Good Customer Service is About Exceeding Expectations

As I interact mostly with community bankers, I find that these professionals have a keen sense of the level of personalized service that they believe customers are seeking. They strive to meet and exceed that expectation. As I have written before, the advent of more convenient services available to customers at a time and place of their choosing allows those customers to determine how and when they access banking services. This changes the customers’ expectations of what constitutes good customer service. If we as bankers do not make the necessary adjustments in what our customers “expect” our service levels to be and continue to provide a level of service that we feel is great, we will find a growing chasm of expectations from what we deliver and what our customers and future customers expect.

Consider your mobile banking app. The greatest risk to service expectations for that app is at the time the customer needs it, it is unavailable.? We’ve all heard tales of a bank that had its online banking / mobile banking systems go down for an extended period.? For those who depend on this channel for access to banking info and services, this is a potentially fatal failure.? I’m not talking about the system being down between 2 and 5 am on a Sunday morning. I’m talking about being down all day. Maybe for multiple days.? So you say, “Okay, I agree, but I don’t run the mobile banking app. What can I do to remediate that risk?” Start by having detailed discussions with your mobile vendor about their development processes and how they test their releases. Ask them about how they can roll back to a stable release if needed. Ask for a specific report of their downtime outside of contractual periods and the reasons for those outages.? You are looking for the Qantas Airlines of mobile banking, one that has never crashed.

Unlike a mobile banking app, how you respond to customers to remediate a service issue is totally under your control. But consider that there is a strange dichotomy between the level of service you provide and the customers’ expectations for it. The more you consistently come through for the customer, the higher the expectation for continued great service.? Now, don’t misunderstand this premise, those institutions that have built a great reputation for outstanding service are not going to lose customers over a small blip in service. You will have “banked” goodwill to overcome that.? Yet as you consistently perform over expectations, the customers’ expectations inch up.? It would be nice if we could keep the expectations steady so we could always know the bar we are reaching to soar over; however, the reality is great service begets more expectations of continued and increased great service.

Let me give you a recent example outside of financial services I recently experienced. I had traveled to Denver to teach a couple of classes for the Graduate Banking School.?When I returned to the Denver airport, it was about 4 hours before my flight back to New Orleans.?I remembered that there was an American Express Centurion Club in the C Concourse. Great!?I can get online, catch up on emails and write a couple of articles. ?As an AmEx platinum card holder, I am granted free access to the club, but there is a limit to how many can occupy the club at one time. So, I accessed the AmEx app and clicked the link to signify that I wanted club access. I was rewarded with a QR code, and there was a note in red that indicated the club was “almost full.”? I went directly to the club and was hopeful as there was no long line waiting to get in.? The very nice representative greeted me, and I showed her my QR code. Almost everything else that happened violated the extremely high expectation I have of American Express.

First, she needed my ID.? Really?? Why?? I have a QR code generated from the AmEx app, one in which I have to be authenticated to use.? Totally useless.? No problem, I went to my LA Wallet app and displayed my authenticated Louisiana driver’s license for her. No good, she had to see the plastic.? Really? Why? Does AmEx think that their check-in representatives can spot a fake ID in my hand but be fooled by one that is displayed online and authenticated by the State of Louisiana? OK, a minor blip, AmEx has provided a lot of service for me, and they have banked some goodwill.? Next, she asked for my flight information. No problem. I show her my mobile boarding pass and she then asks me if I came in on a connecting flight.? No, I respond.? Then she tells me that I am not allowed into the club because my departing flight is more than 4 hours from now.? I can come back in 45 minutes and get access to the club.? What?

Okay, I get it that they may have to keep people from showing up in the club from opening to closing and just eating and drinking all day, but I just needed to stay in there for about 2.5 hours so I could comfortably work.? Their policy doesn’t make any sense. If I had been on a connecting flight, she would have let me in, but since I arrived in a car, I can’t get in.? Also, 45 minutes from now, I may not even get in. This has happened to me once before at the DIA Centurion Club where I had a QR code for access at a specific time, and when I arrived they said the club was full.? I was not going to wait for 45 minutes in the hopes of getting in the club.? I told the representative that this poor service is not what I expect from AmEx and left.? I have used Centurion Clubs in the Miami and Charlotte airports in similar situations with zero issues. I have never had an issue with any of the international Centurion Clubs I have visited.? Definite violation of my expectation of American Express.

Maybe this is just a blip at the DIA Club; nevertheless, it bugs me since it is incongruous from the level of service I expect from AmEx.?Oh, but it gets worse.

I went back to the B Concourse, grabbed a coffee, and sat down at a table to work.? I decided I wanted to let AmEx know that my expectations were violated.? As an aside, know that any customer you might anger is unlikely to let you know about it. They’ll just tell twenty-five of their closest friends and business associates about your customer service “fail.” I went to the AmEx site to find a customer service email.? Hmmm, there does not appear to be one. I accessed chat and was quickly connected with a customer service rep. I asked for the email address for customer service. I was politely told there isn’t one, but I could put anything on my mind in the chat.? Really?? Chat is great for short-form communication, but I needed to write out a narrative somewhat like what I am writing now. Chat is not a good format for that.? You see, AmEx has decided for David Peterson that chat is superior to customer service over email and subsequently eliminated email as a customer service option. David Peterson does not agree.

What kinds of service levels are you dictating to your customers in the interest of providing what YOU think is the highest level of service?? Not offering an email connection option is a poor decision, just as deciding to not offer a chat option is. Further, when you know a customer is upset, you need to find a meaningful way to connect with them and see if you can make it right.? The chat agent knew I was trying to lodge a complaint, and when I said I was not interested in doing so over chat, they could have forwarded my contact information to the help desk, and someone there could have reached out to me.? If that had happened (I have received no follow-up from AmEx …), that would have likely remediated my need to vent and avoided this rant on an AmEx customer service fail which is now online for everyone to read.? It is your organization’s responsibility to pay attention to anywhere and everywhere a customer might complain about you.

Example: on the very same trip to and from Colorado, I rented a car from Hertz.? When I arrived at DIA, it was snowing pretty hard.? I select my car, fired it up, left the rental center, and started up the mountains towards Silverthorne. About 15 minutes into my drive, the low fuel warning comes on.? What?? When you rent a car, it is always FULL.? I never even check, and they no longer ask that question at the checkout booth.? So, I had to exit the interstate and fill up with gas in a raging snowstorm. The bummer of it was that I had selected to buy the tank for this rental.? So I was paying for gas twice!? To make matters even worse, when I checked the gas receipt from the pump, it was completely blank!? Not a spot of ink on it. Grrrrrr.

I went online to Hertz.com and accessed their customer service options. They have an email for customer service, so I drafted an email that spelled out my issue.? I immediately got an automated response that my email was received. Take note bankers, this is an important feature alerting customers that you acknowledge receipt of their email, a policy that your customer service email service should mirror. Two days later, I got a response from a Hertz representative.? Note, not a generic response, but an email from a specific Hertz customer service representative.? First, he apologized for my issue. OMG, how simple and important to make this the FIRST step in remediating an issue!? He asked that I provide a receipt, and he would gladly issue a credit.? Since I had used my AmEx platinum card, I access the AmEx card website, found the gas charge, and conveniently, AmEx included a small picture of a map showing the exact location in the Colorado mountains where I had purchased gas (see AmEx, you really can exceed expectations, but it has to be consistent). Five days later, I received a credit for my gas purchase and a follow-up email from the Hertz rep checking to make sure it all turned out okay.

One leisure company failed to meet, much less exceed, my expectations. Another one exceeded expectations with flying colors.? I have already told this story about a dozen times and now it will be plastered all over my social media feeds.? Perhaps someone from AmEx will be watching for any reference to them on social media and contact me.? I am not that hopeful, but if they do, I will so report in a future post.

Don’t take your customer service levels for granted.?Examine each contact point and test it regularly to make sure that any contacts are followed up. Also, train all customer-facing team members, whether in person or online, to respond like this: first, express sympathy, then determine what is the expectation for service and finally determine if there is an option for your organization to meet and exceed that expectation.?As digital service options expand and more of your customers are experiencing those options via other companies, their expectations of your service will shift.? Your ability to provide a range of customer service across different customers is key.? One size fits all personalized service is no longer going to be acceptable.?Each and every customer is like Goldilocks seeking to find the bowl that is “just right.”

If any of you have managed to gain successful entry to the Centurion Club at the Denver International Airport, please let me know at [email protected] or 225-247-6113.??