Customer service versus exceptional customer service

You are unique, just like everyone else! So, does that mean all expectations are the same across the board? I really hope not, otherwise it’d be a very dull existence indeed.

The childhood Pirate in me loves being on a treasure hunt so to speak, and my long time quest has kept me searching for those little nuances that separate “Customer Service” from “Exceptional Customer Service” over the last 5 years.

My adventure will never be over, but from the information I have collated over this time, I have now come to the conclusion that the distinction between the two on most occasions is very delicate, like building that infamous house of cards on a Sunday afternoon, when there is nothing on TV, getting so far but knowing that at any minute it could come crashing down, as you see the tremble in your hands increase to the point of holding your breath and putting all your effort into adding that one last card (which always seems heavier than the others)!?!

I feel that the below example I came across recently, highlights the above conclusion that I arrived at:

My girlfriend and I were doing our weekly shopping at a well known supermarket establishment, and one of the items on our list was a pair of corn on the cob holders, which I had previously purchased at this same place 6 months earlier. After a few minutes of searching, she approached a store employee for assistance. Now, let’s freeze time (if only we could) at this “defining moment.” Her interaction with the employee could have gone down one of five paths:

Path 1 – The employee says, those dreaded 11 little words, imbedded into their psyche “If it’s not on the shelf then we don’t have it”. We have all heard that famous supermarket sentence that results in a 10 second staring competition between you and the employee, where neither of you blink, you knowing those words spilled out of them like an automated mechanical donkey hell bent on not moving an inch, whilst they stand there determined not to go back on the untruth they just uttered from their lips, before you smile, thank them for their help and turn around to go off searching on your own, refusing to believe that travesty you have just been told. This is the situation, unfortunately, most customers have come to expect and even worse, anticipate as they reach out for help.

Path 2 – The employee says, “I’m not sure where they are. If we have any, then they are probably on aisle four.” You then go off searching on your own – really just continuing the search you have already been on, so what was the point!? This is also another situation, that most of us willing shoppers inevitably end up with, grumbling to ourselves on the lack of assistance and why can’t supermarkets invent an Argos style system where all goods are brought to you on a conveyor belt.

Path 3 – The employee says, “I’m pretty sure the cob holders are on aisle four, I’ll go with you to help find them.” While certainly a better customer experience, how many of us have been in that same position, following a store employee up and down aisles that we have already scoured until ultimately abandoning the search or finding the item that you now feel was not worth the journey to begin with.

Path 4 – The employee says, “The cob holders are on aisle four, let me show you.” The employee walks you straight to the item.

Path 5 – (And this is what happened to us recently) – The store employee asked my girlfriend if we had more shopping to do, which we did. He said, “You go ahead and keep shopping, I’ll find it and then come and find you.” Which he did. He delivered the cob holders, I say plural as they were on offer, 3 for 2 and he let us know exactly where they could be found again in the future.

I’m glad I experienced the above story as it showcases the possible customer responses to each of the five options:

- Path 1, of course, leads to frustration and an undying hatred of shopping and all that belongs to it.

- Path 2 also leads to irritation, as well as a feeling of discomfort that you would now rather find the cob holders to use as a weapon against the store employee!

- Path 3 unfortunately leads to annoyance as the customer tags along behind the “scout leader” feeling useless that they cannot locate the items themselves.

- Path 4 begins moving us in the right direction – appreciation, to a feeling of empathy, knowing someone else will share the effort with you.

- Path 5 takes the customer one step beyond a feeling of appreciation; it results in the customer being impressed.

Having a customer feeling appreciative is certainly good, and in many circumstances appreciation is really the best that we can hope for (when we fully try). But when a customer feels impressed with an employee’s efforts, it creates a memory (an “impression” – see how that word works!). Impressed customers are not only appreciative, they then tell others about their experience, just as I am doing with you good people.

When we experienced this, it reminded me of being 14 again at Disney World in Florida, where we were told that they have a “Take 5” programme. What is this, I hear you cry, “Take 5”, how does taking a break relate to the above tale!? No no no, my friends, every Disney cast member is encouraged to take 5 minutes every day to do something extra special for a guest. The rest of the time, of course, Disney cast members are expected to perform at an elevated level, but at least once a day they are requested to take it to an even higher level. And with over fifty thousand cast members working there (I just Googled that fact!), the result is a lot of impressed guests.....unless like me, you have ever peeked round the back of the studio doors to see Pinocchio take his head off...never forgotten and scarred for life! Sigh

For me, that way of thinking is the difference between Customer Service and EXCEPTIONAL Customer Service. Customer service should always result in appreciative customers, but Exceptional Customer Service results in appreciative and impressed customers.

Hopefully, you enjoyed this little snippet in an SSLPost’s Customer Service’s Manager’s life and I leave you with something for you to think about:

What’s one action you can take today to impress a customer?

So, until next time blog fans!

Kind regards,

Graham Lee

  

Managing customers

Story 6 – Managing customers

Whilst working at Sage UK, I learnt that the single most important consideration for any business, of any size, is to have a company- wide strategy for managing customers.  So, I thought I’d share some of my experience and thoughts and hope that you find it useful.

1.    Why do customers matter?  It seems an obvious question but sometimes so obvious that people don’t think beyond giving immediate customer service.  However, how many have actually considered measuring customer satisfaction as a means of evaluating the long term success of your business?  In 2003 Reichheld wrote an article in The Harvard Business Review discussing a metric developed by Fred Reicheld, Bain & Company and Satmetric. That metric is known as Net Promoter or Net Promoter Primer.  It is a tool used by management to gauge the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationship.  In basic terms, the happier the customers are, the more likely they are to recommend your business.  All you need to do is ask a single question – “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”.  

     The answers are divided into 3 categories: promoters, passives and detractors.  The aim is to have the highest number of promoters and the least detractors as possible.  A simple calculation then gives you your net promoter score which then shows you the state of your business (Google for this calculation).  Once you understand the spread of promoters, passives and detractors you can then begin to devise your customer strategy.  There are some fascinating insights to this study and well worth reading.  Don’t assume you should spend all of your time on your passives to make them into your promoters.  Turning a detractor into a promoter can be much more powerful for your business than simply moving a passive.  If you can convert a detractor, the chances are the change will positively impact your passives by default.

2.    Even the smallest business can ask this one question and it’s from this simple understanding that everyone in the business can contribute to your customer management strategy.  So what should your customer strategy contain?  At the very least it should include the following:

a.    Summary of Knowledge of your customers

b.    Segmentation and Prioritisation of the customer base

c.    A customer management and messaging plan

d.    An internal communication plan and the creation of customer champions

Don’t assume that if you are a SoHo business that this isn’t important.  You may have just as many customers and prospects as a business employing 20 people. 

I will cover these sections in a bit more detail but this is by no means an exhaustive list.  It would be good if we could all share ideas – I’ll pose this question on the Twitter account SSLPost and see what we get to add to this.

a.    Summary of knowledge of your customers

There are a number of ways that you can gain knowledge of your customers – market research, net promoter score (see point 1), and data management (what data have your recorded about your customers – for example what is the average customer spend, how many have spent more than the average, how many customers buy on a repeat basis, how many customers have complained – are these your best spenders or your worst? Etc.).  Once you have gathered all the information you can then get more of an understanding of what strengths you can build on and what elements present you with the most challenges. More importantly you can begin to segment your customer base.

b.    Segmentation of the customer base

The segmentation of customer data can be extremely complex.  Large companies spend millions on in-house data mining teams who supply information to project teams who, in turn, spend a significant amount of time matching different customers to different types of sales teams/support teams and product development plans.  Often behind the scenes this information is shared company- wide so that any employee can see at a glance who are the best customers (best being defined by the company – could be spends the most, complains the least, with consistent interaction and high promoter score). 

However, the reality is that if you are a smaller company you need to keep your segmentation at a more manageable level.  The more segments you have, the more you have to tailor your business to handle them.  Therefore, I would recommend a maximum of 5 and more ideally 3 customer segments.  Once you have all your data collated you can divide in the way that suits your business objectives but you probably want something like:

Promoters/High Spenders/Least interaction

Promoters/Mid spenders/Mid interaction

Passives/mid-to high spenders/low to mid interaction

Detractors/mid to high spenders/low to mid interaction

Detractors/low spenders/high interaction

(where interaction = numbers of calls with your business – sales, support, other)

c.    A customer management and messaging plan

Once you have your customer segments you can then decide what to do with each of them with regard how you manage them and what messages you give to them.  Taking each of them in turn here are some ideas, again in no way exhaustive.

i.      Promoters/High Spenders/least interaction.  At a glance these would be your best customers as they are your most profitable (spend money but don’t take too much time).  You would need to check that the least interaction is a positive rather than a negative element (they may not call you because they don’t feel that interaction adds any value which could be a problem in the future).  In terms of management and messaging, I would ensure that this group of customers are told that they are special.  You could, for example, think about creating a premium club for these customers with discounts and advance notice of new product launches (and tell them you are doing it because they are special). You may also want to put account managers with this group (to maximise relationship management but also potentially to up sell as they are so positive with you already)

ii.            Promoters/ Mid spenders/Mid interaction.  Like the first group, you should try to engage with these customers too in order to increase their loyalty and to move them up to the highest group.  As they interact with your business a bit more frequently you have a lot of opportunities to get more information from them.  Understand why they are calling – is it positive or negative?  For example, if they feedback to support rather than sales then you could consider engaging this group in product development, as they appear to be keen to interact with you.  Again, tell them that they are important and flag them to your employees so that they understand this (see section 2d below).  If they ring more to complain then you may want to rethink your communication plan and only communicate (verbal or written) what is absolutely relevant.  Remember to act on their feedback, record it in a way that all can get access to it and act on it.  If you want to reduce the number of segments this segment could be combined with the first.

iii.           Passives/mid-to high spenders/low to mid interaction.  This is an interesting group because whilst they spend reasonably well they don’t promote you and with the low to mid interaction this could mean that they are generally indifferent to you.  This is dangerous as they could switch their spend without much compunction.  You need to work hard with this group to get them to engage and tie themselves more tightly to you, your company and your products.  You would need to find out who they are and ask them some more detailed questions to try and find some common threads across the group which would enable you to engage in a more meaningful way.  It would be worth looking at things like: do they buy on-line or in-store (in which case they may not interact so much with you as people and have no buy-in to your brand personality), it could be that the purchasing company has had a high turnover of staff so you haven’t been dealing with the same person for each subsequent orders.  Remember, people buy from people and even when buying remotely at some point there will be some interaction – try to make this as personal as possible – don’t always rely on automated responses.  Even when interacting by email or letter remember to add some personality and some individuality to your correspondence.

iv.           Detractors/mid to high spenders/low to mid interaction.  This group of customers is worthy of a significant amount of investment in both time and money.  They spend a significant amount of money with you but take up little time so are profitable.  If you can turn them from detractors to promoters, this will make a considerable difference to your customer profile and the long term stability of your business.  It is, therefore, worth speaking to as many of these customers as possible to find out how you can improve your service.  Once you understand where the issues may lay you can group them into a specific plan and deal with it accordingly.  It could be a number of different elements that are upsetting their impressions of you.  It could be specifically related to sales, service or marketing. Or, it could be something entirely different, for example, it may be that you are inaccessible out of normal working hours.  As soon as you know what you are dealing with – one or several areas of issues, significant or minor, it will then be possible for you to create a plan to turn the service and, therefore, these customers around.

v.            Detractors/low spenders/high interaction.  As far as possible, you should try to limit the amount of time/budget you spend on this group.  They appear to spend little, but interact a lot.  They are, potentially, unprofitable and they tie up your resources which you could be spending on other groups.  This seems somewhat harsh but the reality is that you need to understand where you are best spending your limited resources.

d.    An internal communication plan and the creation of customer champions

Once you have done points a,b and c above then you will have a clear idea about your customer segments, your strategy and the way ahead.  It is at this point you need to ensure there is buy-in to your plans right across your business.  Even if there are only a couple of you in the business, it’s still important that you are consistent with your different customer groups.  Ideally, as I have mentioned in previous blogs, you will have a customer management system.  This makes it even easier to flag accounts and to collect notes in a way that is meaningful for later use.  For larger businesses it is also worth creating customer champions in each department so that they can ensure the communication of the customer plan is effectively implemented and equally they can feedback useful information as they collect it.  Ultimately, you should see the fruits of all this labour in the increase in sales value and the improvement in your net promoter scores.

My last note is a word of caution.  There are very strict rules around data protection.  In managing and analysing and sharing information you need to make sure you do not infringe any rules (google: data protection to get the latest legislation).  You can not, for example, store data that is not relevant to what you do and which adds no value.  You should always password protect data records whether on an office or laptop computer.  Make sure you stay the right  side of the law with respect to what you do and it will further enhance your reputation as a legitimate business.