June 27, 2007
| Category: Graphic Design Skills, Marketing
|
Annoyed by a lousy customer service agent early this morning, I’m more than motivated to share some thoughts on this subject. After all, I firmly believe customer service is one of best weapons available for small business owners.
An attention-grabbing article from Harvard’s Working Knowledge discusses about dominance trap, a condition wherein large companies are more inclined to neglect their customers. If you happen to be a small business owner like me, this is indeed an opportune situation to develop excellent customer service as your competitive advantage.
According to that article, there are 3 “Ds” essential in bringing “superior customer experience”:
1. Design the right offers and experiences for the right customers.
2. Deliver these propositions by focusing the entire company on them with an emphasis on cross-functional collaboration.
3. Develop their capabilities to please customers again and again—by such means as revamping the planning process, training people in how to create new customer propositions, and establishing direct accountability for the customer experience.
If you’re looking for some inspiration to augment your customer service, you can take a lesson from JetBlue’s founder David Neeleman and his role playing as flight attendant to gather consumer insights. Maybe adding the so-called HEARD (Hear, Empathize, Ask, Respond, and Deliver) technique might work for you as well.
But wait there’s more…watch and listen to the video below about the a cab driver’s passion to deliver customer satisfaction and how he turned misery to magic!
June 27th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
How’s this for customer service? Yesterday, I ordered two pizzas and a salad for delivery. Because it had been a while since I ordered from the chain, I repeatedely stated the price of each item out loud, as per the flyer I had on hand, and asked the CSR if each was correct. Each time, she didn’t respond, but after I persisted, she made a non-commital sound that I mistakenly took for confirmation.
When my order showed up, the delivery guy told me after I’d started punching in a tip that he was the owner. Usually, I don’t tip owners, especially because this place is so over-priced to begin with, but their pizza is delicious. Maybe I’m a jerk, but that’s that. But after he left and I finally found the receipt (which many drivers seem to want to hide from me), I found out I had been overcharged $4. Not a lot, but it’s the principle, since I also got taxed on the excess. So I called the same CSR and she conveniently seemed to have forgotten that I asked about the price of each item but remembered a few Seinfeld/Kramer jokes about do-it-yourself pizza. And yet, get this, yet she stated bluntly to me that the price of everything had gone up in the morning. So I guess customers don’t need to know this kind of information. What kind of customer service is that?
As someone that works out of the house and orders meals in a lot, I’m a bad food customer to peeve off. These idiots will be blogged about on my food blog, and I’ll be putting in a review of them on Google Maps. They’ve lost a customer who would have been semi-loyal. And, if I’m not mistaken, they violated the HEARD concept mentioned above.
crusty in canada
June 28th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Here’s another bad customer service story, this time from Guy Kawasaki, about his experience with AT&T and trying to cancel a service he had never ordered in the first place. I regularly have problems like this with one of my web hosting providers:
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/06/my-iphone-revie.html
June 29th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
[...] Excellent customer service can be your unique selling proposition and it is stronger than any price deals or discounts you can offer. Gauge your response time and if you’re confident about your performance, build up this advantage over competition. Make sure you do not forget to use snail mails to augment your customer service performance. [...]
June 29th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
[...] Regardless of the reasons, we need to devise some sort of standard operating procedure (SOP) to arrest these problems. After all, we must be aiming towards superior customer experience. [...]
July 30th, 2007 at 10:40 am
[...] big advantage of our small businesses is our ability to give more personalized customer service. In our business they are not just numbers but important customers. We know their first names and [...]
September 2nd, 2007 at 1:05 am
[...] different loyalty programs, think again. Just like in friendship, loyalty must be earned through excellent service and high quality products, over a period of time. Borrowing the words of Zoomstart, loyalty is all [...]
September 6th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
[...] small businesses consider excellent customer service as their main competitive edge to convert the neglected customers of the big players. Despite the [...]
September 24th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
[...] you talk with your customers and ask them what sets your company apart from your fierce competitors, do you think they can tell [...]
July 11th, 2008 at 11:09 am
[...] on customer service. It is not enough to sell product to every customer; you must delight them always so they will [...]
July 11th, 2008 at 11:12 am
[...] is important to match it with your competencies and experience. If the problem in one industry is customer service for instance, is your business equipped to make a difference in this [...]
July 11th, 2008 at 11:40 am
[...] So, gear up to outsmart and outpace your competitors with innovative marketing programs and strong customer service. [...]
July 12th, 2008 at 9:00 am
[...] front-line customer service agents engage customers every single day, giving them enough exposure to establish a relationship [...]
July 12th, 2008 at 9:01 am
[...] talking too much or dominating every business meeting. We might be carried away by our passion to delight our customers, or even frustration about our current business [...]