The phrase "poor customer service" is an oxymoron in its own right. When someone "serves their customer," the fact that the service is high-quality is implied. Without outstanding service, you're not being "served," you're being "interacted with."
When I spend my money (valuable) or my time (extremely valuable) with you and your company, I expect that I will be served and not merely interacted with.
You want two examples of this from last week? You got it!
At the office, I have a Chase Visa Credit Card. I don't use it often but I do have it and use it when necessary. Every single time I have to call Chase's customer service department to make a payment, dispute a charge, ask a question, etc. I always am greeting with outstanding customer service.
It is worth noting that I don't even like having to use a credit card. I don't like credit cards and don't have one personally. It is simply an agency policy that I use one. That being said, I adore Chase's customer service department. Simply outstanding. Every single time.
On the other end of the spectrum, I have had poor dealings with Verizon. Our office used Verizon as our telephone and internet company for years. However, after a string of poor interactions that I had with their technical support office over the summer, they eventually lost my business and now we spend our money with Suddenlink. Suddenlink has proven to be the anti-Verizon and we love doing business with (i.e. giving our money to) them.
When we closed our accounts with Verizon, I continued to be billed. For months. The first month I called their billing department and was placed on 30+ minutes of hold on different occasions and was often disconnected. The next month I wrote a note on my bill explaining the situation and mailed it back. No response. The next month I went online to their e-mail contact form. It wasn't working that day, I was told by an automated message. I tried the online, live chat. The virtual, automated agent was no help.
I was sick of it.
I took to Twitter.
As you can tell, I received a human response to my tweet within a few minutes. Within an hour, I had the entire situation resolved. And, to give credit where it is due, I had a great experience with the three people that, because of a tweet, got my problem rectified.
All that being said, I want to tell you what makes for an outstanding customer service experience like I have with companies like Chase and Suddenlink and this one interaction with Verizon.
1. Treat me like I'm the only person in the room. I know your day is full. I know that you have a lot more people to see besides me. I know the line is getting long behind me--but you don't have to let me know that. I love it when the person I am talking to gives me all the time necessary to resolve whatever my issue is. When the customer service associate gives time and attention to solve my issue, I can leave that conversation confident that I've been taken care of and I really appreciate that.
2. Use my name. I love it when people call me by my name. The second that you use my name, I feel the conversation become a little more personal. When you use my name (and I will typically use yours as well) you separate yourself from your competitors. When I say that you separate yourself, I mean that when given the choice of where I will spend my money, I will choose you instead of your competitor that treated my like a number rather than a person. I will choose you even though your prices may be slightly higher. I will choose you even though it takes a little longer to receive the service. I will choose you because you use my name when we talk.
3. Over deliver. This is easy to do because your competitors have really lowered the bar for you. Let me give you and example of over delivering:
A couple of weeks ago, I had to take a day off to stay home with my son. Of course, that's the day that our internet service at the office went down. Since our work is web-based, the office came to a stand still. I talked my staff through some typical troubleshooting and when that didn't work I had to call Suddenlink (our internet provider). I told the gentleman that we had an internet outage and that I was at home, not at the office. Because of my previous internet provider, my expectation was that the technician would field my call and then after about 30 minutes of my begging would schedule another technician to come to my office sometime in the next week.
Not this time.
Upon hearing that I was at home, he laughed and said, "that's about right, the problem waited for you to leave, huh?" Jokingly I agreed. After about 5 seconds he said, "I think I know what's wrong. May I have the phone number of one of your folks at the office? I'll call them and I know that they can fix this on site." Stunned, I agreed. He was proactive. He was sympathetic to my situation. He took care of it for me.
He over delivered. He blew away his competitors. He gets my money.
I know that those are just three ways to deliver awesome customer service and obviously there are so many more. But in just one week's time, those are the three that have come up big for me!
In what ways have you received outstanding customer service?
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