Rules for delivering sensational service
I recently received a call to speak on “The Customer Experience” at a Bank Branch Manager’s Meeting. Unfortunately I was on my way to Toronto so had to painfully decline.
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On my regular book shopping on that trip I bought a new book on service entitled THE CUSTOMER RULES: The 39 Essential Rules for Delivering Sensational Service; authored by Lee Cockerell.
This book just added to a collection of over a hundred books I have on customer management and service delivery issues, but made for such pleasant reading, I have decided to share some of these 39 rules for delivering exceptional customer service with my esteemed readers.
On Lee Cockerell’s Customer Rules website (http://www.leecockerell.com/book_the_customer_rules.cfm), Lee himself describes the Customer Rules Book as comprising 39 digestible, bite-sized chapters and I wholly recommend the book to anyone who is serious about achieving superior customer service.
Elaine Harris in her book Customer Service: A Practical Approach notes that customer service is anything we do for the customer that enhances the customer experience and cites some examples of customer service as being calling the customer by name, a doctor calling you back to see how you are feeling after a professional visit, on-time delivery and easy to use and functional web sites.
Lee Cockerell also notes in the Customer Rules book that at the end of the day, everything a business leader does is in the service of customer service. Lee notes that has always been the case, and based on current trends, customer service will be even more crucial to companies’ success in the coming years.
Connecting with customers
In today’s highly competitive marketplace, a business needs more than excellent products, good technical service, efficient procedures, and more competitive prices to win customers. It also needs to truly connect with its customers through authentic, human-to-human interactions that satisfy not only their practical needs, but their emotional wants.
The first rule I will discuss in this article from Lee’s book is that fact that Customer Service is not a Department. Customer service is far more than a department name or a desk that shoppers or clients go to with problems and complaints.
Customer service is a personal responsibility. And it’s not the responsibility only of people called customer service reps. It’s the responsibility of everyone in the organization, from the CEO to the newest and lowest-ranking frontline employee. In fact, everyone in the company should be thought of as a customer service representative, because in one way or another each of them has some impact on, and bears some responsibility for, the quality of the customer experience.
Even if you never see or speak to a customer (or potential customer), you need to treat everyone with whom you interact- your vendors, your creditors, your supplier, and so on – with sincerity and respect.
Lee notes that great service serves bottom-line business objectives. Time and again, customer service has been shown to be the best way to distinguish an outstanding company or organisation from its competitors.
Let’s face it, no matter what business or industry you’re in there’s probably a host of competitive offers that are similar to yours, but if you provide the same product plus personal service that feels authentic, you will have a leg up. No matter what business you’re in, great service is a competitive advantage that costs you little or nothing but adds huge value for your customer.
And it’s one advantage you can’t afford to pass up, because in today’s highly competitive marketplace your customers will leave you in a heartbeat if your service doesn’t measure up. In one study, customers were asked why they stopped doing business with a company.
Customer expectations
Forty-three per cent named “negative experience with a staff person” as the main reason for taking their business elsewhere, and 30 per cent said they moved on because they were made to feel they were not a valued customer.
Lee notes as well that most people expect quality products and services. It’s the lowest common denominator. If a company gives people the products or services they want and customer service that exceeds their expectations, then they have an unbeatable combination, and their competition can’t easily imitate.
Lee advocates that companies and institutions should not get confused about the difference between the services they sell and customer service. Services are what consumers come to you for and pay for.
Customer service encompasses the entire experience, from the moment a person logs on to your website or walks through your front door until the moment they log off or walk out. It’s what brings the human factor into a transaction.
Humans introduce the emotional element into the service encounter that makes the service experience a memorable or a disastrous one and therefore everyone employed in Ghana’s private, public or not-for-profit sectors must undergo a service mindshift that makes the centrality of the customer their reason for coming to work every day!
• Robert E. Hinson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing and Customer Management at the University of Ghana Business School and writes for the Centre for Sustainability and Enterprise Development (CSED) at the same School. CSED is a training, research and advocacy centre specialising in marketing; communications, sustainability and social responsibility. Robert holds doctorate degrees in Marketing and International Business Economics and can be reached at [email protected]