Most everyone has heard the expression, “There is no time like the present”.
Perhaps this truism should be modified to “There is no time but the present”. It’s true. The present moment is really all there is.
“The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality.” - Robert Pirsig
So, what does this have to do with customer service? Everything!
Past accomplishments or failures are just that, in the past. They cannot be changed. They are not going to solve the issue your customer is having today. What you do in the present moment will have the greatest impact on your customer’s happiness, satisfaction, and loyalty.
Now don’t misunderstand me. You can learn from the past, and achievements and failures from the past can impact the present. Telling your customers what you will do for them in the future will also have an impact on the present. Sometimes good…sometimes not.
Today is what matters the most to customers. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Today.
So, what can you do to make each day the most it can be for your customer?
Here are 5 steps…
1. Learn what your customer’s needs are.
2. Map out the customer’s journey when working with your organization.
3. Align your service processes and resources to support your customer’s desired journey.
4. Communicate quickly and effectively with your customers about the issues you are solving for them.
5. Make specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) commitments that will meet or exceed your customer’s expectations.
1. Learn what your customer’s needs are.
Customer surveys are a valuable tool for organizations to learn what their customers are feeling about them and why. Surveys are also a great way to learn what the customer’s needs are. There are many forms a customer survey can take. Online surveys, telephone surveys, telephone interviews and focus groups just to name a few. Surveys can be used to measure Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer satisfaction (CSAT), customer effort score (CES) and to learn customer desires. Better yet, surveys provide customers with a direct line of communication to your organization that demonstrates their feedback is important. Customer needs and preferences are constantly changing. Never assume you know what your customers think about your company, products, and services, or what is important to them.
The ability to make data-driven decisions is one of the most important capabilities of any successful organization. It starts with conducting customer surveys that can provide customer service, sales, and marketing with actionable insight. Without this insight, businesses are more likely to make ineffective changes while wasting time, money, and resources. Remember, happy and loyal customers are those who have been heard and perceive your company as a valuable partner in their success.
“What you do in the present moment will have the greatest impact on your customer’s happiness, satisfaction, and loyalty.”
2. Map out the customer’s journey when working with your organization.
Customer journey maps will help you to better understand your customers by identifying how your processes positively or negatively impact their experiences with your organization. According to Adriti Gulati at HubSpot, there are four key moments in your customer experience:
a) First Impression
b) First Value
c) Intended Value
d) Extended Value
Applying these four key moments to the customer service experience, it could look like this:
a) First Impression
The first impression occurs when your customer tries to contact your organization. How easy or difficult is it? They will likely have an issue that needs your help to solve. A quick response from you is critical during this time, whether the inquiry comes via phone, email, website, or chat. The customer’s patience is likely to be fleeting. Their first impression sets the tone for the rest of the engagement.
b) First Value
The first value is when you have engaged with your customer to try to solve their issue. They are hoping for a same day resolution, or often referred to as a first-time fix. It is critical that your organization’s response be coordinated to maximize the probability that the customer’s issue is resolved quickly. If your field service technician arrives at the customer site on time, but the repair parts do not, everyone’s time is wasted. The customer goes from being hopeful to anxious.
c) Intended Value
The intended value is when the customer’s expectations have been met and their operations have returned to normal. Your field service technician has fixed the customer’s equipment and it is up and running. Meeting expectations is expected by the customer from the outset.
d) Extended Value
The extended value is when your customer’s expectations have been exceeded. In this example perhaps the field service technician installed a free upgrade which improved the equipment’s overall performance. When this happens your effort is a memorable occasion for the customer which could lead to customer loyalty and referrals for your organization.
A good journey map will uncover the customer’s pain points during this process, affording your team the opportunity to fix them and create a higher likelihood of an extended value customer experience.
The graphic below is a modified HubSpot graphic which illustrates the four key moments of a customer service experience during a routine repair visit from your service technician.
3. Align your service processes and resources to support your customer’s desired journey.
Now that the first round of customer journey mapping sessions has been completed, and a roadmap of what needs to change to create satisfied and loyal customers has been established, a little panic begins to set in! The heavy lifting has begun. Processes, systems, and documentation must be created or modified to hard-wire the changes into your company’s DNA. This is not an activity that should be trifled with. It will take the full commitment from the CEO and the rest of the c-suite. A project manager with a supporting cross-functional team made up of members from all the departments being impacted by the changes needs to be assembled. The only agenda is to work on behalf of the customer and on the behalf of your company’s overarching mission, goals, and objectives. This is no simple task. The cross-functional team’s mission is working on the business.
Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) will have to be created or modified to document changes in the process. Having these SOPs reside in the cloud where everyone can easily access them is a critical requirement for success.
Behavior modification is another big hurdle. Having written SOPs readily available does not guarantee that everyone will use them. Some will continue to do things “the way they have always done them”. It is critically important that everyone who has been impacted, or will be impacted by the changes, be given the opportunity to ask questions and provide their input into the customer journey mapping exercise. Buy-in needs to happen from the top down and from the bottom up for the new systems, processes, and documents to work, and for the SOPs to be followed.
“The extended value is when your customer’s expectations have been exceeded. When this happens your effort is a memorable occasion for the customer which could lead to customer loyalty and referrals for your organization.”
4. Communicate quickly and effectively with your customers about the issues you are solving for them.
Telephone, email, website, chat, and social media are some of the ways customers will choose to communicate with your business. An omnichannel customer communications hierarchy is critical to delivering exceptional customer service. Customers become annoyed when they must repeat themselves after having been switched to a different communications channel to resolve their request, issue, or question. Regardless of which medium a customer chooses, or is required to use, it should be a uniform, consistent, efficient, and a seamless customer experience.
Frequent and effective communication is the best way to guide your customer through the first impression and first value stage to the intended value and extended value stages.
Respond to customer issues, questions, and requests quickly. This will increase customer up-time and satisfaction. Quick action and issue resolution can turn a customer’s negative experience into a positive one, with the potential of creating not only a satisfied customer, but also a loyal one. In this situation time is money, literally. An equipment issue may be slowing or holding up a production line, causing the customer to lose revenue, profit, and opportunity. The longer the issue goes unresolved, the less patience the customer will have, eroding the relationship with your organization.
5. Make specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) commitments that will meet or exceed your customer’s expectations.
The commitments that you make to your customers to resolve their issues will likely make your customer a promoter or a detractor of your organization. As NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz purportedly said during the Apollo 13 crisis, “failure is not an option”. SMART commitments will help to ensure that you do what you say you are going to do, when you say you are going to do it. This is what most customers expect. Your customer may not be able to get exactly what they asked for, but since you and your customer have come to an agreement on what can be done, the path to success is to deliver those commitments to your customer on schedule.
“If you worry about yesterday’s failures, then today’s successes will be few. The future depends on what we do in the present.” - Mahatma Gandhi
To learn more about how to deliver exceptional customer service experiences that drive customer satisfaction, loyalty, revenue and profit, please visit Bass Harbor Group’s website at www.bassharborgroup.com.
Patrick Sandefur is the Founder and Managing Director of Bass Harbor Group / Customer Experience Solutions. His 30+ year career in Customer Service, Sales, Marketing, Product Management and Business Development has given him a unique perspective of what customers want and expect when interacting with a brand.
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