Top 5 Customer Service Articles For the Week of August 10, 2015

TOP CUSTOMER SERVICE AND BUSINESS ARTICLES

Each week I read a number of customer service articles from various online resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.

This is Your Brain on Product, This is Your Brain on Service by Susanna James

(WINTHECUSTOMER!) Product and service focus can be like two sides of a brain, approaching customers in completely different ways and often struggling to achieve maximum customer experience potential.

My Comment: It takes both – a quality product and quality service experience – to create the customer-focused company. If the product doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, then it doesn’t matter how nice the service is. And, if the product is awesome, but the service is terrible, customers will eventually move to a different source and find a similar or same product (sometimes one that isn’t quite as good)because they feel appreciated and have a better service experience. The combination of the two is powerful.

Guest Story: Personal Customer Experience by The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center

(The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center) In the following guest story, the employee was addressing a customer complaint and was able to not only solve a problem, but turn the situation into a memorable and personal customer experience.

My Comment: Sometimes it’s fun and refreshing to read about a company that delivers an outstanding customer experience. The Ritz-Carlton is known for great service, so it shouldn’t surprise you to read a story like this one. This is the kind of story that customer service legends are made from.

4 Things to Avoid When Building Relationships with Customers by Heather R. Younger

(LinkedIn) Building relationships with customers once they have put their faith and trust in you is a complicated process. In the end, customers have many choices when choosing to purchase products and services.

My Comment: Great list of common senses ideas, strategies and tactics to help create a better customer experience. I like the focus on the employees. What’s happening inside a company is felt on the outside by the customer.

Twitter’s Quest to Be the Way We Yell at Customer Service by Jessi Hempel

(Wired) Customer service on social media has long been Twitter’s game to lose. As early as 2008, we users figured out that if we tweeted about our gigantic cable bill or bad restaurant service, businesses would get in touch, often much more quickly and attentively than if we called them. Almost 80 percentt of the questions people ask businesses on social are happening on Twitter, according to the most recent quarterly report by the analytics company SocialBakers.

My Comment: Twitter has become an alternate channel that customers use when they have a complaint or comment about a company. Will it become the main channel customers use (versus the phone)? At this time, the answer is no. Maybe in the future. But the point is that customers are using social media for customer service and expecting a response to their post. For the companies that aren’t engaged in social media customer service, it’s time to get on board!

5 Ways to Reduce Customer Care Costs without Compromising on Quality by Rohan Ayyar

(Zopim) Here are a few ideas that will help you reduce your customer care costs without any negative impact on quality.

My Comment: When I started reading this article I was hoping to find ways to reduce costs without the customer noticing – and I did with the fourth and fifth ideas. But the first three emphasized something very important. The way to reduce costs is to just do things right in the first place. Hire and train the right people to begin with. Identify customer’s problems and them proactively eliminate them. That is part of what delivering a great customer service is all about. If you want to cut costs, do it right from the beginning!