In Customer Experience, It’s Never Too Late.

A beautiful aspect of working in customer service and customer experience, is that I’m doing what I love.

I sincerely love architecting customer service and understanding the customer thought process and how I can mold our systems, offerings, words, and actions to develop a better customer service experience.

The love of service comes at different times to each of us. For some of us, it’s early on in our career. For others, changes have to be made along the way.

Customer Experience Requires Passion

In my mission to achieve the exceptional customer experience, I enlist the help of other customer-focused people who want to do right and deliver great customer service. The most successful customer service individuals are those who have come from the most familiar and “safe” fields, but who invest their hole heart into delivering the exceptional customer experience. Great customer service MEANS something more to them.

I admire people who change career tracks, ignore university studies, and do what they love…what they know they can do well…and what will mean more to them.

Customer Experience Requires Investment

I recently was introduced to Paula Sandusky, who embodies the ideals of turning your back on what’s familiar and seeking instead to do what she knows she loves. Paula’s experience shows us that when we find a knack for customer service and develop a passion for delivering exceptional customer experiences along the way, it takes considerable personal investment.

Paula just graduated in May with a MS in biology, focused on animal physiology and biomechanics. She learned many things about herself during her graduate education; in particular, she learned that she truly didn’t want to continue in biology. She really loved robotics. She dove into it, and found that she was good at it…really good at it.

Real Dedication to Customer Experience Takes Work…A Lot of Work.

It’s not enough to simply have a mission statement about service or about taking care of the customer. It’s not enough to setup a customer service department and staff it with people. To develop an exceptional customer experience, service takes study, practice, and development. To rise to the level of the Ritz Carltons and the Zappos of the world, you’re going to need to put in a lot of hours, years really.

Paula didn’t have the background everyone else in the room did, but spent A LOT of time outside of class catching up on unfamiliar material. She loved every second of it.

You don’t have to be a customer service genius, but you have to get it right.

Paula’s new goal is to develop her skills and make a difference in her field.

Since she’s now out of school, a lot of her development must be done informally. She spends her time documenting the process on her robotics blog. She hopes to use this record as a way to keep herself motivated, to follow her progress, and to set an example for anyone else out there who finds themselves wanting to re-chart their course.

It doesn’t matter what we’ve done in the past, or how we’ve done it. If we’re sincere in our desire to change, even a bad customer service reputation can be turned around for good with the right principles, practice, and with dedicated time and attention to the customer experience cause.

It’s never too late to start over…or to change.