Lots of people are searching for the holy grail of customer service, but what does great customer service look like? In this week’s blog, our expert customer service and sales consultant Chris Brindley shares a few hints and tips to help you develop great customer service and great customer experience:
It’s no good just giving customers what they want – that’s what they pay you for – these are known as ‘hygiene factors’, if they’re there, so what? But if they’re missing, it’s a problem.
Imagine taking your car for a service, they service your car, that’s what you pay for. The fact that they serviced it doesn’t give you a great experience. But, if the car breaks down driving out of the garage, the hygiene factor isn’t there, leaving you pretty annoyed.
The real skill with customer experience is to give the customer more than they expect, give them something extra, this is known as a motivation factor. Try using ‘Surprise & Delight’ – how are you going to work at setting yourself apart from the competition? What is your surprise and delight?
Taking the car analogy further; it could be the fact the car is washed and cleaned internally, or it might well be that there is a nice bunch of flowers or some gift for the car when the owner comes to collect it – keep thinking ‘Surprise & Delight’.
It’s important that customers feel they’ve had a great experience, they won’t remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel. How they feel will differentiate between having a customer or a fan; I’m a great believer that great companies should be looking for fans not just customers.
Fans will cheer you on, fans turn up every single week and fans will go and tell lots of other people about the great experience they’ve had and persuade their friends/colleagues/family members to come and do business with you.
I’d like to think that actually 90% of giving customers surprise and delight is what they would want and asking them lots of times. But occasionally you may want to give them something they’ve not asked for.
A quote from the great Henry Ford sums this up perfectly:
“If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have asked for faster horses”
When he actually produced the motor car it was in high demand, and still is today – that’s great customer experience.
For more information on Chris, drop our team an email at enquiries@raisethebar.co.uk or give us a call on 0203 137 7353.
Chris Brindley MBE
Speaker
Chris Brindley MBE is an award-winning Business Leader who is former Sales and Marketing and Non-Executive Director of the Year. He is a leading authority on Sales Management, Customer Experience, Employee Engagement & Satisfaction particularly within organisations where change is on the agenda.