Being People to People
6 Big Benefits of Great Customer Service
At Stray Boots we offer live phone and email support to customers, and we rotate customer service duties between full time employees. During the week, we take turns answering the phones and responding to customer emails, and over the weekend we have a dedicated customer service rep. Until we hired Shauna, who is a total customer service rockstar, my cofounder Scott and I alternated answering the phones on the weekends for three years. We still sub in for her when she’s out sick, and it’s one of the most rewarding things we do: getting to talk to real customers, understand their issues, and resolve their problems. The benefits of this strategy, as evangelized by Tony Hsieh of Zappos and so many others, are invaluable:
1) Building Trust
Even just knowing someone can get a hold of live support builds trust with prospective consumers and can dramatically improve purchasing or signup conversion rates.
2) Creating Differentiation
In a day when people are used to being sent through endless layers of automated phone menus, live support makes your business truly standout and memorable. We got this email from a customer yesterday:
Dear Murphy,
Thank you so much for actually listening to what we had to say!! To be honest, I thought our opinion was just going to end up in an automated pile somewhere where no one would actually read it. I can’t tell you how pleasantly surprised I was to see that not only was our opinion read, but that we are also valued customers. How refreshing to see in a company!! I already knew that my family and I would be using your service again, but you now have yourself a LOYAL family who will be adding your app to everywhere they travel (and being with the military, we travel a lot!) ^_^
Thank you also for giving us the opportunity to try your historical tour.
I am excited to try that with my young daughter!! Although to be honest, we’ve already told our friends to hire a babysitter — we have the perfect (childless) activity planned!! Lol. ^_-
Thank you again for creating such an amazing app!! We look forward to using and sharing it with all our friends and family!!
Warm Regards,
Nicole W
3) Turning Naysayers Into Evangelists
Offering great live support lets you nip any issues in the bud for dissatisfied customers. Not only do you become aware of the problem before the entire Twittersphere, but you can often resolve the person’s issues easily on the spot, particularly if you give all your reps the power to resolve problems (aka make the customer leave happy). Anyone answering the phone at Stray Boots has the authority to grant a refund on demand or credit an additional tour to make customers realize we don’t haggle over the experience. These customers are often the loudest proponents of your product or service after you take their experience from negative to positive. In some cases, you can achieve this just by listening and not BSing them.
4) Generating Amazing Word of Mouth
As Nicole W’s letter suggests, one of the best ways to take someone’s experience from good to great is through exemplary service. Because it’s so rare (see above Seinfeld clip), people really do want to TALK about it. To that end, even if we miss a call or someone hangs up before we answer, we call them right back to make sure everything’s OK.
Had a lovely day and it was a great way to get two teenagers away from the tv and exercising without
them realising! I liked being able to stop and start when we saw other things of interest.Would definitely do another one.
Would also like to praise Avi who was fantastic in helping me set up the phone side of things and even called me to make sure all was well.
Allison P,
London
5) Keeping a running dialogue with your customers
It’s key, particularly when running a startup, to understand your customers and constantly get their feedback. There’s no better way to do this than having a verbal discussion with them. We learn what questions they have about the product before they buy (thus, what our website does not communicate well), what issues they have when using our technology (ways we can make it more user-friendly), and ideas for what other features they want to see (opportunities for product improvement). It would be very difficult to get as accurate or as much feedback through a customer survey alone as a result of selection bias.
6) Customer-centric culture
By having everyone handle customer service, it makes our company a customer-first business. It’s important that not just one or two people in the organization understand the problems customers face, but that everyone does. Hearing those issues second hand is never a substitute for hearing them directly while on the line. For instance, when you have a mother on a street corner trying to start her tour and her nine-year old is growing impatient, that anxiety in her voice cannot be conveyed secondhand, nor can the noise of traffic behind her, or the “just another minute, honey” pleas she offers her kid. To be customer-centric you need your people on the front lines.
To a typical employee who didn’t set out to do customer service, the thought of speaking to customers might seem costly, distracting, and all together daunting. After all, who wants to actually talk to a ragingly upset person who might treat you like dirt? But, if you embrace it, you’ll find that it’s not only worth every minute and every penny, but that it can be actually quite enjoyable too.
