Training for Customer Service & Leadership Development
in Canada | USA | Asia | Europe
The one place you absolutely don’t want to be is in the bottom position of customer experience. Anecdotally, we’ve all heard people share stories of “the place I will never go back to.” There is nothing worse than having the reputation of ABYC (Anyone But Your Company) in a customer’s mind.
It gives your customers greater confidence with the second person, and to establish that their needs are not just important to you, but to everybody in the organization. Here’s an example of how it might work in a telephone conversation where you are connecting a customer to somebody in a different department:
How you manage customer expectations is a critical component to delivering outstanding customer experiences. When you can meet or exceed someone’s expectations you trigger trust and the belief that you genuinely care about your customers. Unmet expectations, on the other hand, are the most common trigger for “difficult customers” or difficult situations that lead to the need for service recovery.
This is what WOW experiences are all about. This fantastic story about the actions of Publix employee Gilnet Sainvil reaches to the very heart of creating loyalty.
Last month we got not one, but three stories of truly WOW customer experiences. All three of them from a bank — the same bank. This, from my experience, is a customer service unicorn of the highest order.
This year’s Top 10 Customer Service Stories for 2021 is kind of special for us, as it represents a rebound from the previous year where positive stories were few and far between.
Don’t ask “What is the ROI of customer experience?” A better question is, “Are you ion or are you out?”
“This is the definition of WOW customer service: experiences so unique, customers share them on social media.”
More than once over my career, I have been asked by people in customer service roles, “These customers are jerks. Why should I go out of my way for them?” The question, on the surface, seems fair. But here’s the thing. I have seen more than one situation where a customer’s ‘jerkiness’ was actually triggered by the employee in the first place.
Scolding customers damages relationships; a respectful response to their decisions benefits your long-term business.