Category: When Customers Rule!

Ways to delight your customers

For all your cricket lovers there, I don’t have to explain how exasperating it is to have the match being interrupted by ads – either immediately after an over or when a wicket falls. The exasperation is a amplied multifold in the 20 over version of the game.

And for all the verbal support that the ESPN Star commentators provide against such a behavior of the channels, I felt they this channel too sold out to the advertisers during the ongoing T20 world cup. Whoever is deciding on when the ads come on is so trigger happy ….
But the channel did come out with a master stroke recently. The second semi-final between Australia & India was a true humdinger ….being decided in the very last balls of the game. Every single moment was worth grabbing on to. And in this situation, the channel decided to skip (I hope this was a conscious decision) ads between the 19th & 20th over of the Australian innings. And even after the win, they continued showing the joyous celebrations on the field off it without showing the ads. ESPN-Star managed to delight me with this.
  • They knew exactly what their customer base values the most.
  • And they decided to positively affect their customer’s experince when it mattered the most.

Customer Service Quotes

Eric Fraterman has listed quite a few customer service quotes. Below are those that appealed to me –

  • Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it.It is what the client or customer gets out of it. -PETER DRUCKER
  • If we don’t take care of our customers, someone else will. -UNKNOWN
  • Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify!HENRY DAVID THOREAU
  • Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game. -TONY ALESSANDRA
  • Our greatest asset is the customer! Treat each customer as if they are the only one! -LAURICE LEITAO
  • People expect good service but few are willing to give it. -ROBERT GATELY
  • Well done is better than well said. -BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
  • To my customer:I may not have the answer, but I’ll find it.I may not have the time, but I’ll make it. -UNKNOWN
  • In business you get what you want by giving other people what they want. -ALICE MACDOUGALL
  • You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied. -JERRY FRITZ

Source: http://customerfocusconsult.blogspot.com/2007/09/customer-service-quotes-for-inspiration.html

Customer Service Champs

Ideas that caught my imagination :

  • Rankings & lists do matter, but nothing matters more than having the processes & the determination to do the best for your customers. Case at hand – Jetblue. Though not on the BW top 25 customer service champs list, the first 10 mins of the podcast sounds like a Jetblue promo!
  • Disasters happen – how you recover from them is what characterises a company. Work on the foundation!
  • Empathy Engine – is the idea that every single person in the organization is really thinking of customer.
  • Customer Service leaders don’t just want to be best amongst their competitors, they want to be the best in customer service. Period!

Best Practices:

  • Remind your employees often about who their customers really are, what is it like to live the customer’s life, what is their perspective, what do the customers go through, etc. eg. Four Seasons has a program that allows even a housekeeper gets to stay in a Four Seasons hotel as a guest & experince that life.
  • Employee (treat them well), Processes (get the senior management in front of the customer) & Attitude (never be happy with just customer satisfaction)- most important constituents of the foundation for customer focus.

Source:

Kano Model – resources

Kano does seem to be in the air! I have come across atleast 4 blogs in the last few weeks bringing the Kano Model to the surface in the context of customer focus.


A few take aways & additional resources (at the end of this post) –

  • the model forces design teams to think from a customer perspective & helps bring a balance of what can be delivered & what is expected to be delivered
  • like a healthy food diet, service or product design too should allow for a proper mix of threshold, performance & excitement attributes

Such basic stuff ..yet needs to be reminded yet so often.

Resources: