What happened to customer service? And how to fix it.

How do you feel after a phone call you’ve recently made to a customer service representative? How do you feel when you had unsatisfactory experience and your problem has not been resolved? Recent studies have shown us that more and more customers are feeling the same way.

In the U.S. 71% of consumers have ended a relationship due to a poor customer service experience. When it comes down to poor service, customers today are willing to switch to a competitor if you don’t provide the quality of service they expect. Companies that understand the importance of customer service and over-deliver are more successful. Eighty one percent of companies with strong capabilities and competencies for delivering an excellent customer experience are outperforming their competition.

It seems that it was only yesterday that every business claimed that the key to a successful business was to take care of their customers with exceptional products and the service they deliver. But, things have changed…

Technology brought about rapid changes in how we communicate with customers and businesses shift their brand focus toward selling and marketing. While all of these things are critical to business success, we seem to have forgotten the relationship with the customer.

Sometimes, to my amazement I see businesses who truly let an irate customer just walk out the door without any efforts to provide empathy and solutions to their customer concerns. Bad news travels faster in the age of social media. Unsatisfied customer will tell more people about their negative experience than a satisfied customer.  How does it impact your bottom line? It can cost you future business or lack of it. It cost seven to eight times to attract a new customer to your business.

While many companies pride themselves about their customer experience, few actually deliver on their promises. You don’t have to go far to test it. Just take a trip to visit some businesses around your neighborhood and you will experience inconsistency. Some will deliver great service while others take the customer for granted.

So how do we work toward improving customer service?

Bad customer service actually hurts many economies around the world. Recent research shares that across 16 key economies (countries), the total loss for poor customer service in US dollars is $338 billion annually or the average value of each customer relationship lost to a competitor or abandoned of $243

In this blog post, I will share with you how you can turn the tide and truly walk the talk of customer service with your brand. Remember, your brand is not what you say it is. It’s what your customers say about you when you are not around.

Engaged Leadership from the Top

Many executives want to improve their company’s customer service. They say the right things, they come up with well intentioned slogans or even worse, delegate customer service to a department. Customer service must come from the top of the organization. You have to walk the talk. That means that as a leader, you are engaged with your team and customers. It should be a requirement of every leader in a company to go through the customer service departments in their organization to experience directly how their customers feel. Most importantly, how their employees can improve the interaction with the customer. As leaders, we have to be the example of excellence by showing and modeling the way.

Build a Culture of Service

While hands-on leadership is critical, it’s only part of the transformation to win more customers. You need a culture that’s committed to excellence. Culture takes time and real positive change at levels of the organization. The rewards outweigh the loss of many clients and reduce employee turnover for your organization. It begins with setting a customer service vision and core values that translate to day to day behaviors of excellence. Gain commitment and hold people accountable toward those behaviors to sustain customer service over the long haul.

Selecting the right people

Customer service at its core is about people. We know technology is changing many of the faucets of customer service today but, we cannot underestimate the importance of selecting great talent to deliver the service to our customers. Customer service doesn’t begin with the customer. It begins with your employees.  

Spend quality time in the process of reviewing candidates and select people for their attitude than their skill. Look for the soft skills such as friendliness, empathy, kindness, listening and self-awareness.

Invest and focus on people’s development

 As a consultant and trainer, I see great opportunities to invest and develop in people. Companies really need review this closely. Many companies simply don’t spend their dollars, efforts and time to train the soft skill of customer excellence.  Everyone needs to know how their roles impacts the customer experience. They may serve internal or external customers, or both. What’s the return on investment? Better customer and employee loyalty that can potentially if not taken care of, could hurt you and your business to achieve long term success.

The customer is not a transaction, but a relationship

I wanted to finish the blog post with an important point. The customer should never be treated as a transaction or a number. The customer is a relationship. Customers have many choices to choose where and how they will engage with a company. Most managers understand it intellectually, but often times the reality is that we treat customers as a transaction rather than a human being. As the saying goes, people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Now it’s your turn, I would love for you to share your comments and join me in the movement of improving customer service across the world. I would love to engage with you to find out how we can help each other.