This Week in Small Business: The Human-to-Human Customer Service We Want

By Kim Honjo

All companies want to deliver exceptional customer service, but how many are actually succeeding? Providing terrific customer service can be difficult to manage due to always-changing customer expectations and the evolving ways we communicate. Who knows? At this time next year, customers might want to use Periscope as the preferred method of customer service. This week, we look at the psychology of customers in order to anticipate their needs and resolve issues. Giving better service is not necessarily the speed of resolution, but more about the ability to relate and empathize. Read on!

• John Goodman, Vice Chairman of CCMC spoke with us about how no news from customers is NOT good news. Businesses tend to self-rationalize that most good customers actually do complain when they’re unhappy. He explains that kind of assumption is untrue. Due to previous experiences with customer service representatives, customers have been trained to accept problems as a general business practice without the prospect of change. Learn how you can counter trained hopelessness to set your company apart from the competition. [via Medium]
• As we saw in the bullet point above, most customers don’t call customer service to air grievances. In today’s digital world, they take to the Internet and post a review on sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor. This means that complaints no longer automatically fall under the jurisdiction of customer service teams. With social media, it’s often left to marketing to remedy the issues. This interesting article from Jay Baer talks about the convergence of customer service and marketing and what it means for business. [via Inc.]
• SST/Shotspotter is a is the global leader in gunfire detection and location technology. We spoke with Jeff Jaeger and Mike Will on their unique customer service model. Instead of measuring individual agent metrics and working with call scripts and quotas, they strive to deliver a “First Call Resolution, First Time Fix” scenario that emphasizes quality of interaction. As they work with a lot of law enforcement agencies, they believe that addressing customer issues immediately the first time around helps their customers better protect communities. [via Medium]
• Did you know that the average attention span of Americans is now 8 second short? Yet somehow, we’re surprisingly patient when it comes to waiting on hold on the phone. Recent poll results showed that more than half of responders were content to stay on hold for more than a minute before getting frustrated. Guess how long Brits are willing to wait? To find out more results from the poll and how we really feel about Muzak, click through. [via Entrepreneur]
• When two pints of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams tested positive for Listeria in April, it threw the small company headfirst into crisis management mode. With her tight-knit team of employees, Jeni Britton Bauer moved quickly to organize a recall of over 265 tons of lost ice cream. (NOO!) A call center was setup to field queries from buyers and online customers and Britton Bauer’s team quickly learned that way to go was “owning it, even if it sucks.” Read more about how Jeni’s weathered the storm and how to lead through a crisis. [via Fast Company]

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