Guest Blog: Back to the Beginning – Building a Superior Customer Service Experience

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post, my colleague Kate Feather writes about the importance of hiring right. I believe that customer service starts with hiring the right people, as well as training and empowering them. – Shep Hyken

Imagine you’re back at the start. You don’t yet have a company, customers, the people, processes, and technology that you have today. You are setting out on a journey to build a company that is going to be known for delivering The Best Customer Service Ever. Where do you begin?

About People Problems

At PeopleMetrics, we’ve uncovered meaningful patterns in the Voice of the Customer data that we collect for clients. Some of these patterns are repeated across different sectors such as Retail Banking, Restaurants, Hospitality, B2B Distributors, Telco, and Luxury Service Providers.

Perhaps not surprisingly, customers who have experienced issues tend to be less engaged than customers for whom the experience is flawless. However, when we analyze our data, it becomes clear that people problems – those either created or exacerbated by a company’s employees – lead to the biggest decline in positive customer perceptions.

For example, in one Retail Bank we uncovered:

• A 58-point gap in Customer Satisfaction between customers not experiencing a problem and those experiencing a people problem.
• And a 21-point gap in Customer Satisfaction between customers experiencing a non-people problem versus those with a people problem.

For a wireless communications provider, we learned:

• Nearly 7 in 10 customers citing issues with customer care representatives were considered Detractors, compared to 1 in 10 among those not experiencing such service issues.

Letting the Right Ones In

Since you know that people are the place to start, then it makes sense to focus on hiring the right people. By recruiting the right talent and empowering them to take customer-focused actions, you can build a great customer experience one hire at a time. Here are two examples of how starting with hiring has benefited high performers:

• Nordstrom: Robert Spector, author of The Nordstrom Way to Customer Service Excellence, once asked Bruce Nordstrom, “If you don’t have a formalized training program, who trains your salespeople?” Mr. Nordstrom’s answer was: “Their parents.” Nordstrom believes that you can’t train good salespeople to be nice, but you can train nice people to sell. It’s a simple philosophy that some would say is the foundation of their success.

• Signature Flight Support: One of our clients, Signature Flight Support, is a Fixed Based Operator that provides fueling, maintenance and passenger services to private and business pilots and crew. After we helped them determine what their customers wanted, they changed their hiring process. They now include a service aptitude test to see whether candidates have the “service gene” in their DNA. (For more about Signature’s story and to hear President and COO Maria Sastre’s advice to others on this journey, watch our video here.)

Characteristics to Consider

So now you know that hiring is important, but what should you look for in candidates?

In 2010, PeopleMetrics started to identify and award Brand Ambassadors, the client-facing staff who receive high levels of Recognition within our Voice of the Customer platform. Because they come from our diverse client base, Brand Ambassadors consist of tax accountants, call center reps, restaurant servers, account managers, and sales reps. But they share a common set of characteristics. Of course, your unique culture and values may dictate that other characteristics are important, but we’d suggest you consider this set:

• Passion: A powerful belief that nothing is more meaningful than serving customers and resolving their issues. For Brand Ambassadors, delighting customers and clients is a source of pride and engagement.
• Humility: A habit of sharing the kudos with those on the team. Customer service all-stars frequently refuse to be a one-man band or take the glory.
• Empathy: The ability to imagine how the customer feels. Brand Ambassadors respond to situations from the customer’s point of view.
• Ownership: A habit of taking responsibility for the customer. even if company structures dictate the customer is someone else’s problem. Brand Ambassadors have a high degree of conscientiousness and will go the extra mile to fix an issue or delight a customer.

The Wrap Up

So, the fact is, your company likely exists, with its own customers, people, processes, and technology. But that doesn’t mean you can’t start with people first as you journey toward The Best Customer Service Experience Ever. The evidence points to a need to start with people who care. Who has the right attitude? Who will go the extra mile for your customers?

And if you find those people, maybe your customers will go the extra mile for you too.

Kate Feather is Executive Vice President, Marketing for PeopleMetrics. She is happy to describe herself as “customer-obsessed.” She has more than 20 years of experience in organizational and customer research and consulting.  

Image Credits: Snapshot of Patti… by daveynin, CC BY 2.0

Elmo the Bouncer by Lars Plougmann, CC BY-SA 2.0

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com. Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article:

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