If you want to create a culture of customer service excellence, here’s the decision you have to make:
Are you going to put the customer at the center of everything you do: At the center of your company, your department, your daily routines, what you determine are best practices, the way you schedule your day…even the way you design your webforms?
Let's look at that last one: webforms. There a company I know that has over 97 percent of its customer base within the U.S. Yet, to fill out any form on this company’s website, you’ll find yourself trudging through over 200 unlikely options (Swaziland, Solomon Islands, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu...) just to get to the U’s to select “United States.”
This company, like so many others, hasn’t made the decision to put the customer at the center of its operation.
Assuming you’ve made this decision, we can get down to business.
And it’s an arduous business. It’s not easy. Putting the customer at the center doesn't just mean being sweet as pie, over and over, and over and over again. It does mean that, but it means more than that. Putting the customer at the center is a more complicated, subtle, and demanding adventure than it sounds.
But it will ultimately be a very, very fruitful endeavor.
Find out how to make millennials, Boomers and everyone in between fall in love your business.
Doing what comes naturally. Sort of.
Once you’ve made the decision to have a customer-centered mindset, a “spreadable” situation will grow, more or less naturally. This, really, is central to thriving commercially in our world where customer service, customer experiences, are such a crucial part of real-life marketing.
Here’s how the doin’ what comes naturally virtuous circle works:
• You commit to allocating resources, improving processes… based on the interests of the customer
• You hire based on the customer
• Those whom you hire inspire the next people hired through positive peer pressure.
• Engaged customers themselves become ambassadors for your brand: your extended marketing team for the human-driven world of today.
• The inspiration you receive from these customers, and the customers they bring to you, inspires you to do your work better and better. Putting customers at the center is no longer a chore, but an inspired passion.
I'm sounding a bit airy-fairy, new agey here, which I assure you I am not. And I have indeed left out many of the hard parts in this description, including developing detailed and battle-tested customer service standards for almost everything you will do that will affect the customer.
But all of this will flow, and will be self-reinforcing, if you start with the decision.
Micah Solomon is a customer service consultant, company culture consultant and the bestselling author most recently of High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service
