The decision to have great customer service wow experiences as a core part of your service offering is easy, the hard part is making it actually happen.
It’s easy to sit in a meeting and decide to make customer service a core part of your organization. Adding customer service to the mission statement is easy. It just takes adding two little words, “customer” and “service”.
The hard part comes when you have to translate the general “customer service” aspiration statement from a mission statement into real, actionable, difference-making practices that your people can follow.
Foundation of real customer service that matters
Great customer service doesn’t magically just happen. It’s not just a by product of having the “right” office environment, it’s not based on the fact that you have experienced senior management that “believes in customer service”, and it certainly doesn’t happen by reading customer service books.
All of these factors help, but don’t get you there.
So what matters when it comes to delivering a WOW customer service experience?
The right attitude is central to customer service wow
Attitude makes a big difference when it comes to delivering exceptional customer service experiences. Many times customer service interactions are the result of breakdowns in the normal course of things. Instead of the interaction being proactive, it’s really a service recovery opportunity. When it comes to customer frustrations, you often don’t get a second chance to make it right. The first time is when it counts.
Your approach, or attitude about the interaction often sets the tone for what will happen in the service experience. Even the right answers delivered poorly or with a bad attitude will detract from creating a customer service wow experience. Poor attitude will eat away at your customer relationship until the you reach the point where price, features, and product no longer are enough to keep customers loyal.
Make customer service simple and straight forward
A shiny, fancy customer service helpdesk doesn’t make good customer service. Adding hundreds of options to your phone menu doesn’t improve the customer experience. Waiting 20+ minutes on hold doesn’t make me feel that my call is very important to you, no matter how many times the recording says so.
Customer service, REAL customer service needs to be free of barriers. We need to strip away the layers that shield us from customers and welcome customer interactions. This doesn’t mean that we ignore the fantastic technology that is available to refine the customer service process. Natural language search options, effective FAQs and knowledge bases, customer forums, and proactive video and interactive tutorials all can enhance the customer service experience without making customers feel like they’re getting the run-around.
Customer service as a core business strategy
We’re seeing a transition from a more strict, formal business environment to a startup culture where organizations are centered around building products, features, and services centered around customer needs, not corporate ambitions.
The next generation of great companies will be led by CEOs who are serious about great customer service.
-James Slavet, Greylock Partners
Today’s Lean Startup strategy, led by Eric Ries, focuses on aligning organizations around establishing an improved customer service experience as a core strategy of the organization. Customer service, according to Ries, is a learning function. Organization need to integrate customer service support into the product development process.
It’s no longer enough to build what you think customers need and then use marketing to hammer to customers why they need it. Instead, organizations have to align their strategy around delivering services that enhance customer experience and eliminate customer frustrations.
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