Is your front end staff obsessed about delighting customers?

“Your customers don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” -Damon Richards.

One of the best quotes about customer service that I have come across recently! We all know how difficult it is to sustain a business while keeping your customers coming back to you. Many organizations had to shut-shop, owing to their negligence towards customer service. No matter how much you focus on your strategies to market your product, if you are not thinking about delighting the end user, you will fall flat more often than not.

Satisfying customers is one thing and delighting them is another. When customers reach out for help, it is a great opportunity for an organization to foster trust and win the customer’s loyalty. Surprisingly, not many organizations focus on this. Companies that “serve” customers fail miserably in retaining them. Successful companies always focus on “delighting” their customers. This is an open secret. But how exactly do we delight a customer? Who should take the responsibility? We will have a quick look at some important strategies.

I am sure everyone will agree if I say that customers will remember the first interaction they have with your organization, no matter how good your product is. And it is this interaction that will make or break your relationship with the customer, once and forever. So the cat is out of the bag! If the front-end staff of your company is “mentally equipped” enough to delight your customers, there is no looking back. Mentally equipped? What’s that now?

Delighting a customer does is not a big ask. If you keep it simple, you will find a number of ways to let the customers know that you really care for them. It is all about getting into their shoes and walk with them through their journey right from the point they decide to take your services. If this job is done the right way, believe me, the customer’s journey with you will never come to an end. As simple as that.

I would like to share a personal experience I had the other day, when I was hanging out at a local restaurant with my buddies. We were having lunch and the waiters at this restaurant were a cheerful lot to say the least. There were around 100 people in the restaurant and it was peak time, 1 p.m. in the noon. There were some 15-20 serving staff, so you can imagine the load. However, every single time we called them to serve something, they all greeted us with a smile, bowed down to listen and even suggested which cuisine would suit our taste! If this was not enough, there were people who were celebrating the birthday of their family members and every time the DJ played the birthday song, these guys formed a circle around the birthday boy/girl and clapped and sang and danced! Their hospitality and dedication towards their job took me by surprise. It did not end here. They even had a special dance performance for the entire crowd and shook a leg with quite a few customers for a good 10-15 minutes. The whistles and cheers from the crowd added to the atmosphere and we all spent a wonderful afternoon.  Now tell me, who wouldn’t want to go back to this place again?

To delight customers, your front end staff needs to inculcate a few habits:

• Listen – This has to be on the top of the list. People who interact with customers directly, should know the art of lending an ear.
• Empathize –Use phrases such as “I can understand your concerns”, “I would have felt the same had I been in your place”. These will give a message to the customer that someone from the company is able to relate with the problem they are facing.
• Deep Dive – Once the questions has been understood completely, it is time to research. Even if it takes an extra minute to get back to the customer, get your facts right. Effective utilization of available resources to identify the root cause and coming up with a resolution should be the aim of a deep dive analysis.
• Don’t answer the question, resolve the issue: When you have mined the information required to help the customer, make sure you communicate it effectively. The customer should not get back to you again with an additional question that was left unaddressed. Always remember, customer’s time is precious!

 However, these habits can only be inculcated, if the think-tank of the organization is willing to invest some time in training the front-end staff to build their confidence. Only a handful of successful companies take this task seriously. This the reason they are known as “customer centric” and “customer obsessed” companies. When the leadership of an organization treats the staff as their customers, it automatically drives the staff to inculcate the above habits. As leaders, you have to consider the following points if you aim to “mentally equip” your front-end staff to provide delightful customer service.

• Ask – Give them the opportunity to voice their concerns. They know what issues customers face day in and day out. Hold a meeting at least once in a month with them, to identify the problems they faced while interacting with customers. By asking them about their problems, they would know you care for them and this would in-turn make them care for the concerns of your customers.
• Brainstorm – Nothing works better than a brainstorming session, when it comes to finding solutions in a time-bound environment. It also gives everyone the opportunity to express their idea and makes them feel that they are being heard.
• Appreciate – Whenever someone goes the extra mile to delight a customer, make sure you recognize their effort. Create enthusiasm amongst the front end staff by organizing award ceremonies on a weekly or monthly basis. Sending out appreciation emails to individual employees by copying the higher leadership gives a huge boost to their confidence and they strive to perform better
• Measure – Last but not the least, make them accountable by measuring their performance in terms of delighting customers. Allot significant weightage to customer satisfaction in the performance review plan.

 It is easier said than done. Delighting customers is a continuous process, provided your people are obsessed about it. Unless they know the importance of retaining loyal customers, it will be an uphill task for any organization to grow and keep pace with the competition. Close monitoring of the interaction of front end staff with customers and implementing the ideas that arise out of these interactions add a lot of value to your services.

I would like to end this post with a very meaningful and strong quote from Jim Rohn

“One customer well taken care of, could be more valuable than $10,000 worth of advertising”