A positive customer experience results in a happy customer. By creating a positive customer experience, you will have a profound impact on your business because your customers will help build your brand loyalty, evangelize your product or service and refer new customers to you.
Consumers have little patience for lousy customer service and easily get tired of waiting in long lines, trying to get a live person on the phone, going through an interrogation to return something or trying to communicate through a language barrier.
Last summer, my son flew to Germany for a visit to see his brother. His flight left Seattle with his checked luggage, connected in Vancouver, BC and landed in Germany. He arrived safely minus his luggage. He informed the airline and they had no idea where it was (so much for a bar code on baggage tag). They gave him a website and a number to call to check the status. Neither the website nor the phone number worked. He departed ten days later. As he was boarding his flight, his bag was being delivered to his brother’s house. The airline never responded to any inquiries that we made about the luggage…never. In fact, we had to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Transportation to get them to respond.
Was this a positive customer experience? No, not even close. In fact, we have told this story numerous times to family and friends who were traveling to Europe and advised them to avoid this airline.
It was not a simple, efficient, nor pleasant experience.
You must provide customers with a simple, efficient, pleasant experience so they will revisit your business over and over. More importantly, they will tell everyone they know!
You are the captain of the ship and the visionary for the future of your business, so you need to have a clearly-defined plan for your customer service.
There are three main goals to consider:
It needs to be easy for your customers to do business with you.
Doing business with you needs to be a warm and pleasant experience. If you have a store front, your staff must be knowledgeable, approachable, warm and patient.
Your customers need to feel like they are getting a good value for their time and money. Perceived value goes beyond the price of the products and extends to their shopping experience.
With these thoughts in mind you also need to take a few things into consideration when deciding on the experience you’ll put into place:
Share your customer service vision with the rest of your staff.
Measure and monitor the level of customer service your staff is putting out.
Continuously focus on improving your customer service goals by:
Analyzing your customer satisfaction survey results
Identify why your customers leave
Take action on the results so your customers see the improvement.
To wrap up the lost luggage story, we did receive the luggage about a month later and a $150 shipping bill. The airline did send a check for the cost of shipping; however, it was not enough to make up for the angst they created by a poor customer experience.
If you’re experiencing problems in your business related to time, team, or money, please don’t hesitate to reach out to info@pillarsgrp.com or click to schedule a complimentary 30-minute BLiTZ session with Dean.