What does it take to change the opinion of your client base to think you deliver great customer service?

We all carry baggage with us. We carry our baggage with us through our personal and professional lives. Baggage is defined as "past experiences or long-held ideas regarded as burdens and impediments" (Dictionary.com).

Baggage is something that we build up over time when we are engaged in active relationships. Baggage is something we take into new relationships. Baggage is sometimes why we are judged based on someone else's previous relationships. Let's talk about what to do with all this baggage and how we can not only find, but highlight the positive in a bad situation.

Baggage doesn't happen in only personal friendships, intimate relationships, or within families. Baggage happens professionally through working relationships (internally within our companies) and (externally) with our client relationships. Clients buy our product but they expect much more than just the product. Clients know there may be an occasional hiccup with the product. Maybe delivery is delayed, a bug with the product, or an issue with the billing. But when a client has a snafu, they expect to receive customer service to assist them with resolving the issue.

Here are some great ways to assist your Customer Success and Support teams and begin the process of reshaping how clients view Support and what is possible from companies who believe in serving their clients, regardless of any previous baggage in their mind. 

Acknowledge it. This goes a long way with clients. So many times companies try to deflect or point the finger elsewhere. Here is the bottom line: the client pays to use your product. It doesn't matter to your client who is at fault, why there is an outage, or why a bug is impacting them. The bottom line is you have to empathize with them, understand that it is impacting their business, and you have to take action to advocate for them internally with your team. Acknowledge that there is a problem, explain what the problem is, share how widespread the issue is, and provide the critical information on when service will be restored. While managing these incidents, it’s important to ensure your team is executing within your service level agreement (SLA), the team is leveraging their process and training on how to handle outages/critical issues, and that the team is infallible in documenting communication with clients. 

Create a plan to fix it. Not all issues that upset clients are as extreme as an outage. There are many times when clients will educate you on how to improve things like internal processes or the way your Support team provides information when servicing them. This is an absolute blessing. A client usually knows how to use the product, but more importantly, they know how to apply the use of the product in a real business situation day in and day out. You will never get better feedback. If a client takes the time to share how you can fix something like a process, service, or support.......LISTEN! They are not holding you accountable to be difficult, a lot of times they have your best interest in mind. They want you to succeed and they volunteer their valuable time to try to help you. Common issues clients will report are about processes lacking to account for usage variances, lack of follow up on open cases, inconsistent product info being provided by support agents, lack of product documentation, and the list goes on. Now that you have their feedback, digest it, and make a plan to fix the issue(s). 

Fix it! Telling a client you will fix it, in my opinion, is a waste of breath. Clients, you, me, and everyone else has heard I will do it, fix it, take care of it. The reality is that more times than not, the person telling us those things does not follow through. So once you have committed to fixing something and you have come up with a plan to fix it, follow through and get it across the finish line. Don't tell your client you will fit it. Fix it, then tell them its corrected, what you did to fix it, how they will see that moving forward it will not be an issue anymore, and...... thank them for bringing it to your attention. After all, most of the time clients are the ones telling us we need to get things in order. Why would you not want to tell your clients that their feedback matters and show them you take action on the feedback they give?

Don't stop! Once you have received an issue, fixed it, and the client is satisfied with the outcome, don't stop. Have the Customer Success Manager follow up the next week to check-in. There are many ways you can expand on this win:

• Follow up on how the resolution worked out for the client. Check to make sure there are no other issues, and that the solution is what they expected.
• Thank the client again for their help. Share that after rolling this out with other clients we see the real value it adds for everyone. 
• Drop-in just to see if there is anything else that is hindering the client, anything too time-consuming, any other feedback they have for improvement. 

Whatever the message, the idea is that you are making them feel special. All it takes is being intentional to communicate with the client. Don't take these opportunities lightly. Be purposeful, put it on your calendar so you don't forget, make a competition within your team to see who can gather the most client feedback. 

Build upon it. Build upon the momentum you are gaining with your client. You have taken the time to hear their issue or concern, you have created a plan to fix it (to which they thought, that would be nice), you followed through and resolved the issue, and you have dropped in to check on them unexpectedly. Now that they feel special, you can have more in-depth conversations that will start serving as the foundation to a long-term relationship with them. If you have a strong product, they are likely sticking around at this point. It is rare to find someone who will listen and deliver on their promises. Now is your chance to get real-world subject matter expert insight. Co-present a webinar, co-present at a conference, get on-site with the client. Do whatever you can to take this relationship to the next level. Yes, I am saying be very selfish here. These relationships are what you need to be successful tomorrow, next week, and next year. You are never going to learn how and what will change your client's lives sitting in your headquarters. Get in front of the client, get integrated into what they are doing, and go learn how to make your product exceed their expectations in ways they would never imagine. 

Leverage it! When a client starts out upset, unsatisfied, and generally frustrated with your company, product, or service, it takes a lot of work to win them back. Not only did they bring that baggage into the relationship where they automatically assumed you and your company are going to be just like the other ones, but they also had a bad experience with your company. Truly addressing their issue, thanking them for their help, and developing a deeper relationship leads to trust and loyalty. Once your client trusts you it is the perfect time to have them share their success story with your other clients. Why? You can tell everyone how great you are, but it will hold little water compared to the testimonial of a client who is saying it first hand. Leveraging a testimonial from a client that they will allow you to share with clients and prospects speaks volumes about your level of support. It provides validation that you are doing the things needed to be successful in supporting your clients. 

I challenge everyone to rethink the way you service and support your clients. Do not let industry baggage define who you are going to be. You take the steps to re-define and re-shape what support can be given to a client. You build relationships and a reputation that influences your clients to leave their baggage behind in their next partnership because now they know there is a better way to service.