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By Shep Hyken
We just released our annual customer service research where we surveyed more than 1,000 consumers and asked what customer service experiences are most likely to cause you to come back. The top answers belong together: helpful and friendly. That seems pretty simple. All a typical customer wants is for someone to be nice to them, with a willingness to take care of them. How hard can that be? It seems like it’s just common sense, right? Yet we all have the customer service horror stories that are the exact opposite of people being helpful and friendly. Please keep reading, even though this is basic information. I emphasize the word basic because it is foundational to the success of your customer service program. That means it’s really, really important. You have to work on the basics before you can move to something more advanced. Customers want the basics before anything else. Let’s approach this from another angle. While, in general, helpful and friendly interactions get customers to come back, here’s another statistic from something more specific, which focuses on complaints. We asked, “When you have a problem or issue with a company or brand, which solutions do you prefer to help you solve your problem?” 89% of customers want employees who are kind and helpful. So, whether it’s a general interaction with employees or a problem or complaint you want resolved, those two words, friendly and helpful, are right at the top of why customers come back. So, what makes customers want to stop doing business and switch to another company? The opposite of helpful and friendly, which it turns out is rudeness and apathy. 75% of customers would switch companies or leave a brand after experiencing rudeness and apathy. When working with our clients on their customer service and customer experience initiatives, I always preach the basics have to be in place. Sure, we get into very advanced discussions about how to create the best processes, self-service solutions, the proper way to use data, implement artificial intelligence programs, and more. But none of that will mean anything if the customer ends up interacting with one of your employees and experiences anything less than friendly and helpful. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success!
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By Shep Hyken
Let’s go back to physics class for just a moment. Isaac Newton’s third law of motion states, “For every action in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” I admit to struggling in physics, but this was one principle I understood. The other day, a friend quoted Newton’s third law, and it hit me. Not only does this happen in physics, but it also happens in business, specifically when there is bad customer service or a bad customer experience (CX). So, with that, I bring you Shep’s Law of Customer Service, which is: For almost every bad customer experience created, there is an opposite reaction by the customer. They don’t come back. Notice that I put the word almost in the definition. Let me explain. A company wants a customer to buy its product or service. Then the customer has a bad experience. Perhaps an employee was rude or there was a problem with a shipment and the company didn’t handle it properly. Let’s call that the company’s “action.” The “equal and opposite reaction” comes from the customer choosing not to come back, which is the opposite of what the company wants the customer to do. Where customer service and CX differ from Newton’s third law is that it’s not always an exact equal or opposite reaction. It doesn’t happen every time, but almost every time. What if almost all your customers, as in almost nine out of 10 of them, were to leave after experiencing bad customer service? That’s exactly what we found in our latest customer service research, that 86% of customers are willing to switch brands or companies because of a bad customer service experience. And the company doesn’t even have to deliver truly bad service – just not “good enough service.” Eighty-three percent of customers are willing to switch because another company will give them better service. Now let’s remember that perfection is not reality, so it’s not quite as grim as it may seem. I have emphasized the word almost, and for very good reason. Our research also found that most customers give one or two chances before leaving deciding to leave. While not quite an equal and opposite reaction, it’s close enough to make the point. And mistakes don’t count if they are managed well. A mistake or complaint handled well actually reinforces that the customer made the right choice to do business with that company – sometimes even more than if the mistake had never happened at all. Let’s summarize it this way. When a customer chooses to do business with you, there are two future outcomes. They come back, or the opposite happens, and they don’t. So, manage for the reaction – not the opposite reaction – that you want to happen, which is to get the customer to say, “I’ll be back.” Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Shep Hyken
There are many ways to deal with complaints or angry customers. I’ve written a number of articles on the different ways to do so, and today I want to add an excellent technique. The idea is to say something that lets the customer know you understand the problem, you’re in sync with their concerns, and you empathize with their frustration, anger or whatever emotion they’re exhibiting. I refer to this as The Perfect Thing to Say. This is more than apologizing and acknowledging the customer, which are steps one and two of my five-step process for dealing with angry customers. When a customer brings you a problem or has a complaint, you want to find a way to align with their goals and articulate it in such a way that immediately lets them know you are on their side. Let them know you’re in sync with them and what they want to achieve. Here is a perfect example. I had switched to a new mobile phone. I was having great difficulty getting familiar with the new features. I wanted to return the phone and go back to the older technology. Actually, returning the phone wasn’t on my mind. I wanted to smash the phone and mail the pieces back to the manufacturer. It was that different. Eventually, my frustration forced me to call customer support. In just a short time, I was talking to a rep. I know he sensed my frustration, so I emphasized that I wasn’t angry at him but at the phone. After all, if he was there to help me, I didn’t want to make him angry. Then the magic happened. Once he listened to my problems, making several comments that proved his empathy toward my situation, he said something that made me want to keep the new phone. He said, “I want you to love your phone so much that you’re willing to jump in front of a bus to save it.” Trying to stay with his lighthearted comment, I replied, “I’d be happy to jump in front of the bus, as long as it was going backward.” But what I was really thinking was that this was a bigger challenge than he thought, and was he up for the task? Go ahead and give it your best shot. Regardless of my frustration, I realized he was there to help me. His positive attitude and energy, along with his perfect thing to say, turned me from an upset customer into one who wanted to love his brand. Think about the problems or complaints you hear most often. Is there a sentence or phrase you can work into the conversation that would turn that misery into magic? This isn’t something you make up on the spot. This is a line you will use again and again. It’s the line that will turn your angry customers into loyal customers who say, “I’ll be back!” Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Shep Hyken
It is one of the most common questions I’m asked in interviews: What’s the difference between customer service and customer experience (also known as CX)? While I’ve written about this before, my original article about customer experience was more about how to create a more interactive experience. The example I used was how Home Shopping Network (HSN) incorporated gamification into the customer experience. It offered games and puzzles on its website. The prize for winning the game or solving the puzzle was in the form of discounts. That’s a great – and even fun – experience, but there is much more to it than that. First, a little history. I remember the term customer experience being used as a fancy phrase to describe customer service. Many years ago, that’s all it was. Some smart person was trying to give a facelift to the term customer service. Not long after that, however, other smart people started using the term customer experience to describe every interaction with a company. That included customer service and much more. This is where it confuses some people. Customer service is part of customer experience, but customer experience goes to a much broader level. Some of the obvious experiences include navigating a website, reading promotional emails and text messages, watching the brand’s videos and much more. Even opening a package is part of the customer experience. Think about how cool it is to unbox an iPhone or iPad. Back in the day, Steve Jobs was very specific about how he wanted the unboxing of the company’s products to be an amazing CX. Some say that customer service is what happens when the customer experience goes wrong. That’s part of it, but it’s not the whole picture. If you’ve followed my work, you know that customer service is not a department that deals with problems and complaints. It’s a philosophy to be embraced by every employee, from the CEO or owner to the most recently hired. It’s how you interact with people, both your internal and external customers. The customer support department deals with questions, problems and complaints. Of course, their customer service skills must be at the highest level when dealing with unhappy customers and solving problems. So, a short definition of customer service is all of the interactions that customers have with the people in the company. We can even broaden that to digital interactions, which now include chatbots, interactive experiences on a website and more. Just to emphasize, these interactions include, but go beyond, the interactions for customer support. Customer experience includes customer service – and everything else a customer might experience when doing business with you. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Shep Hyken
One of the big concepts we teach in our customer service training programs is the concept of Always. This is the backbone of creating customer amazement. When the customer uses the word always followed by something positive, you are creating a predictable experience, and even more important, you are operating in the zone of amazement. For example, your customers might say:
Notice that these statements are about the interactions customers have with your employees. Often, they are really just one person the customer is interacting with. So, consider the following questions:
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But simple doesn’t mean easy. Let’s talk about what drives the Always experience. It’s really two words: people and process. It starts with the right people, whether they are newly hired or have been with your organization for years. Your people must understand what is expected and what drives the experience you’re trying to provide. Beyond understanding, it takes training – and not just one time. It’s ongoing reinforcement of the goal for the customer experience you want to provide. Training can be just a few minutes each week at a weekly team meeting. Some organizations have daily meetings where customer service and experience are brought up, even if just for two or three minutes. The point is that it is never a distant memory. Then there is the process you provide. While the always statements above mostly apply to the people, you also want to have a good customer-focused process to support it. The journey the customer takes must be easy. Ideally, you want your customer to say, “They are always easy to do business with.” Being easy is baked into the process. So, have a team meeting. Discuss the concept of Always. Discuss your answers to the questions above. The Always concept drives trust, and trust is a big reason why customers come back to do more business with you. Do it right by creating an experience that ensures customers always come back! Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Shep Hyken
Here is a stat that’s hard to believe: Forty-eight percent of Americans would rather go to the dentist than call customer support. OUCH! It seems that going to the dentist to get a filling or a root canal is preferred over having to call customer support. This statistic comes straight from the 2021 Achieving Customer Amazement Study we conducted this year. We surveyed more than 1,000 consumers to find out what they loved and hated about customer service. What would make them come back or terminate their relationship with the brand or company? But let’s get back to this stat for a moment. The following horror story has happened to all of us. You spend 10 minutes searching a company’s website for a customer support phone number that you eventually find in tiny print on an obscure page. You make the call and you’re put on hold for an unreasonable amount of time. The hold music is terrible, and they don’t tell you how long it’s going to be. You just wait and wonder. Someone finally answers. You have a hard time understanding them. It may not be an accent that’s hard to understand. It may be that you can hear hundreds of other customer service agents in the background, making it hard to hear the agent you’re talking to. You take the time to tell the agent your name, address, last four digits of your Social Security number, your mother’s maiden name, and the answer to a security question. Then another five minutes explaining your story. The agent keeps saying, “I’m sorry,” so many times that it loses its impact and seems insincere. You hope this is the person to help you, but your dreams are shattered when the agent says, “I’m sorry, that’s not my department.” From there they transfer you to someone they think is better equipped to help you. And, then it starts over! The next agent and the experience is no better than the last. Finally, you ask to speak to a supervisor. Yes, you’ve done that! Admit it! I can keep going, but you get the idea. First, nobody wants to call customer support. They don’t want to have a problem that forces them to do something they hadn’t planned on doing. But it happens, and when it does, you can’t give your customers anything that resembles the experience I just described. So, do you want to know what’s important to customers? Here’s a peek at some of the findings from the ACA study. Customers want:
These are some of the basics! And to most of us, these are common sense. Unfortunately, they aren’t always as common as they should be. But the companies that get it right flourish ahead of the customer service laggards. Read more stats and facts in the 2021 ACA study that will help guide your decisions as you improve your customer service. The information the survey revealed is your motivation to deliver an amazing customer experience. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Shep Hyken
“We love our customers, and they obviously love us. They keep coming back, again and again!” Who doesn’t want to be able to say that? And, if that is the case with your organization, let me ask you this question: Do you know why they are coming back? Not to be a “downer,” but we shouldn’t confuse a repeat customer with a loyal customer. They are not the same. Don’t get me wrong, I love repeat customers, and we absolutely want them. Repeat customers are very desirable. I write about this topic in my latest book, I’ll Be Back: How to Get Customers to Come Back Again and Again. As a business, you should do everything you can do to get the customer to come back. However, as I explain in the book, just because they do come back, that doesn’t mean they are loyal. You have to understand the why behind the repeat business. For example, let’s say you own a retail store. There are a number of reasons customers might come back. Ideally, it’s related to an emotional connection that causes them to want to come back to you and not the competition. Maybe they love your unique merchandise. Maybe they love your salespeople. Perhaps there is a cause or charity you support. These are reasons that customers could be emotionally connected to you. But, maybe it’s because of your location or low prices. If the customer keeps coming back because of a convenient location, the moment a competitor opens a store that’s more convenient, the customer may go there instead. It’s the same with price. If you promise low prices, and that’s what is driving customers to come back, as soon as the competition offers a lower price, you may lose the customer. And you thought they were loyal? They were, but that loyalty was to location and price, not to your business. The point is to recognize the difference between repeat customers and loyal customers. Make sure you understand the why behind what brings that customer back. If it’s something other than an emotional connection that can drive loyalty to your business, work to move that customer from just being a repeat customer to loyalty. I like to refer to repeat customers as gold and loyal customers as sacred. And to emphasize, while customer loyalty is the “holy grail,” there is nothing wrong with going for repeat business. The point is that you must understand why the customer comes back. Once they start coming back, make sure they are coming back for reasons that will keep them from leaving you for your competition. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Shep Hyken
Reducing friction is all about creating an easier experience for the customer. In my book, The Convenience Revolution, I identify six ways to create convenience. The first, reducing friction, is tied to all five other principles. And, all of them focus on creating convenience and reducing friction for customers. But how about we look inside our organizations and the way we conduct business internally? Do we think about the friction we cause our employees? What extra work do they do because of antiquated systems and processes? For our outside customers, when we reduce friction, they find it easier to do business with us. Internally, when we reduce friction for employees, we make it easier for them to do their jobs, which has a direct impact on the customer. That brings me to an excellent article posted by Josh Linkner, innovation guru, who wrote about how tiny air bubbles led to a potential $28 billion cost savings. Noah Silberschmidt is the founder and CEO of Silverstream Technologies, a company that reduces friction – not for customers, but for large oceangoing ships that move people and cargo through the seas. Apparently, large ships going through water create a lot of friction and drag. Silverstream Technologies has an air lubrication system that reduces friction by blowing tiny bubbles, less than one millimeter in diameter, in front of the ship, creating an “air carpet” for the ship to ride on. This reduces fuel consumption by as much as 10%. If the 50,000 large oceangoing vessels in the sea used this technology, there would be approximately $28 billion in fuel cost savings. That’s a lot of money – and a lot of bubbles! Here’s the Point We use convenience to create a better customer experience. We reduce friction by eliminating unnecessary effort. But, convenience and lower friction need to go beyond the customer experience. I really encourage you to look at the internal side of what you do. What friction can be eliminated for your employees, making it easier for them to do their jobs? What processes could be updated to save time and effort? Freeing up employees from cumbersome processes, systems and operations has a positive impact on many levels. In some cases, it eliminates frustrating tasks. It can save time – and time is money! It makes employees more productive, and a byproduct of feeling productive is fulfillment. That means employees are happier, and subsequently more engaged in their jobs and with customers. And, happiness means less employee turnover. So, your innovation may not be blasting bubbles into the ocean, but it has the same impact. It makes your company and employees more efficient and potentially saves you money. And, who doesn’t want that? Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Shep Hyken
You may or may not know that I’m a magician. Some of you may know that I’m also a musician. But today I want to talk about being a magician. Growing up throughout high school and college I performed at parties, corporate events and comedy clubs. That experience in show business gave me the stage chops to start my business as a professional speaker. I share this background to give you some context. Many of my friends are professional entertainers. A friend I’ve known for years is Jeff McBride, an amazing magician who performs throughout the world and resides in Las Vegas. I was reading an article by Jeff in a magic magazine. He was writing about the business of a magic show, but his concept applies to business in general. His comment was, “The show starts when the phone rings.” He was referring to clients who call him for private engagements. The point he was making was that the customer experience begins the moment the customer connects with you, not when they see you on stage or in person. The way the phone is answered is really your opening act, and the manner in which you conduct yourself from that point forward, all the way up to taking the stage, is part of the overall show experience for the client. I’ll also add that every interaction that comes after the performance on stage is part of the show. We can call that the encore. It’s the same in business. Our customers may find us as the result of a Google search or a recommendation from a friend or colleague. They land on our website. Look around and research. They may call us or visit us. At some point, they move from thinking of doing business with us to actually buying whatever we sell. Depending on what we sell, whether B2B or B2C, the buying cycle may take more than one visit. It could take weeks or months … maybe even longer. So, when does the customer start making the decision to buy? Long before they actually make the purchase. It happens between the moment the customer thinks of you and the time they actually buy. And, it’s probably much earlier in the process than you think. Everything that happens leading up to the sale is part of the customer experience. And, that includes customer service. Most people think service happens after the sale. The reality is that every interaction leading up to and after the sale is part of service and experience. That first time the customer lands on your website or makes a phone call – that’s the opening act. From that point, the show has started. In business, the show never ends. There’s the follow-up, customer support and repeat business. For some, this is common sense, so consider this a reminder. For those who haven’t thought this way, this could be an epiphany. So, here’s to strong opening acts, standing ovations and encores that get your customers to come back again and again! Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! By Shep Hyken
Here’s a question, and I think I know the answer: Would you do business with an airline that didn’t offer the ability to book a ticket online, check-in online, and get your boarding pass online? Assuming that every other airline has these self-service digital options, what if one didn’t? Would you be willing to call for a reservation, wait on hold, pull out your credit card to verbally give your payment information, and stand in line at the ticket counter to check in on the day of departure? Would you choose to fly with this airline over the others? I feel I can safely say the answer is, “No!” Assuming everything is comparable among all airlines – the planes are similar, the seats are the same and the pricing is competitive – you would almost certainly not choose to do business with the old-fashioned airline, for one simple reason: The digital experience, at least as it applies to flying, is an easier experience. It’s simple. Easier wins. Faster wins. More convenient wins. If it means using digital to achieve easier, faster, and more convenient, then customers will use a digital channel. The point is, you can’t fight digital. More and more customers are looking for digital and self-service options. Our customer experience research finds that 41% of customers prefer digital first and the phone second. That number increases year after year. Customers prefer a self-service solution on the Internet over calling a company, being put on hold, potentially repeating their story, and more. Easy is better, therefore, in many instances, digital is better. So, back to the original question. The airline that doesn’t make it easy for the customer to do business, and that means using the digital experience, will lose. Metaphorically speaking, you don’t want to be that airline. If you feel as if you’re lagging in the digital world, what can you do to catch up? If you’re already offering your customers digital solutions, what can you do to make them better? Sit down with the team and consider the following questions:
Most companies already have a digital presence. If a website or app makes life easier and more convenient for your customers, they will want to use it. So, don’t let your competition take your customers away from you, simply because you haven’t kept up. Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event a success! |
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