How Verizon Is Setting a New Standard for Customer Experience with Sampath

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This episode of Amazing Business Radio with Shep Hyken answers the following questions and more:   

1. How can you turn your call center from a cost center to a profit center? 
2. Why should companies invest in improving customer experience? 
3. How can organizations use customer feedback to enhance their products and services? 
4. Why is it important for leadership to be accessible to customers when addressing service issues? 
5. How can proactive customer service resolve complex issues more efficiently? 

Top Takeaways

• Feedback is a gift. Every complaint is an opportunity to learn what went wrong and how to do better. Whether it’s reading emails, analyzing phone calls, or collecting feedback, listening to the customer is a powerful way to enhance any service or product. 

• Spending money on customer experience may sound expensive, but it can save money and create loyalty over time. By fixing problems quickly and making interactions easier, customers don’t have to waste time with lengthy calls and repeating themselves. Happy and satisfied customers tend to stick around longer and often attract friends and family.  

• First contact resolution is always the main goal. However, some problems need more time and coordination with different departments to resolve. That’s why having a “customer champion” inside the customer support department who takes ownership and proactively follows through until an issue is resolved makes a difference to customers.  

• Being “customer first” means making sure every channel, whether it’s digital, in-person, or on the phone, works seamlessly. Not everyone wants to call, and not everyone wants to use a website or app, so giving customers a choice is essential. When people can choose what’s easiest for them and have a great experience every time, it contributes to creating a flawless experience. 

• AI, automation, and technology can make things easier and faster for both customers and employees. If used correctly, technology provides employees with the most accurate and complete information available, enabling them to answer customer questions quickly.  

• Retail isn’t dead. It’s just become impersonal for many customers. However, if you create a store experience that’s good, local, and personalized, people will come to your store. When you make your store about real, personal connections in the community, you give people a reason to want that face-to-face experience again. 

• Plus, Sampath shares why Verizon is shifting its internal metrics from traditional contact center measurements (such as average handle time) to metrics that truly matter to customers and the business in the long term. 

Quotes:

“When a customer reaches out to us, they don’t reach out to say how great we are doing. They reach out because someone or something along the process did not live up to their standards or ours, whichever is higher.” 

“Getting feedback is a gift. I want to hear what’s not working for our customers.” 

“Providing the best customer experience may seem like a lot of money, but it pays for itself. At the end of the day, it makes life easy for the customer. When they are happy, they stay with us longer and help us attract more customers.” 

“We don’t need to be the lowest price, we need to be the best value for money.” 

“Customer care is a revenue center, a profit center, and a center for experience excellence.” 

About:

Sowmyanarayan Sampath is the CEO of Verizon Consumer, overseeing a customer base that’s the largest in the U.S., generating over $103 billion in annual revenue.

Shep Hyken is a customer service and experience expert, New York Times bestselling author, award-winning keynote speaker, and host of Amazing Business Radio.