tools, which can help your teams to look up customer information and can be accessed by both your customer service and your sales teams.
Utilizing an effective CRM system can significantly enhance their capabilities as a sales tool, allowing them to access customer data seamlessly.
Always Keep the Customer at the Core
Answer this question: “Why do you want to align your customer service and sales teams?” If you have answered, “To improve the relationships with my customers”, you are on the right track.
While equipping your customer service and sales team with the best technology, making sure they interact regularly, and sharing unified visions and goals, the ultimate star of the show is not them: it’s your customers.
So, remember to always keep your customers and their needs, wants, and expectations at the core of both your sales and your customer service strategy. Only by doing so will you succeed at synergizing these two fundamental pillars of your operations.
The Takeaway
Running a successful company also means having a clear, solid, and consistent vision for all the different components of your business. Specifically, you’ll want to align customer service and sales, as these two areas are directly linked to exceptional customer satisfaction and retention.
In this article, we reviewed some of the most important benefits of this alignment, as well as explored ways to achieve it. Are you ready to take your customer experience to the next level by aligning customer service and sales? Start today!
Jessica Collier is VP of Growth Marketing at Assembly Software, a developer of practice management software and cloud-based solutions for the legal sector. Her passion for digital innovation and agile marketing has led to significant success in innovative tech marketing, client collaboration, and driving conversion results. You can check out her LinkedIn here.
Read Shep’s latest Forbes article: C-Suite Leaders, You Too Can Host A Podcast
More often than not, when we think of customer service, we tend to picture post-purchase tasks and activities, such as returns, refunds, exchanges, delivery information, and the like. But what if we told you that, in fact, customer service and sales are much more interlinked than you may think?
And because of this natural synergy, it’s vital to keep these two areas of your operations as aligned and harmonized as possible. Are you interested to find out how you can achieve this? Keep reading our brief guide packed with excellent tips on aligning customer service and sales for top-notch results across the board.
Aligning Customer Service and Sales: The Benefits
Whether you are a company providing law firm SEO marketing services or an eCommerce store selling outdoor living products, aligning customer service and sales can yield various benefits. Let’s find out more about the most impressive ones.
Build Trust
To inspire trust in your customers, you are probably already focused on keeping all your channels as coherent and cohesive as possible. This helps reinforce your brand image and reputation, presenting you to your customers as a reliable, professional, and trustworthy company.
Therefore, it only makes sense to ensure that your sales operations are as harmonized with your customer service as possible.
Keep Customers Happy
When your sales and customer service areas are aligned, the chances are that all the operations you perform across these are smooth, accurate, and streamlined. And who loves smooth, accurate, and streamlined sales and services operations?
You’ve guessed it: your customers. Therefore, aligning these two crucial parts of your company should be one of your priorities if you are serious about keeping your customers happy and satisfied.
Optimize the Use of Resources
Aligned sales and customer service don’t just benefit how you interact with your customers but also prove advantageous to your internal operations. One of the main advantages you can expect is the ability to optimize your resources, including at the point of sales.
This happens because, despite working in different departments, your sales and customer service teams will focus on accomplishing the same set of goals instead of obsessing over department-specific KPIs and other things.
When both these teams work in synergy, you can reuse and repurpose resources in a smarter and more efficient way. For example, you could encourage your sales rep to share a pitch deck with a customer service rep or ask a service rep to show a customer satisfaction report to their sales counterpart.
Best Ways to Align Customer Service and Sales
Let’s delve into how you can achieve the all-important alignment of customer service and sales.
Get Clarity on Your Vision…
Unless you know exactly what your goals are, it’s almost impossible for your customer service and sales teams to reach that level of alignment that you are seeking. Therefore, it’s crucial that you spend some time zooming into your vision, getting clarity over it, and sharing it with the relevant people within your customer service and sales teams.
The next step? You’ll want to share that well-thought-out vision with the relevant people within your customer service and sales team.
… and Share It With Your Teams
Even the best and most detailed company vision won’t do much if it sits at a metaphorical corner of your desk gathering dust. Think of your vision as a living and breathing document: for it to make sense and to spur change, you’ll need to share it with the right people.
Ensure that both your customer service and sales team have access to any materials relating to your vision and goals – from written documents to videos, graphics to audio files – and you’ll be ready to move on to the next step.
Keep Your Teams Connected
Ensuring that your customer service and sales team work in synergy also means helping them to communicate and interact easily and seamlessly. This can become even more of a challenge if you run a remote or hybrid company where staff is scattered across different physical locations (and, sometimes, time zones).
For this reason, you’ll need to rely on advanced software tools that enable your teams to communicate whenever and wherever, at the touch of a button. Solutions like Slack and Discord are some of the most common for this intent but also remember to implement a unified CRM solution that allows your teams to access the most up-to-date customer data quickly and securely.
Similarly, it can be useful to deploy one of the best email finder tools, which can help your teams to look up customer information and can be accessed by both your customer service and your sales teams.
Utilizing an effective CRM system can significantly enhance their capabilities as a sales tool, allowing them to access customer data seamlessly.
Always Keep the Customer at the Core
Answer this question: “Why do you want to align your customer service and sales teams?” If you have answered, “To improve the relationships with my customers”, you are on the right track.
While equipping your customer service and sales team with the best technology, making sure they interact regularly, and sharing unified visions and goals, the ultimate star of the show is not them: it’s your customers.
So, remember to always keep your customers and their needs, wants, and expectations at the core of both your sales and your customer service strategy. Only by doing so will you succeed at synergizing these two fundamental pillars of your operations.
The Takeaway
Running a successful company also means having a clear, solid, and consistent vision for all the different components of your business. Specifically, you’ll want to align customer service and sales, as these two areas are directly linked to exceptional customer satisfaction and retention.
In this article, we reviewed some of the most important benefits of this alignment, as well as explored ways to achieve it. Are you ready to take your customer experience to the next level by aligning customer service and sales? Start today!
Jessica Collier is VP of Growth Marketing at Assembly Software, a developer of practice management software and cloud-based solutions for the legal sector. Her passion for digital innovation and agile marketing has led to significant success in innovative tech marketing, client collaboration, and driving conversion results. You can check out her LinkedIn here.
Read Shep’s latest Forbes article: C-Suite Leaders, You Too Can Host A Podcast
October 31, 2023
It’s Not Really Free Delivery!
My friend Norman Beck sends me interesting articles and newsworthy information regularly. This one is worth talking about here. A grocery store chain had a sign in front of its entrance that read: Free Delivery – $99 a Year!
I had to smile – even laugh out loud – thinking of how many people would roll their eyes when they read that sign. It’s not free if you have to pay $99 for it! But some brilliant marketers must think the public won’t know the difference. Perhaps a better sign would have read:
Unlimited Delivery – $99 a year!
I’ve shared similar information about this in the past. How often are we told a company offers free delivery, free returns, free refills on soda … you get the idea. It’s not really free. It’s in the price you pay.
I’m okay with that, and it’s actually a pretty good marketing strategy that works. As an example, if I order a soda at a restaurant, I like the idea of refills. But are they free refills? Or are they unlimited refills? Either way, I’m happy. It’s just that one is a more accurate description of the value provided.
So, consider this simple concept. For any business to make money, it has to charge for whatever it sells. By giving too much away, it would lose money. But if the company leaders know how much they can give away without losing money and incorporate it into a competitive price, they may have a value proposition that gets and keeps customers.
Southwest Airlines is the perfect example of this. It markets the heck out of Two Bags Fly Free®. Southwest knows that when other airlines charge for something that they don’t, it can be perceived as free. By keeping operating expenses low, they can charge a competitive price for an airline ticket that doesn’t require the customer to pay extra for checked baggage.
After reading this, some of you may think I’m against free. On the contrary, I’m a huge fan of free. Even if I have to pay for it, if the perceived value is that it’s free, that works for me. I just think that we should be careful about putting a sign in front of a store that basically says you have to pay $99 for “free” delivery.
And, while I’m talking about free, there is one other form of free that I love, and that’s hassle-free, something I know your customers will love too.
Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.
October 30, 2023
The “More Than Perfect” Business Model
Top Takeaways:
The hospitality mentality is key to creating a great customer experience in any type of business. Industries like hotels, restaurants, and cruise lines excel in this area because they live with their customers 24/7, which creates a unique dynamic for delivering outstanding service. We can all learn from their methods.
Living with customers means managing their experience from the moment they start considering a purchase to the time they return for another one. It involves addressing any issues they may encounter, no matter how small, and ensuring their overall satisfaction throughout the entire journey.
Employee engagement is crucial for maintaining a high level of service for any company or brand. In industries like cruising, where employees live and work together, fostering a positive work environment is essential to ensuring that employees wake up each day ready to deliver exceptional customer service.
“More than Perfect Service” is all about where you are, where you would like to be, how you will get there, and making sure that your customers and employees sing your praises.
You’re not just competing with other businesses in the same industry. You’re competing against every business in the world. Take other companies that deliver great service and design your training and education to emulate them.
Plus, Paul shares how he managed a recent moment of misery of a cruise getting canceled and turned it into an opportunity to keep and impress customers. Tune in!
Quotes:
“Forming relationships with people is what business is all about. It’s the little things that make you stand out, like learning somebody’s name or writing a thank you note. It’s what makes them want to come back.”
“There’s always a lower price somewhere. So, you have to compete on something more than price. You have to compete on service.”
“With the ‘More than Perfect Service’ model, we wanted perfect to be the starting point. Then, you just go a little bit above and beyond perfect to stand out in a crowd. As a result, people are willing to travel a little further to go to your business or spend a little bit more money.”
“Attitude is everything. You have to wake up with the right attitude in order to do the job and excel at it.”
Paul Rutter is a seasoned professional in the cruise industry who understands the unique challenges and dynamics of living and working with customers 24/7. He is the author of Repeat Business Inc.: The Business of Staying in Business and his latest book, You Can’t Make This Ship Up: Business Strategies, Life Lessons, and True Stories from Forty Years at Sea .
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio .
This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:
What is More Than Perfect® business model?
How does living with customers 24/7 impact the hospitality industry in unique ways?
Why is employee engagement crucial in maintaining outstanding service in the cruise industry?
How does the hospitality mentality apply to any and all businesses?
How do you make brand advocates out of customers and employees?
The hospitality mentality is key to creating a great customer experience in any type of business. Industries like hotels, restaurants, and cruise lines excel in this area because they live with their customers 24/7, which creates a unique dynamic for delivering outstanding service. We can all learn from their methods.
Living with customers means managing their experience from the moment they start considering a purchase to the time they return for another one. It involves addressing any issues they may encounter, no matter how small, and ensuring their overall satisfaction throughout the entire journey.
Employee engagement is crucial for maintaining a high level of service for any company or brand. In industries like cruising, where employees live and work together, fostering a positive work environment is essential to ensuring that employees wake up each day ready to deliver exceptional customer service.
“More than Perfect Service” is all about where you are, where you would like to be, how you will get there, and making sure that your customers and employees sing your praises.
You’re not just competing with other businesses in the same industry. You’re competing against every business in the world. Take other companies that deliver great service and design your training and education to emulate them.
Plus, Paul shares how he managed a recent moment of misery of a cruise getting canceled and turned it into an opportunity to keep and impress customers. Tune in!
Quotes:
“Forming relationships with people is what business is all about. It’s the little things that make you stand out, like learning somebody’s name or writing a thank you note. It’s what makes them want to come back.”
“There’s always a lower price somewhere. So, you have to compete on something more than price. You have to compete on service.”
“With the ‘More than Perfect Service’ model, we wanted perfect to be the starting point. Then, you just go a little bit above and beyond perfect to stand out in a crowd. As a result, people are willing to travel a little further to go to your business or spend a little bit more money.”
“Attitude is everything. You have to wake up with the right attitude in order to do the job and excel at it.”
About:
Paul Rutter is a seasoned professional in the cruise industry who understands the unique challenges and dynamics of living and working with customers 24/7. He is the author of Repeat Business Inc.: The Business of Staying in Business and his latest book, You Can’t Make This Ship Up: Business Strategies, Life Lessons, and True Stories from Forty Years at Sea .
Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio .
This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:
What is More Than Perfect® business model?
How does living with customers 24/7 impact the hospitality industry in unique ways?
Why is employee engagement crucial in maintaining outstanding service in the cruise industry?
How does the hospitality mentality apply to any and all businesses?
How do you make brand advocates out of customers and employees?
