Three Ways to Create Confidence with Your Customers

I recently interviewed Nate Skinner, the VP of Customer Care for Campaign Monitor, a company that helps businesses use email to market their businesses. It was for one of my Forbes columns, Seven Ways to Use Email to Build Your Brand and Create a Better Customer Experience.

In the process of the interview, I asked Nate about his favorite customer service story. Without hesitating he told me about Jordan, one of Campaign Monitor’s sales and support reps, from Minneapolis. As I listened to Nate tell the story, it was obvious that he was proud of how Jordan stepped up and reinforced one of the most important reasons a customer does business with a company… Confidence!

The short version of the story is that one of Campaign Monitor’s customers had a new employee that set up a large email campaign to go to thousands of his customers. Now, when it comes to sending mass emails, there are certain laws that make “spamming” illegal. Campaign Monitor takes compliance very seriously and has safeguards that keep their customers on the right side of the law.

While this customer’s emails weren’t spam, the person working on the campaign did something during the set-up that caused, for lack of a better term, an alarm to go off, which caused Campaign Monitor’s system to prevent the emails from being sent.

This all happened on a Saturday. Somehow Jordan, who was out for a bike ride getting a little exercise, was alerted. He immediately headed home and set out to right what was obviously wrong. Jordan knew that his customer didn’t send email spam. He knew that it was just a mistake. Within a short period of time, all was “fixed” and the emails were sent.

That day Jordan became a hero – to both Campaign Monitor and to its customer. Regardless of when the problem occurred, even if it was over the weekend when he was officially “off duty,” Jordan stepped up to take care of the problem.

Here’s what we can take away from this story:

1. Customers don’t want “transactions.” They want something more. They want partnerships, with people that care about them and are willing, if necessary, to go the extra mile, which might mean doing a little work after hours. Basically, whatever it takes to get the job done.

2. Customers like to deal with companies and people that are proactive. The customer would have never known that there was a problem until someone came in on Monday morning and realized their emails weren’t sent. Instead Jordan, was proactive and took care of the problem – without being asked.

3. Customers want to have confidence in companies and people they do business with. If they didn’t already know, the customer now knows they can count on Campaign Monitor. Find a way to prove to your customers that they can always count on you.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

(Copyright © MMXVI, Shep Hyken)