Sticky Customer Service E-Book

Peter Lyle DeHaan

• Herausgeber: Rock Rooster Books
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Sticky series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 115

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Do you lose customers about as fast as you gain them?=

It doesn't have to be that way. 

Customer service isn't a once-and-done effort. It takes ongoing work to truly meet your customers' expectations. In Sticky Customer Service, unearth practical, action-oriented insights to help you turn customer service from an embarrassing weakness into a business strength.

With over three decades of business and entrepreneurial experience, Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD, offers his prescriptions to serve customers better and stop driving them away. 

You'll discover:

- The three key areas where customer service occurs and why they must work together.

- How to avoid common errors that too many businesses make.

- Why delighting customers is not the best approach and sets up future failure.

Based on a lifetime of real-world examples, Sticky Customer Service reveals customer service gone wrong and customer service done well. 

Customer service is not a set-it-and-forget-it initiative. Never lose sight of this. Sticky Customer Service will keep you moving forward and on track.

Uncover helpful customer service tips through this compelling read, encouraging you to do better and celebrating what you do best. Learn how to meet your customers' expectations every chance you get.

Get Sticky Customer Service and turn customer retention into a strength.

Leseprobe

Sticky Customer Service

Stop Churning Customers and Start Growing Your Business

Peter Lyle DeHaan

Sticky Customer Service: Stop Churning Customers and Start Growing Your Business © 2021 by Peter Lyle DeHaan.

Book 1 in the Sticky series.

All rights reserved: No part of this book may be reproduced, disseminated, or transmitted in any form, by any means, or for any purpose without the express written consent of the author or his legal representatives. The only exception is short excerpts and the cover image for reviews or academic research.

ISBN

978-1-948082-58-7 e-book

978-1-948082-59-4 paperback

978-1-948082-60-0 hardcover

Published by Rock Rooster Books

Credits:

Developmental editor: Kathryn Wilmotte

Copy editor/proofreader: Robyn Mulder

Cover design: Taryn Nergaard

Author photo: Jordan Leigh Photography

To all who serve others.

Contents

Customer Service Matters

In-Person Customer Service

Is It Business or Personal?

Customer Service Is Not a Slogan

Customer Service Is a Strategy

Get Mad to Get Results

An Eye for Customer Service

Customer Rip-Offs

Penny Wise and Dollar Foolish

Consistency Matters Most

Telephone Customer Service

The Trials and Triumphs of Telephone Support

Call Center 101

The Truth About Interactive Voice Response

Does Anyone Like Speech Recognition?

The Perfect Answer

One Moment While I Disconnect Your Call

Your Staff on Autopilot

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

How to Handle Cancellations

A Well-Timed Call Can Make All the Difference

Online and Multichannel Customer Service

Available and Accurate Support

Provider-Inflicted Pain

Customer Survey Failure

Service Sold It

Beware Corporate Partners

The Name Game

The Myth of Self-Service

Good Customer Service Keeps Its Promises

Put It All Together

Frontline Customer Service Staff

How to Deal with Difficult Customers

Move Forward

Books by Peter Lyle DeHaan

About Peter Lyle DeHaan

Customer Service Matters

We hear much today about delighting our customers. This is an admirable goal, and every business should strive to do so. We must acknowledge, however, that this is not sustainable. We may delight customers upon occasion, but to expect we’ll succeed in every interaction will leave us falling short of their increasingly higher standards.

Each time we do something that excites our customers, we set the bar higher for next time. What delights them today and gets them to tell their friends about us will soon fade into the recesses of normalcy. Then, when we can’t meet their newly heightened expectations, we have much further to fall and their disappointment will be all that much greater.

Instead, we should set a more realistic goal. Though it’s not exciting or compelling, we should aim simply to meet customer expectations. Though this sounds boring, don’t dismiss the idea too fast. Many customer service interactions fall short—sometimes far short—of meeting customers’ expectations.

Meeting expectations is sustainable and is good business.

Do you know someone who left one company because of service issues and then left the new company for the same reason? Once they have used and dismissed each company, their new goal is to pick the least objectionable one.

They no longer pursue the best option. Instead, they seek the one that is least bad, returning to a former unsatisfactory provider. This produces a revolving door of customer churn, whereas a better goal is to keep existing customers.

Does any company provide quality service anymore? The good news is yes, and I celebrate this whenever possible. Yet for each positive example, it’s usually not the company but one person who made the difference. They cared about me and had a genuine interest in the outcome. I was their priority, and they did what the situation required.

Every company claims they offer quality service, but is it real or fantasy? Is a personal connection provided to customers? Can you say, believe, and prove that your company delivers quality service? If you can’t, what changes do you need to make?

* * *

Throughout my career, from the jobs I’ve held, businesses I’ve managed, and companies I’ve owned, a consistent thread has been customer service in one form or another. Yet I’m not writing about my experiences in providing customer service, for we are our own worst judges of success. And I’ll admit to having fallen short too many times.

Though sharing a lifetime of experience in providing customer service would offer useful input, it would only draw from the businesses I’ve owned and managed. Instead, this book covers something I have much more experience with. Not in providing, but in receiving customer service—and in not receiving it.

We can glean a far better perspective by looking at a lifetime of receiving customer service. This provides a greater array of consideration, offering a more comprehensive approach that most customer service books miss.

I am a consumer. As someone who purchases products and services, I often need support after the sale. I need customer service. In this book, I’ll share the times that left me appalled or produced discouragement. Yet I’ll also share those times—albeit not as common—when I experienced customer satisfaction.

Customer service opportunities occur in three arenas. These are in person, over the telephone, and online. None functions in isolation. Each type of customer-focused communication informs our expectations in the other formats. Regardless of the communication channel, whether we’re speaking face to face, talking on the phone, or interacting over the internet, we deal with the same issues and desire the same outcomes.

It’s my hope that this book will provide you with helpful customer service insights that will encourage you to do better and celebrate what you do best. Let us meet our consumers’ expectations every chance we get.

In-Person Customer Service

We’ll start our exploration with in-person interactions. These normally occur in retail, service, and hospitality settings.

Insights that we gain from these in-person customer service opportunities, however, can inform our perspectives regardless of how and where the customer connection takes place.

Is It Business or Personal?

Build Relationships to Forge Ongoing Business

When I did a lot of printing, I used what was essentially the same printer for my business forms. I used them for years. Our time together bridged many changes. For me, it transcended two places of employment. For them, it spanned three ownerships, a time of expansion and contraction, three name changes, and a merger. We stayed together through it all—until they messed things up.

It Starts with Friendliness

This printer was near my office, had competitive prices, and was easy to work with. Convenience, price, and service were all significant reasons to use them. So begins my story.

What impressed me the most, however, was their collective friendliness. It didn’t matter who I talked with. Whether on the phone or in person, they were always friendly. After friendliness is acquaintance, which leads to relationship. I knew the staff and the owner—who never felt it beneath him to wait on me. We had a relationship. With relationship comes understanding, tolerance, and forgiveness.

Although they exemplified the adage to “under promise and over deliver,” at times things didn’t go as expected. Sometimes this was my fault and other times theirs, but regardless we worked through these glitches for the common good of our long-term relationship. I understood they were in business to make money and that I needed to be a profitable account. Likewise, I needed quality product.

Form a Relationship

When a problem occurred, if we didn’t have a rapport, instead of seeking our mutual benefit, we would have sought our individual self-interest. We would have pursued mutually exclusive goals and become adversarial.

Instead, we pursued a relationship. Relationship creates tolerance. Tolerance overlooks the small stuff, the issues that aren’t essential. If they made a mistake that didn’t affect the form’s essential usefulness, my tolerance accepted the product.

However, if a problem occurred integral to its function, then reprinting was in order. Our relationship prompted their desire to correct errors, while tolerance gave me the desire to allow for extra time.

The last relational benefit is forgiveness. If they missed a deadline, I wanted to forgive them. If I had a rush job or changed something mid-production, they forgave my lack of planning.

One day, as I walked from their front door to the counter, three people paused their work, glanced up, and greeted me by name. They were glad to see me, and I was happy to be there. Bob approached me and beamed. “We’re the printer where everybody knows your name!” He was right. They knew my name, making me feel welcomed and appreciated.

Bob and I got to know each other. Our kids were in marching band at their respective schools, giving us a commonality apart from business. Although not a hunter, I enjoyed hearing of his adventures in the woods. He heard of my business trips and home improvement projects. When Bob bought into the business, he shared his news with me. As business owners, we now had another area of connection.

I changed jobs and Bob’s downtown shop was no longer convenient for me, but I kept going anyway. When he moved to manage a satellite store, I followed him there. It was also closer for me. Later, when a downturn in the economy required the closure of his location, my loyalty followed him to a third store. Though not as convenient, the extra drive was worth it to see my old friend.

Avoid Transactions

Then they merged with another company. This resulted in yet another name change and the closing of Bob’s satellite office. Later, needing to have some envelopes printed, I returned to their original location. I hoped to find Bob there and the other people I’d known for so long. I saw nobody I knew, and no one knew me. They didn’t understand my history that spanned decades. They weren’t friendly and didn’t try to know me. I represented an order, not a relationship. I was a transaction, not a friend.

It’s not that these things are essential to printing envelopes, business cards, or flyers, but they are a pleasant bonus. A personal connection with my printer didn’t improve the quality of the final product. In a hard-core business sense, these things don’t matter. Or do they?

When I picked up my order, the bill shocked me. Their rates had gone up a lot. I hadn’t checked. I gave the new regime the trust earned by the old one, paying for my lapse. Back at my office, opening the box of envelopes again distressed me. There were problems with two of the first twenty. A 10 percent error rate is not the quality I expected. The frequency of faulty product dropped as I worked through the box, but that initial impression stuck with me.

In the past, I would have called Bob and we would have worked something out, but now I didn’t know who to contact. There was no relationship anymore, so there was no real reason to maintain it. My mind was already searching for another printer.

Conclusion

I learned we need to get personal with those we do business with. Relationships matter. Then, when results fall short of expectation, we can work together to develop a solution that benefits us both. If a minor problem occurs, tolerance will win out and forgiveness can take place. If the business moves, the name changes, or new owners show up, it’s the personal relationships that hold customers close and keep them from seeking out the competition.

So get personal. It’s good business.

Customer Service Success Tip

Move from a transaction mindset to a relationship perspective.

Customer Service Is Not a Slogan

Lessons for All from the Auto Repair Industry

Does your organization make customer service a priority? I expect it does. In fact, I suspect the phrase “customer service” occurs somewhere in your mission or vision statement and appears on a wall plaque, a statement that your marketing material hypes. In addition, upper management often talks about providing quality customer service.

However, as the saying goes, “talk is cheap.” Another saying reminds us that “actions speak louder than words.”

Do you deliver quality customer service or just talk about it? Have you said “world-class service” so often that you—and the entire organization—become convinced it’s a reality, when in fact it isn’t?

Customer Service Failure

An unacceptable experience at a car dealership was the incentive I needed to return to the trustworthy comfort of my local service station, where I continue to be a loyal customer of their car care services.

Yet the dreaded day came when they informed me that they weren’t willing to tackle repairing my heat-producing air conditioner. I would need to take my car back to the dealer.

With trepidation, I entered the dealer’s well-lit and decorated service department. As I walked up to the “customer service” desk, a representative, clad in business attire with a tasteful tie, greeted me by name—even though I’d not been there in a couple of years. I explained the problem and, knowing their mode of operation all too well, asked for an estimate. With a confidence-building smile and positive words of assurance, he agreed.

His phone call came soon after I returned to my office: $1,575. After my dumbfounded silence, he launched into an extended explanation, mixing mechanic jargon and automotive terminology, which I doubt even he understood. His aim, I assume, was to intimidate me into accepting their costly diagnosis. Their investigation also uncovered a heater problem that somehow related to the AC repair. True, for only $980, I could fix just the AC, but then it would be over $1,200 to go back later to repair the heater.

“Let’s get realistic.” I challenged him, determined not to be a victim of their predatory practices once again.

The representative apologized, saying he had no other options. “My hands are tied.”

I declined to approve the repair and later picked up the car.

“I’m sorry,” he kept repeating. “I know I’ve lost you as a customer.”

He was right.

Customer Service Success