It’s always wiser to learn from others’ customer service mistakes and not your own. If you don’t watch for the little customer service traps, you’re bound to fall like the rest.
One of the difficulties of getting customer experience right and organizing customer service actions so that they all work together towards a common customer good is that even the little things often make a big difference in the ultimate result that customers experience.
These five little mistakes can prove fatal for your customer experience strategy and will keep you from getting the type of customer loyalty results you really want for your organization.
1. Borrowing customer experience components from others
You’re probably thinking: If it works, I should start doing it too. Wrong. Customer experience for your customers is a very personal thing. What your customers want from you and what customers from another company expect can be completely different. That’s why when it comes to adding to your customer experience, any new component, any service, any feature, any process has to fit into the ultimate strategy you want to execute.
Anything you add has to fit into what your customers have previously experienced in your customer experience process and fit into the next step of the service experience journey.
2. Failing to invest in services, features, or tools
You can’t skimp on the necessary items that are required for your customer service team members to effectively deliver on your brand’s service promise.
From the customer’s standpoint, it’s infuriating when the people they rely on for solutions and information don’t have it and wildly frustrating as customer service agents to not be given the tools to do the work we know needs to be done.
3. Doing more before you’ve mastered your current offerings
The “next best thing” is what we all want to find, right? Generally, organizations spend much more on new projects, new acquisitions, and advertising the “new” than they do on what’s already being done. Bread and butter often are nothing to get excited about, but they’re the staple we all need in order to be nourished.
If we can’t masterfully execute and exceed our customers’ expectations with what we currently have, trying to add something new won’t completely win over the customer.
4. Failing to document your plan
The fact that you know it should be enough, right? The real effect of customer service and customer experience are often dismissed or overlooked because not enough detail has been documented about what is being done and the result of the work undertaken.
Even if you know your program inside and out, senior managers and executives can’t read your mind. And if they can’t read your mind, they can’t attribute results the company sees with work that they don’t know you’re doing.
Customer service isn’t a cost center. But in order to make customer service a profit center, we have to identify the actions being taken and the return of those actions to the organization.
5. Thinking that customer service success will come overnight
We’re all guilty in thinking that this one little change will mean all the difference. Even if this one little piece is all you’re missing, in reality, the result of your one little thing can often take time to permeate your team and organization. Simple put, it takes time for change to really solidify and to be established as the norm.
Not everyone can change what they do and how they do it by flipping a switch.
This is the nature of change. Change takes time. Change requires effort. Change is not easy. Even the simple items associated with customer service change can be hidden traps that will keep you from getting the most from your customer experience actions. Think it through, take your time, organize your actions in order to make the most of your customer service actions so that they lead to create that exceptional customer experience you want.
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