Excellent Customer Service Can Turn Misery to Magic
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!
