Tag Archive for: customer experience

Why can Improving Empathy help me Improve my company’s Customer Service Experience?

Empathy is one of the driving factors of good customer service; without it, it is impossible to imagine what a customer’s position is. Why are they upset about something? Why are they shouting at you over the phone? What is it that they really want? Why do they respond to your smile?

What is Empathy?

Some of you may be sitting there wondering what this video has to do with customer service and when I’m going to get to the point; others among you may be nodding your head. That’s fine; we’re all here to learn.

What this video does is explain ‘empathy’; we can deduce that empathy comes in a variety of different forms but on the whole is reflective of how well we understand each other’s emotional responses to situations.

Most of us are capable of imagining what another person is going through. We have a certain level of empathy; some of us have more than others, but mostly we’re all capable of it to some extent.

Also read this article: Retail Customer Service: Reality of Retail Industry

For example, if my best friend won first prize in a competition and was bubbling over with excitement I could well imagine what that might feel like. When you read a story about someone who is diagnosed with a terminal disease, you might feel sad for that person but it’s not until you imagine what it must be like to be that person that you’re acting on your empathy.

What role does Empathy play in Customer Service?

Empathy allows a good customer service agent to read between the lines. As customer service agents it’s important that we know how customers feel – but there’s a distinction to be made here between imagining what a customer wants and assuming to know what a customer wants.

Picture a little girl named ‘Sally’. Sally comes into an ice cream parlour with her mother for ice cream. It’s fairly simple to come to the conclusion that Sally is there for a treat and will now go through the process of choosing what flavour she wants for her one scoop of ice cream. There’s very little imagining to be done here.

Next, picture Mickey, a young man with a skateboard who’s come into a shoe store, presumably to buy new shoes. An bad sales consultant might just make a snap judgment and try and sell Mickey a pair of sneakers that might go with his current look. A better consultant would ask Mickey what he’s after – apparently Mickey has his first job interview at a tech company and he needs a pair of dress shoes to wear. That’s great stuff, that sales consultant now knows what Mickey wants and needs. What next? Sure we could just sell him a pair of shoes, but what about the next time Mickey needs shoes? Or if his friends need a pair? We want Mickey to tell his friends about our store and what a great experience he had when he bought his swanky new shoes.

This is where empathy comes into play.

Imagine what Mickey is going through. He’s off to his very first job interview at a tech company. Is he nervous? Is he confident? Does he think he has a good chance at landing the job? An empathetic sales consultant will pick up on Mickey’s mood and be able to talk with him about what he’s going through.

Empathy is the key to making good customer service a great customer experience, two vital sides of the coin and the differences between which I’ve explored here.

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Customer Service & Customer Experience: The Difference You Should Probably Know About

Customer Service? Customer Experience? What are these two terms we talk about all the time?

On the phoneCustomer experience and customer service are two prominently used terms, but many of us don’t really differentiate between them. Probably best explained in this article by Elizabeth Clor, these two terms are not interchangeable, which is how they’ve often been used.

Customer service is just that: it deals with the service elements of the overall sales process: How friendly is the staff? How quickly do they see to a customer? What’s the procedure for processing customer complaints? Are they dealt with quickly?

Customer service involves the direct contact that customer-facing employees have with the customer. What type of contact is it? How good is that contact? How quickly are issues resolved? What options of service do customers have?

Customer experience is the experience that the service provides. What is it like for a customer to contact staff? How easy is it for them to give feedback or use the system? Is the store clean and easy to navigate?

If we were in a restaurant, for example, the customer service would revolve around the quality of service: does the waiter smile and answer questions cordially? How quickly does the food arrive? Whereas the experience can be defined by how pleasant the restaurant is: good atmosphere, good quality of food and beverages, prices appropriate for that quality.

Customer Service Experience

waiter
There’s a word in the Dutch language: gezelligheid. There’s no perfect translation into english, but Wikipedia offers this as an accurate:

“…depending on context, can be translated as convivial, cosy, fun, or nice atmosphere, but can also connote belonging, time spent with loved ones, the fact of seeing a friend after a long absence, or general togetherness that gives a warm feeling.” [Gezelligheid, Wikipedia]

Why this tangent?

Any other business can make the greatest attempts at good customer service, but without the gezelligheid the customer experience will be severely lacking. Vice versa, you can have the coziest most ‘gezellig’ business in the world, but if the service is awful no one will come back either.

Creative Customer Service

There’s a restaurant in Melbourne that we tried out a few times before giving up. The decor was wonderful, and the food fantastic, the trouble was that the service was terrible. The few times we went, we were always made to feel like we were inconveniencing the staff when we placed orders, they almost never raised their eyes to look at you and they smiled even more rarely.

A year after they’d opened, they were shut and there was a rumor floating around that the owner took the forced shutdown as a surprise, complaining that the neighborhood just didn’t support his efforts to provide great food.

“The food was really good,” my mother-in-law said, “if they’d just been nicer we’d have gone there more often!”

We’ve all experienced in some shape or form: where either the service was so bad that we didn’t go back, or, even though the service was great, the experience left something to be desired. As customers, we have the right to choose what we want; and we want good everything, both service and experience.

Secret Shopper Companies that have that figured out, are virtually unstoppable.

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Don’t Just Use Customer Service Phrases: Act

How many times have we come across the phrase: “customer service is not a department, it’s an attitude”. I’ve used it myself several times for one reason: it’s true. And also because it’s a cool way of getting my point across.

Trouble is, when you say something too many times you end up losing its meaning. Like when you say ‘oil’ many times in a row; the word turns into a string of meaningless noises. (Or is that just me?) The overuse of the phrase ‘customer service isn’t a department etc’ has made it invisible. Invisibility might be useful for superheroes, but for customer-service reps it’s practically a sin.

We throw around plenty of words and phrases, and it’s become an issue.

Define ‘customer service’. Google it. It’s everywhere. As companies, we’re being told again and again that it’s time to ‘improve our customer service’ and that ‘this is the age of the customer’. ‘Be customer-centric’ is my personal favorite. In the white noise of the overwhelming evidence that ‘customer service is the future’ — another recurring phrase — the real meaning behind the term is slipping away.

So what does it mean?

If you’ve Googled ‘customer service’, you’ll know that the first definition that pops up (from Wikipedia) reads as follows:

“Customer service is the provision of services to customers before, during and after a purchase. The perception of success of such interactions is dependent on employees “who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest”. Customer service is also often referred to when describing the culture of the organization.” (Source)

Does anyone else want to shake their monitor when they read that? I certainly do. Why? Because it could mean anything. A lack of understanding means a lack of goal. I’m not saying that this definition isn’t correct — it probably is — but what it definitely isn’t is helpful.

Customer service has a simpler definition and this is it:

“Customer Service: Helping customers meet their needs.”

That’s it. Throw out the big words, put the meaning back into the definition.

I know that ‘helping customers meet their needs’ is a lot more complicated than it actually sounds, but that’s not the point. By redefining ‘customer service’ we’ve gotten rid of the white noise and made it a responsibility again, rather than a chore.

Once people know the goal, it becomes obtainable. Suddenly, customer service really isn’t a department: it’s something anyone can do. Customer comes in and needs help? You help them. Hey, that’s customer service! That’s not your department — except that it is because no matter what industry we work in, or position we hold — from janitor to CEO and beyond — we are here to supply our customers with what they want.

That is customer service, and it isn’t a department. It’s really an attitude.

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What we need to know about Negative Experiences

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More often than not, we hear about bad customer service experiences. It makes you wonder if the world revolves around negative experiences. Apparently, people are far more likely to share their grievances publicly than they are to share compliments. According to ClickFox’s second annual benchmarking survey, Consumer Tipping Points, only 8% of customers are likely to make public posts or share a positive experience, whereas this percentage doubles in the case of a bad experience.

Think about that for a moment:

One of your customers has a great time, and they don’t tell anyone about it, but a bad time and suddenly their entire world knows about it.

Forget that it’s completely unfair; human nature isn’t about fair, unfortunately.

What do we do about it?

If you’re dealing with a specific negative review, make sure you reach out to that customer straight away. You’ve let them down somehow, best to dive straight in and apologize, perhaps offer them something to express your regret for the bad service they received; while you’re at it, why not ask for their input? If you can figure out what it was exactly that frustrated them, you can better address the problem. Maybe it was something that was said, not done — get the details so you can avoid the same issue in the future!

1. Identify the problem. There’s no point in plunging headlong in trying to solve your issues if you don’t know exactly what they are.

  • What section of your customer-facing department is letting the customer down? Are your customers complaining about something specific?
  • Is your sales team doing something ‘wrong’/not doing something ‘right’?
  • Are you meeting customer expectations in general?

Questions like this need to be answered before you ca begin to isolate the issues and deal with them. This can be tricky if you don’t have checklists in place, and some businesses find they need external help from customer improvement companies or other consultancies.

2. Isolate the problem. Don’t try and tackle everything at once. Which problem is the most pressing? Is it the way your staff greets customers, or is the long waiting periods that are creating negative feedback?

3. Fix the problem. You know what the problem is, you can take steps to make sure it never happens again. Are your customers waiting for half an hour before they’re served? Perhaps you need more staff. Did one of your sales consultants say something that generated the negative feedback? Time to discuss this with that consultant and have a general discussion with the entire team.

The goal here is to learn from the mistakes you’ve made. Don’t think of a customer’s negative review/complaints as a setback, think of it as an opportunity to do better.

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9 Reasons Why Your Customers Believe You Are Awesome

Your Customers think you are awesome!Everyone has different expectations from customer service, but your customers love you. Why do your customers believe you are awesome? It’s easy to see why customers may be walking out your door, but why are they staying with your competition? Or, even more confusing! Why are they staying with you? Customer loyalty is a puzzle, and it’s important to understand the reason behind the positives as well as the negatives!

You know those quizzes that you can take, online – or, formerly, offline – where you get scored on your answers and you then get a result which tells you what kind of chocolate cake you are? Let’s pretend you’ve done one titled ‘What do your customers think of you?’  You’ve crossed your hurdles and are met with smiles all around, and you certainly don’t suffer from any of these issues.  We’ve got great news: your customers believe you are awesome!

I know we shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth and all, but surely you’re just a little curious about why you’re so awesome?

Also read this article for more information: How To Improve Customer Experience

1. You didn’t just sell…

…you connected. It’s not just about making that one sale for you, it’s about giving the customer what they want. For you, it’s not a question of ‘what can I sell to my customers?, it’s ‘how can I help them?’

2. You rock your customer service…

…and people just won’t stop talking about you over coffee with their friends, in the bus, on their social media. Your staff entertains and delights your customers, they know how to make people smile. You’ve put the time and effort in to make sure your customers know that you like them because they’re people, not just because they’re there to buy your product or use your service. You’ve made them feel like they really matter, because, to you, they do.

3. You provide multi-channel support

You recognize that it’s vital to let people connect to your brand the way they choose, not just the way you think is most convenient for you. You’ve done the research and checked out all the means by which your customers connect with you; you know where they spend their time online and how they want to be connected offline.

4. You’ve exceeded all expectations!

When you first offered your service or product, you made the customer a promise. Some companies fall victim to overselling these promises – like politicians – to get a sale. Building up customer expectations is a two-edged sword, but you’ve rocked your customers’ worlds and more than delivered on your promises: not only did you meet the customer’s expectations, you’ve exceeded them and that’s why your customers believe you are awesome.

5. You haven’t just learned from your mistakes you’ve made changes to avoid making them in the future!

You’ve implemented a feedback system, or perhaps your customers just talk to you, but the fact is: you listento what they’ve got to say. You’ve taken the good with the bad, and you’ve come up with ways to avoid the bad – and told the complaining customer how you’ve gone about to fix things, and then asked if they think that’ll solve the problem!

6. You’re in the now! You’ve evolved with the times to stay on top of the world!

When you started out back in the ancient days of ‘ye olde times’, you had a great message and jingle, sure,  but you’ve recognised that the times are a’changin’ and you’ve adapted that message and your branding to the here and now. Used to do TV ads? Now you’re big online! Radio ads? No worries, podcasts and streaming music platforms. Newspapers? Still use ‘m, but you’re also on Reddit, Facebook, and – well, you get the picture. You’ve moved with the times and your customers know you’ll keep moving with them at just the right pace.

7. Customers can’t stop themselves from coming back to because…

They know you understand them. You’ve given them a reason to come back, whether it’s via customer loyalty strategies, special offers, or just giving them time of day with all your collective customer service talents. They know you get what they want, and that you’re adaptable.

8. Your competitors may be great, but you’re doing that extra bit.

You’re in it to win it, and your customers know that that means you’re in it for them and not just because you’re competing with others. You may not be able to compete with your competitors on a financial scale, or even match their advertising campaigns, but you’re creative enough to know that you can win in other sectors: like upping your customer service initiatives and connecting with people in a better, more customer-centric manner.

9. Reasons beyond your control…

People move cities, change lifestyles, get older and, inevitably, pass away. These are things that you can’t control, but you canreact to them appropriately. You’ve made that impression because you’ve impressed them on a human level: you’ve been there to share their happiness and their grief, their ups and downs; and now that they’ve had a change in their life, you’ve expressed your regrets at losing them to these changes, but you understand because you believe in them as people, not just as customers.

Making a difference

Differentiating your company from the sea of businesses in the world is one of the best ways to make a difference.  Every companies in the world has customer service, but striving to make yours the best service out there, to go to the extra lengths is what will make your company truly memorable – and for the right reasons.

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