The reality is that not every customer interaction is going to be an amazing customer service experience, the secret is documenting your customer services successes, then telling everyone about it.
Chances are, most of the time you do some amazing customer service thing, very few people will know about what you did.
Even with review sites, testimonial pages, and all of the encouragement and bonuses you may offer, most customers won’t take the time to tell another soul about the great customer service experience they’ve had with you. If you mess up and deliver bad customer service, magically, your customer response rate increases dramatically, but for the most part, there’s little reward for great customer segment service.
Marketing is the secret to the customer service reputation
One secret you can learn from the great customer service companies is that to establish your reputation as a great customer service company, you have to capture those customer experience gems, integrate the principles that made it great into your service delivery, then tell everyone about what you did. Seriously.
The Zappos record long customer service phone call
Think about it. We’ve all heard about Zappos’ record long 9+ hour phone call with a customer. Now, does that happen every time? Of course not. It doesn’t happen every day, or every month, or every year for that matter. This is probably the only 9 hour phone call a Zappos customer service rep will EVER take. But how many times have you heard about it? Just google “zappos record phone call”. Look at the publicity they get from just one phone call.
Nordstroms customer service and the tire return
The same applies to Nordstoms and their famous car tire return customer service story. How many more tires has Nordstroms had to take back since this first happened? A few? I doubt it. They’ve probably NEVER had another customer try and return a car tire. But how much publicity does Nordstroms get from their tire story? Books have been written about it! Insane!
If you have a business and you need to learn about Brandiing, well you can visit this website and get more information about it and how it can help your company grow.
Why no one is talking about your great customer service
Now, you a working on mastering customer service. You have the customer service skills and you are consistently delivering great customer service experiences for your customers. So why aren’t people writing about your company? Because you’re not marketing your customer service experience.
This is the secret the big guys won’t tell you. When you do something great or when something great happens, you have to capture that experience, then reproduce it for everyone to know.
DigiCert customer service gets some pretty cool customer gifts
The team at DigiCert, an SSL certificate provider and online authentication services company, takes pride in their customer service. Their customer support team members have received some unique gifts from customers just because of their awesome customer service:
- Wedding invitations
- Fine Scottish whiskey (but the team doesn’t drink)
- Home garden goods
- Imported chocolates
Marketing your customer service success
So don’t be afraid to market your great customer service experience. When something memorable happens within your customer service team or when a great customer experience takes place, you can:
- Try to get a testimonial
- Write a press release about it
- Write a blog post about it
- Write a newsletter article about it
- Pitch the event to a news agency
- Tweet about the action, and ask others to re-tweet.
- Share something about the service action on Facebook
- Create a video dramatization and share it on social media
- Create a graphic to memorialize the action and share it online
These are just a few ways to do it. You can be creative and do whatever you’d like.
We often times take it for granted that our service actions will somehow be trumpeted across the Internet world and customers will come flocking to us because of it. Maybe in a perfect world. But in the real world, customers a busy. Sure, they appreciate what you’ve done and you’ve won their business, but they don’t have time and many times don’t have the social network community to leverage what took place into winning more business for you.
You control your customer service reputation
The key to establishing your customer service brand is capturing those special service moments, then reproducing it for others to experience it. Doing this, you maximize the power and benefits of your awesome customer service experiences happening each day.
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