What company wouldn’t love to get a thumbs-up customer loyalty rating along with these delighted smiles? Most would pay dearly for such a solid satisfied response from their target customers. But these positive reactions cannot be bought. They have to be earned.
How do you gain such customer admiration and recognition? Through extraordinary service that translates into word-of-mouth advertising. The better the experience, the more likely customers are apt to talk about it online and offline with friends, family and colleagues. Of course, the same is true of negative experiences. The worse the service, the more likely your company or your brand will get a black eye and the ugly story will be repeated over and over.
Consider a few examples of extraordinary customer service that we found on the web:
- Trader Joe’s received a call from the daughter of an 89-year-old man who lived in Pennsylvania. She was trying to find a store that would deliver food to him so he would be able to have meals on hand during a predicted storm. No store provided such a service. Neither does Trader Joe’s…as a rule. But when they heard about the situation, they overrode their usual policy. Within half an hour, the food was delivered…free of charge.
- The former B. Dalton bookstore had a customer who wanted a particular book for her son for Christmas. The customer service person checked in back but found none even though it showed on the computer as “in stock.” To satisfy the customer, the rep actually called their competition (Borders) to locate the requested book. With directions to the store printed out by the B. Dalton clerk, the customer went to Borders for the book. It was in her name, ready at the front desk. Her gratitude for the successful purchase went to B. Dalton even though they lost the sale.
- Personally, I recently received great customer service from the company where we purchased our Hot Tub. Basically a few strange things happened and the company replaced our two-year-old $600 hot tub cover at no charge with little hassle. They even removed our old cover for free Thank you Darby at Paradise Valley Spas.
- A Comcast customer tried politely to cancel his cable service. The service rep refused to do so and spent the next 8 minutes insisting that Comcast was the best provider in the country. Eventually the customer was successful but did some research and discovered a report that indicated Comcast seemed to encourage this behavior with its crew of “retention specialists” whose pay depended upon how many customers they can, or cannot, save.
- An upscale guest house in New York actually tried to set up a policy to squelch any negative reviews on Yelp. Their web site stated that guests booking for wedding parties would be fined $500 per negative review. Imagine the reviews they got when this hit the fan!
- On a personal level, our teenage son recently had a fender-bender in our car. The service, support and help we received from State Farm, our insurance Broker for 32 years, was frustrating and inadequate. We are now looking to change. Boo State Farm!
The point? Make sure your customer service strategy takes into account the power of customer stories. A 5% increase in customer loyalty can boost profits by as much as 25% to 85%.
Give your service staff the clear message that happy customers are good for business and give your staff the authority to come up with solutions that delight. Otherwise, reps will be guided by their own understanding of your policy. At Comcast and at the New York inn, this had disastrous consequences.
Learn more at: http://www.lsaglobal.com/customer-service-strategy/
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