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Tag: Customer Service Management

  • If You Make This Customer Mistake, Prepare to Lose Business Fast | Entrepreneur

    If You Make This Customer Mistake, Prepare to Lose Business Fast | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Maybe your customer service is tip-top in important areas like empathy, efficiency, proper use of language and so forth. Maybe you’ve engaged in effective and ongoing customer service training — whether in person or via eLearning. All of this is absolutely wonderful and very important. Still, you may have a blind spot that is driving customers away.

    In other words, Beware of The Cliff of Dissatisfaction!

    What customers expect in terms of speed is growing more emphatic and extreme every day, accelerating apace with technological, communication and competitive development. Broadband internet, ubiquitous smartphones and tablets, intuitive search functions, always-on GPS, innovative delivery options and greater competitive choice have all influenced customers’ expectations for timeliness. The old business expression, “Quality, price or speed: pick two,” no longer rings true.

    Related: Don’t Get Defensive — Avoid These 7 Phrases When Talking With an Angry Person

    The “cliff of dissatisfaction” is a metaphorical edge where customers lose patience with your company due to slow service (as defined by the customer, not by you). Before reaching the precipice, this timeframe can fluctuate depending on various factors like business type, location and time of day. It’s an inherent risk in service industries and business relationships.

    Starbucks, for instance, has a good grasp of how long their average customer will wait, from when they are acknowledged to when they receive their customized drink. The company employs strategies like interesting decor to make the wait pleasant and proactive countermeasures like baristas taking orders from the line when wait times threaten to exceed the acceptable limit. Technological solutions like their highly successful mobile app also help manage wait times. These strategies guide Starbucks’ expansion plans; when data indicates that demand and resulting wait times negatively impact customer satisfaction, a new store is opened nearby.

    Related: Want Your Business to Succeed? Use These Tips to Understand Your Customer

    Casino management is another example where waiting times are meticulously managed. Some casinos know precisely how long the average gambler will wait for a complimentary drink before getting frustrated. They utilize data analysis and staff-tracking technology like RFID tags concealed in their servers’ uniforms to improve staffing decisions and workflow.

    However, recognizing that your company has a problem can be challenging when industry standards lag behind customer expectations. For instance, in the furniture sector, a 12-week delivery time may actually be considered (at least by the merchants) to be normal. But if all businesses in your industry are too slow, it’s time for you to revolutionize your field before an innovative competitor like Uber or Amazon does.

    Letting customers control the tempo of support

    In addition to improving your speed of service — for example, by reducing hold times, cutting down on in-person waiting and returning emails more quickly — there are creative ways to match the customer’s timetable. Extending your hours is an obvious one. Allowing appointments and doing so in a way that requires minimal effort for the customer is another. And in telephone support, even when you aren’t actually answering calls any quicker, you can still answer them more conveniently by taking a page out of some of the airlines’ playbook and offering a callback option: When a customer calling in would be faced with a long hold time, give them the alternative of having their call returned at a time of the customer’s own choosing.

    Related: Use This Secret Customer Service Technique to Boost Your Customer Retention and Loyalty

    In-app support can be a step even beyond real-time

    In-app support is another way to align yourself to the timetable of your customers. If a customer is using your app and comes across a bug or something else they need to bring to your attention, in-app support, such as that offered by Zendesk, provides your customers with a “Click to Chat’ button, allowing them to chat with one of your customer support agents right there within the app. Also impressive is that this in-app solution promises to give companies a complete picture of the customer so that customers don’t feel like they’re starting over every time they interact with your company.

    Even more futuristically, certain flavors of in-app support can be, in a sense, a step beyond real-time. (Or if that sounds like a nonsensical statement, think of it as a step toward proactive assistance, or pre-sistance, so to speak.) For instance, when your company deploys Apptentive’s in-app solution, here’s what happens when a customer using your mobile app experiences a crash: A note pops up right within the app with an apology and reassurance that the issue is being fixed — before they even have to take any steps to complain.

    Micah Solomon

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  • 5 Customer Service Phone Tips to Keep Your Sales Coming | Entrepreneur

    5 Customer Service Phone Tips to Keep Your Sales Coming | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    Talking on the telephone with customers is a pretty unflashy form of customer service interaction. And as a customer service consultant, trainer, and eLearning training designer, I can sense how its importance is getting overlooked more and more.

    Too bad: The telephone’s ability to provide human-on-human interaction with real-time cues continues to make it a powerful brand builder, a way to turn your customer service operation from a cost center to a source of customer engagement, loyalty and revenue.

    In today’s varied, tech-informed customer support landscape, voice-based customer support via the telephone is more important than ever before.

    This is because:

    • With the rise of digital communication and self-service, telephone conversations between customers and brands have become rarer — and thus more precious. When a customer only interacts with you on the phone once or twice in their entire journey with your company (rather than every day or even multiple times a day), every call represents a chance to make a real and lasting connection. This single interaction can create a halo of personal connection and care that can positively color all those other electronic, often non-peopled interactions that are so typical today.
    • Customers are typically in greater need (even distress) when they reach out to a business on the phone today. They’re more likely to be at their wit’s end, dealing with a thorny problem that self-service tools have failed to answer. In this situation, they’re likely to feel gratitude for every ounce of phone skills we can command.
    • A telephone conversation offers a chance to shine in a cue-rich environment. A telephone conversation offers multiple clues as to what is going on emotionally on both sides of the conversation, including tone and volume of voice, speed of speech, length of pauses, and more. This allows you to adjust your approach in real-time in response, which can improve your ability to solve problems with empathy and aplomb and ultimately deepen your customer connections.

    This, in turn, can help you shine as a brand and as an organization and help you make strides toward building up to an iconic level of customer service.

    To start on the right telephonic foot (so to speak!), a business should consider its answers to the following five questions, which I focus on in my customer service training and consulting when working on improving telephone procedures and nailing down best practices.

    Related: 5 Life-Changing Customer Service Secrets You Can Learn From Five-Star Hotels

    1. Who should be answering our telephones?

    Unfortunately, it is commonplace for companies to consider reception and phone support entry-level jobs — positions that an employee is supposed to graduate from as quickly as possible. But isn’t it safer to put entry-level employees in positions hidden from customers rather than front and center, where they become the company’s voice?

    In my experience, the right employee to become your company’s voice is not looking to graduate quickly from that position but instead willing to devote themselves to making the most of it.

    And be sure you don’t count out those of an advanced age! In my experience, a grandparent, parent or someone else with extensive and varied life experience is often the person who can provide a calming, empathetic, personable phone experience better than anyone.

    Related: 5 Phone Answering Mistakes That Drive Away Customers

    2. How quickly should we be picking up?

    You need to aim to pick up by, or just after, the third ring. By the fourth ring, callers start to feel uncomfortable, doubting whether you’ll ever pick up, and they begin to assume that if you finally do, you’ll be too distracted, overwhelmed or flustered to be much help. If you commit to the 3-ring rule, you’ll be joining some iconic companies, such as Nordstrom and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company who have taken the 3-ring limit to heart. (In fact, it’s standard of the Forbes Travel Guide rating system; you get points taken off if you delay beyond that third ring.)

    Related: The Best Customer Service Companies Spend These 8 Minutes A Day Becoming Better Than the Rest of Us

    3. What should we say when we answer?

    The absolute most important things to convey here to the caller are 1. That they’ve reached the right place 2. Your name.

    But if you really want to get this right, consider taking a page out of the customer service training I offer. If you’ve worked with me ever before, you know I preach that you include at least four elements in your answer, any time you pick up an external line. e.g.,

    1. A greeting: “Thank you for calling,”||

    2. The name of your business: “Business X”

    3. Your name: “This is [Julie] or [Julie Smith]

    4. An offer to help: “How may I help you?”

    4. What should we sound like when we pick up?

    Fabulous, of course! Achieving this will depend on multiple elements working in concert, including the following two key secrets to getting off with a great start:

    • Make sure you’re smiling. When you smile, it changes your vocal tone in a very easy way to pick up, even within the limited audio range of a phone line. Some veteran phone professionals even use tape or Velcro to stick a compact mirror at eye level in their workspace to remind them to smile every time they pick up the phone. Yes, I know this is dorky, but it works. (A quick caution about sounding cheery and smiley at the wrong time: Once you’ve given your initial greeting on the phone, it becomes time to start emulating the mood and pacing of your customer. This will sometimes call for something other than a cheery tone of voice.
    • Make sure that you sound focused on the caller from the first second that the customer hears your voice. Customers can sense even the briefest moment of disengagement at the beginning of a call. Pause any prior activity before answering the phone to be sure your mind is entirely focused on the call — and that you sound that way.

    Related: 5 Ways You’re Wasting Your Customer’s Time on the Phone

    5. How should we conclude each call?

    Ending your call on a good note — providing a “fond farewell” — is as important (or nearly as important) as getting the opening of your call right. This is because of the proximity effect, the psychological finding that the last part of an interaction lingers in someone’s memory.

    As the call is winding down, ask if anything else is needed. If the caller answers “no,” conclude the interaction with a personal farewell that includes their name and perhaps another personal detail like, “It’s been great working with you, Margaret. I’ll see you back here on Thursday, and I’ll call you if anything changes.” Also, if it’s appropriate to the situation, invite them to call on you for assistance in the future.

    Related: 5 Simple Ways to Get Prospects to Stay on the Phone With You

    Micah Solomon

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  • 10 Steps to Building a True Customer Service Culture | Entrepreneur

    10 Steps to Building a True Customer Service Culture | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    What is customer service culture? It’s how your company looks at, treats, and engages with employees — or how it intends to do so. While ultimate results depend on individual customer-facing employee behaviors and the type of support delivered by back-office employees and technology, the source of these comes from the broader ethos that exists and either supports or sabotages excellent customer service performance and employee engagement.

    In my work as a customer service consultant and transformation expert, I balance the time and resources I expend on more nuts-and-bolts efforts, such as customer service training and eLearning production, with the broader issues of creating the right supporting customer service culture. It’s truly that kind of important. Here are ten ways to drill down on what matters here and kickstart your cultural results.

    Related: The Best Customer Service Companies Spend These 8 Minutes A Day Becoming Better Than the Rest of Us

    1. Create a meaningful statement of purpose

    This can be just a sentence long. Ideally, it encapsulates your company’s values and goals, particularly in how you strive to support your customers.

    Think of the Mayo Clinic’s “The needs of the patients come first” or the type embraced by five-star and other luxury hotels, such as Four Seasons Hotel’s “We strive to treat guests as we’d like to be treated ourselves” or Fairmont Hotel’s “We turn moments into memories.” This should be something your staff can easily remember and embody in their day-to-day work, not a jargon-laden, pompous multi-page work destined to language in somebody’s drawer, never to be seen again.

    2. Develop a philosophical framework

    This can be slightly longer but brief, containing 9-12 principles. Socialize these throughout your company by any means at your command. I’d suggest condoning that into a smaller format on a laminated accordion-folded business-size card for easy employee reference.

    These principles should guide your staff in their customer interactions and remind them of what’s most important during their day-to-day work. (Sound silly? The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company has taken this approach since 1983. Their accordion-folded business card — “the credo card” — is carried by every employee onsite and on the phones.)

    3. Show explicit and frequent support for employee empowerment

    Do this while emphasizing the importance of judgment calls and praising employees for exercising initiative. This helps to foster a sense of trust and autonomy among staff, which ultimately leads to better customer service for customers — in part because of the creativity it engenders in employees and in part because problems (and opportunities!) can be responded to in real-time by the first employee encountering them, no need for a customer to suffer through “I need to talk to my manager before I can help you that way.”

    Related: Recommendations for Quality Customer Service

    4. Hire personalities

    Focus on personality traits during employee selection rather than solely valuing skills and prior experience, as employees may have varying aptitudes for service. This is important because not everyone is cut out for customer service, and it’s more important to have empathetic, kind and willing employees to connect with customers genuinely.

    Related: Stellar Customer Service Starts with the Hiring Process

    5. Involve senior leadership

    Involve the CEO or senior leadership in onboarding new hires to emphasize the importance of service from the start. This helps to demonstrate the importance that your business places on great service, which permeates across your organization. When employees see that their CEO or other senior-level leadership prioritizes service excellence, it can help to instill a sense of ownership and value among employees.

    6. Conduct a daily, short “customer service refresh” ritual

    I recommend keeping it to 8 minutes or less! In this ritual, discuss a single principle of customer service excellence and recognize the great service provided by employees. This is another excellent way to reinforce values and create a positive feedback loop for employees. By discussing customer service best practices in a daily huddle or similar team meeting, you can help to foster a culture of continuous improvement.

    Related: The Best Customer Service Companies Spend These 8 Minutes A Day Becoming Better Than the Rest of Us

    7. Lead by example

    Manage from the floor to lend support to your service culture as well as to provide an opportunity for “instant correction.” Leading by example is critical when it comes to customer service. You can’t expect employees to prioritize service if they don’t see you doing it yourself. By getting out of your office and interacting with customers, you can demonstrate the importance of service to your employees and show them what it looks like in practice. Just as important, seeing, in real time, how your frontlines practice customer service can make all the difference, as it allows you the chance to correct missteps before they fester and ultimately become the norm.

    8. Provide in-depth customer service training

    This ensures that all employees have the tools to deliver the best service. Be sure this includes “situational empathy” training and the all-important training in service recovery (working with upset customers) that will allow success in even the thorniest situations. My company offers training that includes all the above, with an exclusive focus on customer service and the culture in which it resides.

    9. Foster an ethos of lateral service

    This ethos is where everyone pitches in, including senior staff, to get things done. When employees see that senior staff is willing to roll up their sleeves and help out as needed, it can help to foster a sense of teamwork and collaboration. (Think of Disney: how anyone, even a suit-wearing executive, will pause their walk through the park to address the litter they encounter.). In addition, during busy periods or difficult service scenarios, it can be beneficial for everyone to pitch in and lend a hand — both due to the effort expended and the morale boost it can lead to.

    10. Encourage innovation from all employees

    Nothing can be more frustrating for a well-meaning customer-facing employee than to have to solve the same issue repeatedly or to work with cumbersome tools when that employee has an idea for how to improve.

    By implementing these customer service culture catalysts, you can create a foundation for superior customer service and employee engagement to help your company succeed. These tactics require dedication and attention over the long term — creating a culture of service excellence is an ongoing commitment that requires continuous refinement and improvement. But the payoff can be significant: happier customers, engaged employees, and a better bottom line.

    Micah Solomon

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  • How 8 Minutes A Day Will Change Your Customer Service | Entrepreneur

    How 8 Minutes A Day Will Change Your Customer Service | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    It’s hard to picture how a mere eight minutes a day (every day) could spell the difference between where your customer service is today and where it needs to be to work as a true competitive advantage for your business — to transform you into an icon of exceptional customer service, able to command customer loyalty and passion and, often, a price premium as well.

    Plugging the eight-minute gap between where your customer service level is today and where you want it to be is one of several ultra-brief repeating behaviors that I offer to my consulting clients as truly transformational. I’m what’s known as a customer service transformation consultant — I work with companies to bring them ever closer to the pinnacle of customer service excellence, helping clients in varied industries become “the Zappos of car dealerships” or “the Four Seasons of banking.”

    1. The Ritz-Carlton-inspired eight-minute customer service refresh

    If you want to be thought of as the “The Ritz-Carlton of Industry X” because of your great customer service, consider this: since 1983, the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company has held what they call a “lineup” every day (and at the start of every shift if there is more than one) without fail. I use the same technique but call it a “customer service refresh.” The reason to keep it at eight minutes is that when you start edging your way toward 10 minutes, or — shudder — fifteen, you’re well on your way to becoming just another meeting. (Note: depending on your company culture, a daily refresh may be impractical. If this is the case, do it weekly.)

    At the customer service refresh, you don’t talk about quarterly numbers, and you don’t talk about KPIs. You don’t talk about anything along those lines. Instead, you work on conveying and learning and being inspired by one of your company’s core customer service principles or behavioral guidelines.

    For example, at Monday’s customer service refresh, you might be discussing the “default to yes” principle: that as an organization and as individuals, you always strive to find a way to say “yes” to a customer — and that if you can’t say yes, to never flat-out say “no” without offering one to two reasonable alternatives. Ideally, employees will even share examples of applying the “default of yes” approach to real-life customer situations.

    On Tuesday, you will highlight another principle, maybe your approach to customer service recovery, which means helping and ultimately turning around the feelings of a customer. And so forth. Think of how much learning and reinforcement your entire company will have experienced in even one week, let alone one year!

    Related: 5 Life-Changing Customer Service Secrets You Can Learn From Five-Star Hotels

    2. The 10-5-3 sequence to make sure no customer is ignored

    A nearly universal desire among customers is for recognition: the feeling that they are being seen rather than disregarded or ignored. One quick and easy-to-implement way to make sure the latter never happens, at least when they’re on-premises, is the 10-5-3 sequence:

    • At 10 feet: Look up from what you are doing and acknowledge the guest with direct eye contact and a nod.

    • At 5 feet: Smile, with your lips and eyes.

    • At 3 feet: Verbally greet the guest and offer a time-of-day greeting (“Good morning”).

    The only exception is that at three feet if you notice your customer engaged with their cell phone, a fellow shopper, or a kid (or parent), it’s important to just walk on by; do not disturb this customer!

    Related: A Great Customer Experience Begins With Great Employee Engagement and Management. Here’s Why.

    3. The 3-ring rule

    Answer incoming phone calls before they get to a fourth ring, any time it’s humanly possible. Why? Because by the fourth ring, callers start to feel uneasy, doubting whether you’ll ever pick up, and beginning to assume that, if you finally do, you’ll be too distracted or to be much help. In consideration of this, many of the highest-touch brands, such as Nordstrom and all major luxury hotels, have taken the 3-ring rule to heart.

    It’s standard of the Forbes Travel Guide rating system; a hotel striving to attain four-star or five-star status will get points are taken off that may ultimately deny them their desired star rating if they lag too often beyond that third ring!) So now, to demonstrate to customers that you also belong in this top echelon of service, it’s best to abide by the three-ring limit when possible.

    4. Instant behavioral correction

    To build and maintain an excellent customer service-focused company, it’s essential to correct missteps by employees right away — for two reasons. First and most obviously, you want to improve customer service performance immediately rather than letting destructive behaviors fester. Second, if you wait a while — say, until a performance review rolls around — the employee will never remember the incident the same way you do, and they’re going to bristle at rather than learn from your correction at such a late date.

    For best results, you should be doing a lot of “managing by walking about” so you can simultaneously model good customer service behaviors and witness inevitable missteps as well: language blunders, excessive informality (and excessive formality, for that matter), and so on — tiny-seeming things that make a world of difference when you add them all up. Wait until customers are out of earshot and say, “Do you have a minute?” If you do this both frequently and with grace, nobody will get their stomach tied in knots when they hear these words.

    Beyond a doubt, many aspects of the customer service transformation work I do take time. You’re not going to revamp your hiring process, rewrite your collateral or design your behavioral best practices in just a few minutes a day. But it’s impressive how these brief but repeating steps above can help you move up the ladder from tolerable customer service to excellent, even legendary, customer service.

    Micah Solomon

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  • Prioritize This Tool to Increase Customer Satisfaction in a Recession

    Prioritize This Tool to Increase Customer Satisfaction in a Recession

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    As economists continue to debate whether or not a recession is in fact going to happen, many companies are busy developing strategic plans should this come to fruition, taking the “hurry up and wait” mentality and focusing efforts on becoming more efficient with their dollars.

    The past few years have been transformative for many, and hopefully, your business has implemented some customer experience and digital transformation initiatives. Maybe you were already ahead of the curve or in more cases than not, the pandemic lit a fire under your organization as it did for many others. But if not, the good news is that it’s not too late to get started and with the economic uncertainty, now is a perfect time. The first step? Giving your customers what they really want with self-service options, which in turn will help you operate more efficiently from a digital perspective and more importantly, lead you through the potential recession.

    So how is this done? Let’s take a look at what your company can (and should) be doing:

    Help your customers help themselves — literally

    We are all familiar with how sales used to happen: Handshakes, order forms and catalogs over lunch. This method still worked before Covid-19, but changed drastically afterward — everything went remote and many companies had no choice but to go digital if they wanted to keep up. And now with another likely economic downturn, everyone’s minds are on their wallets, which means that one of the easiest ways to level up your business and lower the cost of sales is to ensure your customers have access to self-serve options so they can get the products they need without assistance. Convenience is key, as is ease of use — for every single interaction.

    It doesn’t really matter what your starting point is. Maybe you’re still employing dozens or even hundreds of field reps that are meeting face-to-face with customers, or maybe your customers use a call center where they’re helped by a rep with their product needs. The thing that matters most is where you need to go: A thoughtful digital experience tailored to your customer’s needs, accessible from anywhere to get what they need in real-time. Things that are easy should be easy. This means that if your customer wants to do something like order a product, track it or update payment information with you, they should be able to do all of those things themselves at a time and place that is most convenient for them. Therefore, creating the digital infrastructure for this is crucial. If something isn’t easy and cannot be done on its own, a customer may second guess their decision or withgo it all together — after all, budgets are tighter, so why waste time on something that isn’t convenient? Upgrading digital also means fewer sales responsibilities. However, with this lowered-cost-of-sale concept may come the logical thought, “are you suggesting we reduce the size of our sales team?”

    Related: The 6 Essential In-Store Experiences That Your Customers Want to See

    Make sure your sales team is still providing exceptional customer service

    To be clear, we are not advocating for you to make drastic changes to your sales team. In fact, quite the opposite. While we’d argue that many clients, especially the big strategic ones, should have a dedicated human being they can go to when they need something, there are always going to be long-tail customers that are perfectly happy to get set up once and from then on, use self-service for all routine smaller orders or account status questions.

    Once your sales team is freed from checking inventory, providing shipping updates, and other administrative tasks, they have a lot more time to do what they’re best at: building relationships and serving your customers with an unparalleled experience that differentiates your company from others. After this is implemented, watch as your customer relationships thrive and flourish. The option of self-service options will be a huge support for your sales team and make them better at their jobs and happier at work, which means you’re far less likely to deal with retention problems – something many industries are still feeling the crunch of in a post-Covid world.

    When we start working with just about any client, one of the first things we want to know is how their selling gets done, and what we can do to make it better, because, at the end of the day, this is what ultimately helps the client’s bottom line. What are the nuts and bolts of how your products are ordered to end up in your customers’ hands? While it may seem that you have bigger things to worry about in the face of economic uncertainty than changing your selling model, I’d argue there’s never been a more important time. Self-service may be the very thing that helps you weather this storm and thrive well beyond it.

    Andrew Walker

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