Top 5 Customer Service Articles For the Week of October 27, 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.

5 Ways To Avoid The Epic Fail — Guarantees, Expectation Setting & Accountability In Customer Service by Bryan Stolle

(Forbes) Not only are happy customers your best advertising, but also, happy customers are far less expensive to maintain as customers than new customers are to source, educate, convince, and convert.

My Comment: If you want to create loyalty, it starts, at a minimum, with meeting expectations. Even if you can exceed expectations ever so slightly, you have an opportunity to create great confidence, which leads to loyalty. The key is it has to be consistent. The ideas in this article will help any company avoid the letdown that comes with missed expectations.

17 Social Customer Service Reports You Can’t Live Without by Chad Schaeffer 

(Marketing Cloud) I have the best job in the world. I get to do what I truly love which is help clients improve their social customer service programs. I’ve been fortunate to be in this small but growing niche for almost 5 years now after spending 9 years helping some of the largest global contact centers provide a world-class customer experience to their customers. After all these years the questions I get asked most are very similar across all the industries I’m fortunate to work in.

My Comment: So many of my clients ask for ways to measure social engagement, especially as it applies to customer service. Here are some great ideas on what to measure and how to go about doing it.

Real Life Customer Service DOs and DON’Ts by Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center

(The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center)  We asked our colleagues and friends for real life customer service examples, and we’re sharing their stories below in order to learn from their experiences.

My Comment: Anytime I can glean wisdom from the fine people at the Ritz Carlton I pay attention. These are great stories with the Ritz perspective. Yes, they are common sense, but sometimes common sense isn’t always so common.

What is customer experience and how do you measure it? Christopher Ratcliff

(Econsultancy) Can you even measure it? Taken at face value, customer experience (CX) seems like a rather intangible term, one that you’d think could only be referred to anecdotally.

My Comment: I am a fan of the Net Promoter Score. I love the one-word follow-up question many surveys include: Why? That said, I think there is a great opportunity in considering the question that this article suggests: Have you recommended us? And, if you did, how did you describe us? Brilliant!

Outside-In Customer Experience Is The Best Offensive Strategy by Christine Crandell

(Forbes) B2B companies are realizing that the real rockbed of building enduring customer relationships lies in the perception customers hold of value.  Value is increasingly not in the product but in the services – paid and free – that sellers provide.

My Comment: There is a lot of great information in this article. First and foremost, it is important to realize that the company can attempt to create value, but in the end, the customer defines the value. And I love the focus on the internal customer. Taking care of employees really does set the stage for how they treat the customer.

Shep Hyken is a customer service/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep’s customer service and customer experience keynote speeches and his customer service training workshops at www.Hyken.com. Connect with Shep on LinkedIn.