Through the Eyes of the Customer

Awaken the Silent Customer Touch Points

I love it when someone takes something that's ordinary and dull, and makes it engaging and remarkable.  I'm talking about those silent customer touch points that usually don't make it on to marketing's radar.  Common examples include product packaging, written instructions, delivery and billing.

 

Just the other day, my brother and I had lunch at the Tap City Grille in Hyannis, Massachusetts.   I ordered a flight of craft beer with my meal,.  If you're not familiar with the "flight of beer" concept, it's a way to taste several (normally 4 or 5) different beers, served in small glasses. 

 

Most flights are served pretty much the same way.  The glasses are placed in a creative wood or metal holder, and accompanied by a piece of paper listing the beers you ordered.  

 

Tap City took the presentation to the next level.

The beer glasses were also served in an interesting container, but instead of that numerical list on paper, the names of the beers were artistically-written in different brightly-colored chalk. 

 

I felt like I was being served a custom-designed work of art!  What a surprise!  Their approach to serving a flight of beer stood out from all the other flights I've been served.  As Seth Godin would say, it was remarkable.  

 

This experience at Tap city stoked my emotions, so I'll remember them.  And I'll talk about them (already have!), and the next time I go down to Cape Cod, I'll probably go out of my way to enjoy another flight of beer at the Tap City Grille, eager to see how they draw the names of the beers next time.

 

Silent customer touch points are opportunities to engage your customers.

Most businesses have plenty of untapped opportunities to trigger the kind of emotional response in their customers, that Tap City Grille did for me, by taking a normally mundane touchpoint, and turning it into a fun and remarkable experience.

 

You can take advantage of this dynamic by identifying the "silent customer touch points" in your business, and doing something to surprise the customer.  And "humanize" the surprise.

 

1. Identify the "silent customer touch points" within your customer's experience. 
   To make the search simpler, think in terms of those places of one-way communication, where you're providing your customer with information. 
   
   These can include written information, such as instructions of any kind, or a sign, directions or labeling.  Or, a place where there's no communication at all, like the inside of a box.
   
   
2. Do something with it, that a customer wouldn't expect. 
   Put anunexpected object or small gift inside.  My wife ordered a metal bed frame recently.  It was packaged in brown cardboard. 
   
   But inside  the box with the bedframe and instructions, was a package of four thank-you note cards, with suggestions of good unexpected reasons to thank people.  To me, that struck an emotional cord, which I immediately associated with the bedframe company.
   
   
3. Humanize it, and make it personal.
   When we feel that the product is coming from a flesh and blood human being, we have more respect and emotional attachment to the product.  The bedframe company achieved this, because the "unexpected reasons" they suggested for sending thank-you notes led my mind down a deeply human path. 
   
   Tap City Grille's servers apply their own personal efforts to make my flight more visually appealing.

 

There are a lot of "un-tapped" ways through which you can positively excite your customers. Identify your silent touch points, then select one where you can apply some unexpected element.  And whenever possible, make that element one that will stoke positive human emotions.  You'll have more customers talking about you, and smiling as they do!

 

The Power of the Last Impression

People say we remember two things in  every presentation; we remember the first thing that's said, and the last thing the presenter says.

The same can be said for a customer experience; we remember the first touch point,  and we remember the last touch point.  That's not to say that we don't remember anything in between; it's just that we always remember  the first and the last.  And in some cases, we really remember the last.

This was the case for me when I called the Doubletree Hotel at the Newark Airport for a shuttle ride.  The fact that I was tired didn't help anyone's performance. 

The phone call from the airport to the front desk to too long to answer.

The instructions where to go to meet the shuttle were too confusing.

The journey from my terminal to meet the shuttle bus was too long.

The shuttle bus took too long to arrive.

The shuttle was too crowded.

The line to check in at the hotel was too long.

When it was finally my turn, the front desk clerk was amazing.  Personable, informative, charming, witty and genuinely helpful.  His performance caused all the negative stuff before him to seem trivial.

I'll gladly stay at the Doubletree at the Newark Airport again.

Last impressions matter - a lot.

How Enterprise Removed the Friction to Create a Wow! Customer Experience

Thanks to Kaspersky for this image that shouts "Wow!"

Hey, do you want to know how to create an experience that customers will love?  Remove the friction.  It's that simple.  Well, sort of.  First you have to find the friction.  So let's start there...

 

What is friction in the customer experience?

Friction is anything requires effort, induces stress or negative feelings, or slows a process.  

Waiting is friction.  Waiting in line, waiting on hold, or waiting idly while a server writes up your order.

Filling out forms at your doctor's office is friction.  Especially when you're asked to provide information that you provided previously. 

 

We may even think friction is a natural part of a process, and accept it as a necessary evil.  In fact, as much as I hate waiting, that's how I'd see it whenever I'd rent a car at an airport.   That is, until Enterprise Rent-A-Car changed my point of view.

 

Whenever I rent a car at an airport, my objective is to get off the plane and into the car as quickly and as easily as possible.   Everything in between is friction.

• Waiting in a slow-moving rental line for the next available agent?  Friction.
• Listening to sales pitches for liability insurance? Friction.
• Signing and initialing a contract in multiple places?  Friction.
• Being handed a printed copy of the contract that I have to carry?  Friction.
• Walking out into the garage searching for Row K, Space 27?  Friction.

 

Here’s What Enterprise Rent-A-Car did to Remove the friction:

 

They had the counter agent (Marcus) just validate my driver’s license and swipe my credit card.  I didn’t have to sign, and Marcus didn’t have to sell insurance or print contracts, so the line moved very quickly. Reduced waiting is reduced Friction. 

 

The swipe of my credit card sent a digital alert to a greeter at the bottom of the escalator.  Eliza carried an iPad containing my reservation, including the insurance opt-outs that I selected online.   She walked me directly to my car.   I didn’t have to find Row K, Space 27.  No searching meant no friction.

 

After I threw my luggage into the trunk, I initialed three boxes on Eliza’s iPad. She clicked “submit,” and my cell phone vibrated as the rental contract arrived in my email.  No paper contracts to carry meant no friction.

 

I happily drove off into the sunset.  No friction, no stress, just that satisfied feeling you get after a “Wow!” customer experience.

 

Your job as a Customer Experience Leader is to identify and eliminate points of friction.  

 

Begin by answering the following questions:

1. What are the more common transactions during the employee’s “customer” lifecycle?
2. For each transaction type, what are the points of friction that slow the process, keep the customer waiting, or produce paper?
3. Which of those steps can be eliminated? 
4. How can you automate the steps that remain?
5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 for each process or transaction.

 

In Summary:

Removing friction from customer-facing processes is a reliable way to improve the customer experience.  Identify each step in the process that requires effort, induces stress or negative feelings, or slows the process.  Then either eliminate the step, or automate it.  Your customers will feel the difference!

 

Image courtesy of AXA.

10 Easy Ways to Build Emotion into the Customer Experience

Last week's post focused on the three elements of an exceptional customer experience:  It needs to be effective, easy and emotional.  "Effective and "easy" are pretty straight forward.  But "emotional?"  Not so much.

How do you add emotion to the customer experience?

The word "emotional" is abstract.  But specific emotional results are more tangible, and easier to apply to a service event.  In other words, instead of going for "emotional," we should go for an emotional result. 

 

Dr. Barbara L. Fredrickson, Professor of Psychology at The University of North Carolina delivered a lecture called "Positive Emotions: The Tiny Engines of Positive Psychology."  Each of those "Tiny Engines" can trigger a different positive emotional response.  And we can build any of those "Tiny Engines"  into our customer service events.

The Ten Tiny Engines are:

1. Joy -  the circumstances the feeling that something's going really well for you, or maybe better than expected.
   
   
2. Gratitude -  the feeling you get when someone goes out of their way to make for you, to make a good thing happen.
   
   
3. Serenity - the feeling that your current circumstances are so right, that you just want to have more of this in your life.
   
   
4. Interest -  something that you haven't mastered yet that kind of draws you in.
   
   
5. Hope - the feeling that occurs in negative situations when you've feared the worst, but a yearning for something better gives you a sense of desire.
   
   
6. Pride - the sense of having achieved something that's respected and valued in our culture.
   
   
7. Amusement - amusement occurs when people appraise their current circumstances as involving some sort on non-serious social incongruity; humor.
   
   
8. Inspiration - Inspiration arises when people witness human excellence in some manner. People feel inspired, for instance, when they see someone else do a good deed or perform at an unparalleled level.
   
   
9. Awe - awe emerges when people encounter goodness on a grand scale. People feel awe, for instance, when overwhelmed by something (or someone) beautiful or powerful that seems larger than life.
   
   
10. Love - there's no need to explain this one, is there?

Here's the point:  Don't try to make a customer service event emotional.  Instead, try to make the event trigger one of the ten tiny engines. Make it trigger joy.  Or make it trigger gratitude.  Or make it trigger amusement.  In fact, you can use any of one or more of the ten.

Here's an example using Gratitude.

Several years ago, I bought a Jeep with 4-wheel drive help me more safely navigate the New England winter roads.  But I bought it in late September when the air was warm, and the grass was still green.

 

10 weeks later, the first heavy snow of the season fell in Portland, Maine.  The following day, the salesman from the Jeep dealership called me to ask how my "new" Jeep was performing in the snow.

 

I felt grateful l that he remembered my concern for safe winter driving, and that he took the time to call, long after spending his commission check.  The phone call  triggered gratitude.  I thought it was pretty awesome.  So you might also say it triggered awe.

And here's an example using Amusement.

By law, commercial airlines must give their passengers a safety briefing before each flight.   For years, those briefings were banal speeches from a flight attendant in the aisle.   It always seemed that the flight attendant was less thrilled to give it, than we passengers were to receive it. 

 

Rote customer communications can be pretty dull.   Unless they're delivered like this video that Delta plays before its flights.

Entertainment can be informative.  Which would your customers enjoy more?  An entertaining 2 minute video, or a bland 2-minute safety talk?

In Summary:

Great customer experiences are easy, effective and emotional.  Easy and Effective are easy to comprehend and implement.  But emotional is harder to grasp, and therefore, harder to implement.  So instead of trying to make your service event emotional, make it trigger any one of the Ten Tiny Engines that trigger a positive emotional response.

 

Your customers will be grateful.  Or amused.  Or any of the other eight responses. And you'll feel pride!

 

Use the 3-E Framework to Improve the Customer Experience.

McKinsey and other top tier consultancies have been counseling clients on the importance of customer experience, for years.  Customer Experience has evolved from a fad, to an ongoing strategic initiative for many organizations.

Implementing strategic initiatives can be a huge undertaking, but there is a method to improve the customer experience, one bite at a time.  Let’s call it the 3-E Framework.

What are the 3 E’s?

According to Kate Leggett of Forrester Research, “Customer Service must be Easy, Effective and instill Positive Emotion.”  (You can download the entire report if you’d like.)

Make it Easy for the Customer

Customers want it to be easy to get help when they need it. They don’t want to spend a lot of time or effort getting help.  They want it to be hassle-free.  And they want it to be convenient.

Make it Effective.

Effective means getting the job done, and doing it right.  When a service rep answers a customer’s question, the answer has to be correct.  It has to be accurate.  And whenever possible, it should be personalized to the customer.

Make it Emotional.

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between hard-shelled lobsters and humans?  Emotions.  That’s what makes us different.  Our central nervous systems are more complex than those of lobsters.

This gives us the ability to process information emotionally.  Lobsters can’t do that.  We can.  When a customer service event triggers positive feelings like joy, interest, kindness, positive surprise, hope or gratitude, we feel good.  Lobsters, through no fault of their own, could care less.

So, those are the three E’s of customer service:  Easy, Effective and Emotional.  But how can you build the three E’s into your service processes?

A Journey Starts with a Single Step.

A customer service journey can be comprised of dozens of steps.  So, trying to build the three E’s into the entire journey can be a challenge.  But there is an easier way.  To understand it, let’s go back to that hard-shell lobster…

When you eat a lobster, you don’t eat the whole thing in a single bite.  You break off one piece at a time.  (Click here to learn how to eat a Maine lobster.)  Similarly, don’t try and apply the 3-E framework to the entire customer journey.  Instead, you break off a single step of the customer journey, and test it against the 3-E Framework.  Then repeat the process for another step.

Example use case #1: Customer goes to the Self-service Portal.

Is it easy to get into the portal?

Is single sign-on in place, so the customer doesn’t have to type a username and password?

Can they get there from their smartphone?

 

Is the portal effective?

How’s the performance?  Does the landing page load quickly, or does the user have to wait a seeming eternity?  Is the content arranged in a clear and simple format?

Is it emotional?

Earlier, we said that triggering positive feelings like joy, interest, kindness, positive surprise, hope or gratitude make an experience emotional.  The right graphics, messaging and personalization of the portal screen can accomplish this in subtle, yet powerful ways.

Don’t leave it up to your IT types to design emotionally evocative portal screens (no offense, IT types!).  Get your creative marketing people involved here.

Example use case #2: Customer reads a Knowledge base article.

Are your Knowledge base articles easy to read?

Are the articles written in complex HR terminology, or in simple everyday language that an customer will understand? Use this tool measure and improve the readability of your content.

Are all articles written in a consistent format, with the same font, spacing and headings?  Consistency breeds familiarity, and familiarity makes life easier.

Are your Knowledge base articles effective?

An effective article answers a question in a clear, concise and definitive manner.  Are your articles driving Tier Zero Resolution, or are customers asking for clarification?

Do the articles guide the customer to related content, to answer those questions that they’re likely to ask?

Is your Knowledge base content emotional?

Is it written in authentic human language?  Does it include images or videos that will further engage the customer in the subject matter?  Where appropriate, do you add humor to the content to make it entertaining?

To Summarize:

Great customer experiences are easy, effective and emotional.  Transform your customers’ experiences by breaking the customer journey down to its individual steps.  Then focus the 3-E framework onto each step, and watch the overall experience improve!

 

 

Sure, Artificial Intelligence is Cool, but there's another Intelligence that's critical for Customer Service Quality.

There’s a lot of hype these days around Artificial Intelligence (AI).  In an October 2017 interview with Knowledge@Wharton, Apoorv Saxena, lead product manager at Google and co-founder of the AI Frontiers conference said, “now computers are able to transcribe human speech better than humans.”

Did you read that right?  Did it say that a computer can understand a human better than a human can?

With all the hype around AI, it’s easy to forget about another type of intelligence that will continue to be a critical component of customer service.

Emotional Intelligence

That other form of intelligence is Emotional Intelligence (EI).

AI will continue to expand within our technologies, and may eventually become a dominant characteristic.   And as AI becomes more dominant, it's going to become more important to balance AI with EI.

More on that in a minute, but first let’s go to Columbus,  Ohio.

 It was a dark and stormy night in early December. 

The flight from New York to Columbus was more turbulent than a bad carnival ride.  Beverage service was cancelled, and we couldn’t leave our seats.

While driving from the airport to the hotel, the normally-reliable Siri sent me on a circuitous route through downtown Columbus, turning a 15-minute ride into 30 minutes.

I arrived at the hotel still nauseous from the flight, and cranky from Siri’s senseless motor tour.  I was a guest in need of care and attention.

The hotel’s front desk receptionist greeted me, then immediately answered a phone call.

The 90 second call felt to me like an hour.  The receptionist told the caller that hotel pool was undergoing maintenance, that Sunday brunch is served until 2pm, and the hotel did in fact, allow pets.  There was more, but my brain had shut down.

Meanwhile, I waited.  Tired, nauseous and cranky.

“What about me?” I thought.   “I flew in from New York, drove up from the Columbus airport, and I’m standing right in front of you, as you talk to someone who’s probably sitting at home on a sofa.

“WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME?!”

The 4 main skills of Emotional Intelligence

In 2013, The Association for Talent Development published “Emotional Intelligence Is Key to Our Success” by John Keyser.  Keyser is the founder and principal of Common Sense Leadership.  According to Keyser, the four main skills of emotional intelligence are:

1. Self-awareness – our ability to perceive our emotions and understand our tendencies to act in certain ways in given situations
2. Social awareness – our ability to understand the emotions of other people (what others are thinking and feeling)
3. Self-management – our ability to use awareness of our emotions to stay flexible and direct our behavior positively and constructively
4. Relationship management – our ability to use our awareness of our own emotions and those of others to manage interactions successfully.

How to apply Emotional Intelligence in Customer Service 

Let’s apply each of the 4 EI Skills to my experience at that Hotel in Columbus.

1. Self-awareness – the hotel receptionist may had a tendency to automatically answer the phone, whenever it rang.  He did.
2. Social awareness – the receptionist could have recognized me – carrying luggage, slumped shoulders and tire eyes – as a guest that was dying to check into his room. He didn’t.
3. Self-management – the receptionist could have avoided his normal tendency to answer the phone, and let the call go to voicemail and engage with me, instead. He didn’t.
4. Relationship management – in addition to choosing me over the telephone, the receptionist might have shown some empathy by acknowledging my efforts to be at the hotel, and treated me in a genuinely welcoming and empathetic way. He didn’t.

The receptionist didn’t follow those four steps of Emotional Intelligence.  Therefore, I felt ignored and undervalued.  But what if he did?

What if instead of falling into his natural tendencies, he followed the four steps?  I’d have been energized from the conversation.  I’d have been smiling as I rode up the elevator.  And I’d have been feeling more engaged with that hotel brand.

In any service environment where human-to-human engagement continues to occur, Emotional Intelligence will – must - continue to be an important skill to drive a positive experience, engage the customer, and create loyalty toward the brand.

AI may be a lot more exciting, but EI is no less important.

Back to the Future Again

Back in 1984, I read a then new book by John Naisbitt called “Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives.”  Naisbitt stressed the importance of balancing high-tech with high-touch.

As we witness the proliferation of Artificial Intelligence, it will behoove us to sharpen our skills in Emotional Intelligence.

At the end of the day or night, we’re all humans.  And there’s nothing like an emotionally intelligent interaction with another live human, to keep us feeling real!

Thanks to LYN GEIST @ljhgeist for this image of Compassion. Compassion is related to Emotional Intelligence.

Don't ignore the customer experience when you improve a business process.

I writing this on an Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Boston.  As I do before most longer flights, I bought a cup of coffee to bring on board.

 

But the Aer Lingus gate agent informed me that airline policy forbids passengers from carrying hot beverages onto their airplanes.  It's considered a safety hazard.

 

(The same cup of coffee is just as hot when carried onto an Aer Lingus flight as it is when carried onto a Delta flight or an Air France flight or even a Spirit flight.  So it can't be the coffee.  Do passengers get more careless when they step onto an Aer Lingus airplane, therefore making that same hot beverage less safe?)

 

I begrudgingly threw away my full coffee before getting on board.  The gate agent thanked me for understanding (I didn't) and assured me that I could get coffee on the airplane.  She was right - but not for a while...

 

An hour later, at 35,000 feet, a flight attendant asked me if I'd like a beverage.

 

"Yes, I said.  "I'd love a cup of coffee!!!"

 

"I'm sorry, but we don't serve any coffee until after we serve dinner.  We only serve cold beverages during the beverage service."

 

At this point, it felt like I, along with the other coffee drinkers on the plane were being intentionally tortured.  The more these Aer Lingus employees tell me that I can't have coffee, the more I want it!  They know this, so they just keep denying me to see how I'll react.

 

Two and a half hours after boarding the flight, I finally got that cup of coffee after dinner.

 

The first denial was attributed to safety. I'll never argue when it comes to enforcement of a safety policy (I may not like it, but. if it's about safety, I'll accept it)  But the second denial of a common airline customer request (hey, airlines began serving coffee shortly after the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty  Hawk).  Aer Lingus can, but they don't, because eliminating hot beverages simplifies the beverage service process.

 

Business processes are routinely simplified to remove unnecessary steps and wasted resources.   If steps don't add value to a process, the steps should be removed.  But companies often make a critical error, by simplifying a process without regard to how the simplification will impact the customer experience.  Their focus is concentrated more on employee productivity than customer satisfaction, as they make the process simpler for the employees to carry out.  Aer Lingus chose to eliminate coffee and tea from the beverage service, because it simplified the distribution process for the flight attendants.  And I'll bet there are plenty of other customers on this full flight, that wanted the coffee that Aer Lingus chose to not serve.

 

Here's the Point:

Design your processes primarily to create a positive experience for your customers, and secondarily to make employees more efficient.

 

Do this by following these 3 steps:

1. Add all customer requirements into the process.
2. After addressing all customer requirements, simplify the process by removing unnecessary steps.
3. Go back, and make sure that you didn't remove any customer requirements during step 2.

Never mind the baby and the bath water.  Eliminating customer pleasures for the sake of efficiency is like throwing the coffee out with the grinds.

 

 

Never, ever waste your customer's time.

Time is said to be the great equalizer.  It's arguably the most precious resource we've got.  No amount of technology can create more time.  (Electronic planners and organizers can only help you use your time more efficiently.  They can't produce more of it.).

 

We're all limited to 24 hours in a single day.  And we all have a lot that we need to do with that time.

 

This is something that every sales, marketing and customer service person must be keenly aware of, and more important, act upon.

 

The Car Dealership
A good friend recently took her car to dealership for service.  The appointment was for 9am.  They told here that she'd be finished by 10.  So, she planned the rest of her day around that.  By 10, they hadn't yet begun the work.  Poor scheduling?  Poor communication?  Poor utilization of shop labor?  The cause of the delay is not the issue.  

 

The issue is that the dealership wasted 60 minutes of her life that she will never get back again.  

 

No business has the right to do that, and no customer should ever have to tolerate it.

 

The Software Sales Person

I sat in on a sales presentation.  All attendees were given an agenda that listed everything we'd see within the 90 minute demonstration.

At the end of the 90 minutes, there were still two items remaining.  The vendor said, "If you give me another 10 minutes, I'll show you those final two features of the product."

 

100 minutes wasn't the deal.   I agreed to give the vendor 90 minutes of my life to see the complete product.  Now he was saying that it would cost me another 10 minutes to get the full deal.

 

He wanted to take another 10 minutes of my life, that I'd never see again. 

 

The Marketer

I received an email with an interesting subject line.  I opened the email. And I began to read it. The more I read, the more I realized that it did not apply to me.  The Marketer should have known better, because I already subscribe to what the email was promoting - the premium version of their service.   They didn't properly target their email marketing campaign. 

 

They caused me to waste 2 minutes of my life that I'll never get back again.

 

Marketers, please respect your prospects' time.  Make sure you're sending them a message that is relevant to them.  And don't send us long emails.  Long emails take to much of our time to ready.   Send us short,  relevant messages.  You'll earn more respect, credibility and increase your chances of making the sale.

 

If you want your customers to trust you, respect their time in everything you do. Because it's their life your dealing with.

 

 

How to be a Customer Service Hero

Customer Service is about creating positive memories for your customers.  But these memorable events typically are not created during "business as usual."  

 

They happen when there is a breakdown in the normal process.  They happen when something is standing in the way of completing the service transaction.  

 

The memory is created when the customer service person does something to overcome, or get past the breakdown to complete the transaction, as the customer would want it.  

 

Heroic actions are positive things that neither the business owner, employer or customer would expect the employee to do.

 

Here's an example:  

Friday evening, my wife and I had dinner at a local Irish Pub.  She ordered a Caesar Salad.  After a moment, the server returned to tell my wife that they were out of Caesar dressing, and suggested 

 a garden salad instead.

 

The server missed an opportunity to be a hero.

 

50 yards away from the Irish Pub is a large supermarket that stocks several brands of Caesar Salad dressings.  They also stock all the ingredients to make it from scratch.  It was a quiet night at the  Pub, and there were plenty of staff available to take 10 minutes out, to go and purchase the dressing.  

 

Had someone done so, my wife would have enjoyed her Caesar Salad.  And more importantly, our customer experience would have been dramatically different.  And so would our loyalty to the Pub.

 

But the server wasn't thinking outside the scope of the routine transaction.  And my wife and I were left with a routine experience.

 

Great customer experience moments often occur during a breakdown in the transaction, or when something goes wrong.  But only if the person delivering the  service takes the initiative to go beyond the routine; to go outside the scope of the standard transaction.

 

4 Steps to create a Customer Service Hero Culture: 

1. Think about the breaks from the routine in your business, that create opportunities for your employees to become heroes to your customers.
2. Create a plan for what to do, for each of these breakdowns.
3. Communication the plan to the  employees.
4. Then ask the employees to think of other breakdowns that occur.  Chances are, they'll be able to think of more than you did.  And doing so will put them in a hero mindset, and cultivate a Customer Service Hero Culture.

 

How would your employees have handled that Caesar Salad episode?   Would they have gone out to buy the dressing?

 

3 Steps to Customer Service Mastery

 

Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach once said:

 

Some people try to find things in this game that don't exist; but football is only two things - blocking and tackling."

 

In any endeavor, if you can identify the basics, and practice them to the point where you can execute them consistently well, you'll be successful.

 

 

This week, I called the Internal Revenue Service.  Just the idea of having to call the IRS conjures negative thoughts.  In fact, the call began just that way:  I navigated the phone menu correctly on just my second attempt.  Then I waited on hold for about five minutes.  Seven precious minutes invested, and no progress.

 

At this point, I felt myself taking on that irate customer posture - after all, it was my right as a citizen and a taxpayer.  By the eighth minute, I was completely caught off guard.  A live agent greeted me (we'll call him Bob), and after a couple quick questions to verify that I was who I said I was, Bob got right down to business.  His demeanor was calm and slightly upbeat, and he really seemed to care.  Bob showed empathy.

 

 

I explained why I was calling, and Bob listened.  He carefully repeated what I told him, then asked me to hold; he said he'd be back in under three minutes.  Bob was back on the line after two minutes and 30 seconds.  (Yes, I timed him.)  Bob set clear expectations, and lived up to them.

 

 

When Bob returned, he had a solution.  He explained it clearly, and with conviction.  I believed  Bob.  His confidence became my confidence.  I was glad I called, and felt  good about the solution.  Bob showed confidence.

 

 

An experience that began with all the markings of something bad, actually turned out to be something good - a very positive customer experience.  And the fact that this happened with the IRS made it even more impressive.

 

 

The things that Bob did so well were the basics of customer service:

 

1. He showed empathy.
   Bob came across as a human - a human who cared.  Empathy at the start of a call can set the stage for a successful call.  Always begin with empathy.
   
2.  He made a point to earn my trust.
   Bob listened to me.  And to prove that he listened, he repeated back what I told him.  That gave me confidence in Bob.  Always earn your customer's trust by listening carefully, and repeating back what the customer told you.
3. He found the right solution.  
   Bob didn't immediately know the answer, so he consulted with a colleague to find the right answer - and in the process, he told me exactly what he'd be doing, and how long it would take. Bob was transparent.  And that increased my trust in Bob.

Customer service is never an easy business, particularly when it's delivered over the telephone, and especially when your customers expect a bad experience.  But when an agent focuses on the basics, and executes them well, the chances for a positive customer experience increase dramatically.

 

Think of some of your best customer service experiences.  What made them great?