Customer Service — Being The Best
posted in Customer Service |
Wealth Principle:
To Get Paid The Best, You Must Be The Best
Outstanding customer service is a sector in which a small business or professional enterprise successfully compete with the big businesses in their chosen market. It is often the differentiator between client loyalty and a one-time sale. Consistently excellent customer service is the holy grail of customer loyalty and the cherished goal of repeat business. Even the best run businesses are vulnerable to poor customer care criticism. Hundreds of satisfying customer contacts can be negated by one, really bad, customer service snafu. In many ways, Big Business dependence on technology-based customer service ruined their customer care performance. An automated system forces callers to endure endless holds, and a computer generated voice, that demands identifying information. We all know the drill, “Say or key your zip code now.” Ahh.. would that be my home zip or my office zip? Customer frustration leads to the path of least resistance. In the case of poor customer service, that path is simply go away and don’t come back. Oh yes, and warn your friend and family, “That way be dragons!”
How do we define great customer service?
There are as many definitions of great customer service as there are business books. I’ve always liked definition Carol I. Kallendorf used in her excellent article that described the “Tools to Build Customer Service that Create Passionate Customer Loyalty”, featured in BizWatchOnline. (1)
“Excellent customer service is the process by which your organization delivers its services or products in a way that allows the customer to access them in the most efficient, fair, cost effective, and humanly satisfying and pleasurable manner possible.”
The Energy Imperative
How can we assure that our customer contacts are humanly satisfying and pleasurable?
To my mind, truly, great customer service is all about positive, energetic intent. The exchange of energy is very apparent in the customer care process. Think about what we, or those close to us, have said about their customer service experiences.
Negative experiences are often described with contracting, defensive energy—fight or flight; “It was too draining to deal with. I just gave up trying to get it resolved.”
Positive experiences are often described with expansive energy — “These folks are great! They listened to me and handled the issue right away!
Happy customers with a history of positive experience will be back and they bring friend and family.
Customer Service and The Golden Rule
We hold these truths to be self evident, “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”
What is one of the surest ways to hold positive energy in all your business processes? In the west we refer to “living by the golden rule”. For those of us studying Zero Limits, we might think of the process as a form of Ho’oponopono, keeping our energy clear and clean, with everyone in our personal and professional lives. In practice it is being positively focused with 100% intent to share a positive, even loving experience. Each of us strives to conduct our personal lives by the guiding principle we have come to know as the golden rule. It should be obvious, that this golden rule is good business policy as well as am important personal practice.
In THE-BIG-BOX-Age, customers focused on “lowest price and one-stop convenience.” Many of these customers did not understand, or did not care, that the hidden cost was the loss of high-quality service. The saying, “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone. “ applies to customer service. Consumers are demanding the return of dependable customer service. Companies in every sector of the economy are recognizing that treating their customers as they themselves would like to be treated – or better has become a critical business strategy. Offering the “BEST” customer service is not only a competitive factor but an integral part of their product or service life cycle.
“Consumers are beginning to feel that their needs haven’t been met. They’re sick of getting poor service all the time.”
— Bonnie Jansen, U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs
The renewed customer service imperative represents a significant competitive opportunity to small or emerging businesses. Delivering excellent customer service in a way that allows the customer to access them in the most efficient, fair, cost effective, and humanly satisfying and pleasurable manner possible is a highly valued customer benefit that small companies can, in the least expensive way, set themselves apart from the competition.
“…small businesses which put heavy emphasis on customer service were more likely to survive and succeed than competitors who emphasized such advantages as lower prices or type of product.”
— National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) in Washington, D.C
In the next few Millionaire Mind Support Network™ Blogs, I want to look at ways to deliver excellent customer service in a way that allows the customer to access them in the most efficient, fair, cost effective, and humanly satisfying and pleasurable manner possible.
1) BizWatchOnline
http://www.bizwatchonline.com/BWJuly06/article3_0904.htm
If you have any customer service ideas, or experiences, please share them with the rest of your Millionaire Mind Support Network™
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