Top 5 Customer Service Articles For the Week of December 1, 2014

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.

Using Proactive Communication to Deliver an Amazing Customer Experience by Nigel Shanahan

(B2Community) To help, here are nine top tips on how you can keep your customers informed and engaged throughout their journey with you to enhance their Customer Experience.

My Comment: Good communication may be the cornerstone of a good customer service experience. All of the nine ideas in this article are important. Making it easy for customers to communicate with you is the first thing. Then personal communication skills must kick in so customers feel they have a connection with a company; they are being heard and that they can relate to the personnel.

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How Big Data is Improving Your Customer Experience by David Youssefnia 

(LinkedIn) These days, companies have a plethora of customer data–CRM systems, loyalty programs, billing/transactional history, location data from smartphones, web surfing/shopping behavior–at their fingertips to help them learn about customer habits, history, and preferences. Some innovative companies are leveraging this information in order to improve the customer experience.

My Comment: It’s easier than ever to get data on your customers for the purpose of enhancing their experience. The key is to know what data to use and how to use it once you have it. Here are several great examples of how a few of our favorite companies are using that data to personalize the experience and create customer loyalty.

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Slippery Customer Service Issues Put Companies on Thin Ice by Jeannie Walters

(360Connext) What happens when we step inside the walls of an organization? We are tasked with totally different goals. We are told to focus on our small piece of the customer puzzle. We are rewarded for profits over people. And we seem to have collective amnesia of what it’s like to be a customer.

My Comment: The point of this article is simple: Take a walk in your customer’s shoes.  Doing so may confirm you are as good as you thought you were or may show you some pretty big – and even embarrassing – flaws, such as (and this is a perfect example) a power company asking customers without electricity, internet or phone lines to check the website.

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Personality Matters in Customer Service by Shelagh Collins   

(CMSWire) Behavioral pairing involves something that resembles match-making — using the content and language of previous calls from clients to determine their basic personality types, then analyzing which types each customer care representative (CCR) communicates best with in order to reduce costs and increase service levels.

My Comment: This is an interesting look at matching behavioral styles of customer service reps to customers and their specific problems, complaints or issues. I’ll go a step further and suggest that every employee of a company know and understand their behavioral style and be trained to recognize others. If we can adapt to someone else’s style in tenuous situations, we can increase the likelihood of a positive resolution.

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10 Simple Tips to Improve Customer Care In Just 1 Day by Flavio Martins

(WintheCustomer!) Customer care is one of the most important aspects of growing a successful business. Here are 10 tips and tools you should utilise to improve customer care.

My Comment: While you might not be able to change a company’s culture to become customer focused in one day, you can make minor tweaks in how people deal with people. These ten tips are great ways to start the process. It will take more than just sharing the tips once. It takes repetition, training, recognition for doing it right and more. That said, here is a good start. I always enjoy sharing common sense ideas that can be implemented immediately.

Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information contact (314)692-2200 or www.hyken.com. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken