The Customer Service Imperative – Delighting Customers
When we think about customer service, usually the onus of managing customer issues falls on a company’s customer success team, post-sales. But I’m offering the perspective of a marketer on what customer service should be and why it’s so important to truly achieve “customer success.”
I don’t know if I’m just getting old and the zeitgeist pertaining to customer service has shifted to a new paradigm, but it seems to me that in general good customer service is a thing of the past. The principle of respect that reflected the adage “the customer is always right” is practically dead. Forget being right, if you have to get customer support from a major multi-national corporation, chances are good you’ll spend time on the phone arguing with them just so they listen to your point of view before placating you with an answer they are reading off a script that is less than satisfactory.
I’ve used this personal disappointment in my professional career to make sure company values are reflected in all touch-points for customer engagement. In my humble opinion, it’s not enough to just say your company stands for certain values, one must epitomize them in customer engagements as well.
Customer Service Impacts Your Brand Image
As a marketer, I’ve spent much of my career thinking about branding. Branding defines what a company represents. Or more accurately, marketers determine a set of concepts that define a company’s brand promise, values, etc. Those concepts are supposed to dictate the brand image, the impression customers and prospective customers get from a company, after an interaction. I use the term “supposed to” in the previous sentence because those concepts can be derailed by any single interaction whether it’s a problem with the product itself or a customer-facing employee who betrays his/her role as a brand ambassador.
Many companies post their brand values prominently on their website, and typically you’ll see terms like “customer-centric,” “reliable,” or “trustworthy.” It takes intentional work to make sure that a company actually represents those values with every customer engagement. A smart senior leadership team will be exceptionally concerned with how every team is living up to those brand values. To achieve excellence, every department needs to think about how to delight customers. Not satisfy, delight!
1. Product – create a product that customers love so much they want to buy more.
2. Marketing – curate clear, concise, and engaging content that piques the interest of prospective customers, conveying value and teaching existing customers how to optimize their product experience.
3. Sales – express value that solves the customers’ problem and make it easy and seamless to purchase the product, providing incentives that make them feel like they’ve gotten a big bang for their buck.
4. Operations and Customer Success – create efficient interactions by listening to customer needs and troubleshooting issues that arise with empathy.
“To achieve excellence, every department needs to think about how to delight customers. Not satisfy, delight!”
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – Customer Service Stories
Let me provide two specific examples of customer service that portray both ends of the spectrum: what to do, and what not to do.
What Not To Do
When my husband and I had our fifth wedding anniversary, I wanted to get him something made of wood as is customary for that year. I wound up ordering a custom-made product from a company called So Wood. The product was shipped to my house, and it showed up broken. It had been customized and personalized for the purpose of gift-giving, so it wasn’t something that could easily be returned. I reached out to the company and let them know about the problem and my disappointment, and I asked what could be done to rectify the situation. Somebody from customer service responded to me in writing that another team member would reach out to me and “the issue would be resolved to my satisfaction.”
The second person that reached out stated that I should fix the product myself with a hammer and nail and glue, and to compensate me for the inconvenience they would refund 15% of the cost. I had to read that statement a second time to make sure I didn’t misunderstand because my initial reaction was, “are you kidding me?” I didn’t think I had bought something from IKEA who tells you up front that assembly is required. This company assumed that I could fix their broken product, after I had purchased additional materials to do so, and for my time and effort to build their product, they offered me 15% of the total cost. Haha. This seemed ludicrous to me, and I was flabbergasted.
I responded back that I wasn’t satisfied with this answer, but they declared that there was no way I could get a full refund or anything greater than 15%. So not only did I wind up with a broken anniversary gift that I had to build myself if I wanted it to even remotely resemble what I had purchased, but the customer service rep misled me and told me I would be satisfied with the outcome, which I was not.
What these people didn’t know is that my husband and I had just spent three full years building a house, and that I was not paying for their crappy product because I didn’t know how to use a hammer and nail to build it myself, but rather, I was paying for the convenience of them producing and assembling it, then delivering a turnkey product to my door.
When I put this matter to rest, the emotions I walked away with about this company were bitterness, disappointment, frustration, and exhaustion. And I guarantee you I will never purchase another stick of wood from them ever again. The brand image I got from this company was incompetent, dishonest, unreliable, and cheap. Shame on me for not doing my due diligence to read through customer reviews because I was not alone. If this is a company’s brand image, it’s the kiss of death!
The Epitome of Delight
Alternatively, I had an unexpected, wonderful customer service experience with my husband’s pharmacy, Alto Pharmacy. My husband takes a particular pill every day in order to survive. On this day, there was an issue with his order that gets delivered to our home. I called the pharmacy to discuss the situation, which was resolved quickly, with ease. While the woman had me on the phone, she pointed out that insurance was charging us $10 for every pill bottle that went out. The doctor had filled the prescription for a 30-day supply, but insurance approved up to a 90-day supply per bottle. The two of us agreed that every order should be a 90-day supply from there on out and she subsequently changed all future orders on my behalf (which I could have done myself on the app).
In so doing, think about what this woman had done to benefit me and Alto Pharmacy:
1. She saved the customer $20 (1 delivery costs $10, 3 deliveries costs $30).
2. She saved me time that I would have spent entering future orders into the app by doing so on my behalf – and I could have screwed it up had I done it myself.
3. She reduced operating expenses for the company (1 delivery versus 3).
4. She eliminated two months’ worth of potentially problematic deliveries and subsequent customer service calls (not that they usually are problematic, but they could have been).
5. She surprised and delighted the customer, causing a positive brand image and customer loyalty.
6. She epitomized the concepts of “customer-centricity” and “trustworthiness.”
7. And unwittingly, she helped Alto Pharmacy get this free, flattering viral marketing as I tell all my friends how she helped me out when I didn’t even ask for such assistance explicitly.
I expressed my gratitude to her, but the words didn’t do me justice. In this tough economy, I was ecstatic to get $20 knocked off our bills, and I was immensely grateful to find a professional who cared about us, particularly in the medical field. Considering the low bar I set at the beginning of this article, with good customer service being nearly dead, I was delighted.
“I was immensely grateful to find a professional who cared about us... I was delighted.”
Being A Customer-centric Company
To truly achieve customer success, every customer-facing employee in the company has to think about the customer experience from the customer’s perspective. This means truly listening, empathizing with the customer’s plight, and thinking outside of the box to find resolutions.
Customer service can go wrong in any department. Having worked in B2B SaaS technology, I can tell you that what you don’t want your team to do is provide a bad customer experience to a customer who is spending six figures for software that is supposed to make their lives easier. Imagine how easy it would be to lose deals if your team did the following:
· The marketing team could drop the ball and provide misinformation or unclear marketing materials, or make it hard for prospective customers to navigate the company website to figure out what the product value is or how to get in touch.
· The sales team could mis-manage calendars, take a long time to follow up on inquiries, or make promises that aren’t reflected in the final contract.
· The product team could ship too hastily and miss glitches or worse yet, cause data security issues.
· The operations or customer service teams could treat customers like transactions without regard for their humanity, as if inquiries were a bother and direct them to figure things out on their own after sending tech specs instead of helping to resolve the problem.
I previously alluded to viral marketing which is simple. When customers are happy, they will tell other people how great your company is and drive positive brand awareness, leading to net new to revenue. And those customers will be willing to buy more products or expand on what they’ve got. The opposite will cause prospective customers to avoid your company like the plague and you will experience high churn.
Delight Has to Be Part of the Company Ethos
For a company to delight customers, every department has to be mindful to avoid the aforementioned pitfalls, and to take their role as a brand ambassador seriously. This means hiring people that think, not just transact as if on an assembly line. And good people are expensive – they must be incentivized to want to do their jobs well.
As a marketing leader, I consciously socialize marketing campaigns across the company with enthusiasm to demonstrate the level of energy that needs to be associated with each message, and to convince staff that we believe in what we are selling. Employees need to believe that the product will help improve lives, and that is the value of the brand.
Enthusiasm is infectious, and as they say, people can hear when you are smiling on the phone. Unless all employees take pride in their work and feel like a valued part of the team, you’ll wind up with staff that damage your brand and alienate customers. Frequently, this attitude trickles from the top down hence the importance of leadership to set an example.
About the Author
Allison has an international MBA in marketing and entrepreneurialism, and has built her career on developing strategic marketing plans. By working with Microsoft for nearly a decade, she honed corporate marketing skills before transitioning to the startup world to help companies grow brand recognition and subsequently revenue. There, she explored various SaaS industries including cybersecurity, DevSecOps, telematics, and industrial IoT (IIoT). All of these industries leverage automation, machine learning, predictive analytics, and various forms of data management. It has been Allison’s pleasure to bring these powerful tools to light and watch as companies grow their business.
Visit her on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/AllisonQDurbin
