Top 5 Customer Service Articles For the Week of September 6, 2021

Each week I read many customer service and customer experience articles from various 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.

When Customer Care Isn’t Enough, Call the Customer Delight Brigade by Katie Deighton

(Wall Street Journal) Staff members at the George Eliot Hospital in the English town of Nuneaton are used to the sight of flowers being delivered to patients. They are not so used to receiving flowers themselves, and certainly not used to the arrival of 100 bouquets, like the ones that arrived last week without warning.

My Comment: This excellent Wall Street Journal article starts with a story about a company doing something special to “delight” their customers. Quoting: “We give every member of our customer delight team a budget to look for opportunities to proactively go out of the way to do something nice,” said Aron Gelbard, Bloom & Wild’s co-founder and chief executive officer. The idea behind the article is to “delight” the customer, rather than to just serve them.

A Customer Discovered Their $350 Lego Set was Missing Pieces. The Company’s Response Was Brilliant by Jason Aten

(Inc. Magazine) Delight is maybe the most powerful thing you can do to generate loyalty among your customers. It doesn’t take much, but even little things like knowing your audience and responding accordingly can go a long way.

My Comment: Next on this week’s Top Five is a fun article that starts with a great story. This is the kind of thing that creates CX legends. After the author shares the story, he offers commentary about why what this brand did (Lego) was so successful. You’ll smile.

Customer Service is SO Annoying (Tips to Make it Less So) by Jim Gilbert

(Total Retail) We help customers deal with bug infestations: bed bugs, mites, fleas, lice, and they’re desperate, getting bitten up, not sleeping and generally miserable. And they want to tell you every detail of their lives and how the bugs are affecting them.

My Comment: Don’t be confused by the title of the article. As the author points out, this is really an article about great customer service, and he shares a number of solid tips on how to do so. I also smiled at his story about the customer who calls him so much, she refers to him as her boyfriend.

A Look at Customer Effort Score and How It Can Help Build Better CX by Dom Nicastro

(CMSWire) Customer Effort Score (CES) is a metric used to determine the amount of effort it takes customers to accomplish a specific task within a brand experience. It is one of several customer experience (CX) metrics that place hard values on a brand’s CX and often works in conjunction with metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Churn Rate (CCR) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT).

My Comment: One of the metrics I like in business is the Customer Effort Score, which measures the ease in doing business with a company, usually tied to their customer support. This excellent article shares the formula and has an easy-to-understand description of how to use the information to create a better customer experience.

CX Best Practices: Learning from AWS Contact Center Day by Sébastien Stormacq

(No Jitter) It’s taken years of trial and error to get Amazon customer experience to where it stands today — and now you can learn from our progress.

My Comment: About two months ago I had the great opportunity to work with Amazon AWS as one of their speakers at their Contact Center Best Practices Event. This short article has a summary of three important best practices that you should consider for your business.

BONUS

State of the In-Store Experience [2021] by Bobby Marhamat

(Raydiant) As consumers have grown accustomed to online experiences, they’ve come to expect a similarly digital in-store experience. Physical brick-and-mortar locations—retail stores, gyms, restaurants, or otherwise—must now be digital, automated, and personalized to the customer.

My Comment: This is a great report about trends related to the “in-store” customer experience. Even if you’re not in the retail world, you’ll enjoy these stats. You’ll get some insights into customers preference of physical shopping experience versus online. The last section includes some commentary from me and other customer service and experience experts. It’s gated, so you’ll have to include your email address, but it’s worth it. And, they won’t spam you.