BLT, 25th Oct 18: Customer Service – What do you do to keep your customers coming back?

STARTER QUESTION: DESCRIBE AN EXAMPLE OF EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SERVICE

The ‘Starter Question’, posed to all the BLT participants around the table at the outset of the meeting helps to set the scene for the main topic.

First of all, what is “Customer service”?

“Customer service is the act of taking care of the customer’s needs by providing and delivering professional, helpful, high quality service and assistance before, during, and after the customer’s requirements are met.” 

SOURCE: Study.com

Furthermore, Study.com suggest that characteristics of good customer service can be summarised by the 4 Ps:

• Promptness: Delays and cancellations of products should be avoided.
• Politeness: Use good manners whether the customer makes a purchase or not.
• Professionalism: Treat all customers with the competence or skill expected of the professional.
• Personalisation: Customers like the idea that who they do business with knows them on a personal level.

The common theme around the table regarding “Excellent Customer Service” was that of ‘Personalisation’, which was deemed to be most effective in converting customers into advocates.

Round the table examples:

• Boxes labelled on every side [printing company] – boxes of printed materials (brochures…etc) are frequently only labelled on top, where the box is cut open. By adding labels all over, it doesn’t matter which way the box is put upon the shelf, the contents are always visible at a glance.
• The bus driver going the extra mile – you get on the bus which you think is going your way, but it’s on a changeover. “Nevermind”, the driver says, “it’s not far off route so I’ll take you there anyway.”
• The restaurant putting things right – a gluten-free meal gets mixed up and a polite complaint is made at the table; before the diner has even arrived back home the restaurant is on the phone apologising to the tune of £100 worth of vouchers.

PURPOSE, PEOPLE AND PROFIT

Purpose. Excellent customer service all stems from your company’s purpose; it’s your company’s reason for ‘being’.

During the previous BLT meeting, we considered the issue of “WHY?”; i.e. what is the reason for your company existing, besides simply making a profit? This is intertwined with the question of “purpose”.

As it happens, one of our BLT members is in the process of setting up a coaching company dealing with the issue of connecting people and purpose. So many employees are disengaged with their jobs that this represents a huge problem for industry: without a sense of purpose it is almost impossible to provide excellent customer service.

Consider this quote from a website I recently worked upon:

“In a survey of 2,400 participants…75% were unaware of their organization’s vision or mission.”

SOURCE: Gallup, taken from https://www.vitalizeyourworkforce.com

Hence, the issue of employee engagement needs to be addressed before the question of customer engagement can even be considered.

Q. WHAT DO YOU DO TO KEEP YOUR CUSTOMERS COMING BACK?

When customer engagement ‘works’, it is because the purpose and the people are aligned.

Consider the following two examples of delivering customer satisfaction: one for a product, one for a service.

A. ZAPPOS: CUSTOMER SERVICE FOR A PRODUCT

Google the words ‘Customer Satisfaction’ and the likelihood is that Zappos will appear somewhere on the 1st page of your search. This is a US company selling shoes online – not necessarily the sexiest product, but this company has turned customer satisfaction into an artform.

Consider this example of Zappos’ approach to customer service, taken from the practicalecommerce blog:

“In 2009, a traveler checked into a hotel in Las Vegas and realised, when unpacking, that she’d forgotten her favourite pair of (Zappos) shoes. She tried online at Zappos’ website but couldn’t find a replacement, and so called the company’s help-desk concierge service. Zappos no longer had the shoes, but its headquarters were located just outside of Las Vegas. So the Zappos team located the shoes at a nearby mall, went there, purchased the shoes, and then hand-delivered them to the hotel, all at no extra charge.”

The following four reasons for Zappo’s success with its customers were:

1. Lightening fast response times: “When an email comes in, treat it like a fire alarm”.
2. No quibble returns policy: Zappos has a 100 percent satisfaction guaranteed return policy. In fact, Zappos actively encourages customers to order several products, check them out, and return what they don’t want.
3. Reward loyal customers: Zappos upgrades good customers to next day or second day air shipping from standard ground shipping.
4. Anticipate problems with solutions: Selling products via mail, often on the basis of images only, means that lots of things can go wrong, from shipping problems to the customer ordering the wrong size. Zappos anticipates and plans for these problems.

B. HOTELS: CUSTOMER SERVICE IN A SERVICE INDUSTRY

As noted at the outset, ‘Personalisation‘ is one of the key characteristics of good customer service, and hotels have turned this into an art form.

The example given round the table was of a hotel doorman at a particular hotel who would greet the guests upon their arrival outside and radio through their name to reception. That way, when they arrived at the check-in, the receptionists had already looked them up online (with their preferences, if a repeat customer) and was able to greet them personally: “Hello Mr Smith…etc.”

This proved so successful that the company instituted the process across all its hotels worldwide.

CONCLUSION

“Customer service should not be a department, it should be the entire company.”

-Tony Hsieh, CEO Zappos

Whilst companies such as Zappos may have elevated the concept of customer service to giddy heights, it doesn’t have to be ground-breaking (or bank-breaking!) for a small company.

• Be honest.
• Take responsibility – don’t pass the buck down the line.
• Empathise – put yourself in the customer’s shoes.

Adopt these basic mantras, and you’ll be well on your way to delivering excellent customer service.

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