Joy: The Customer Service Hack You’re Overlooking

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Dr. Maya Angelou

Customer service seems so simple and obvious in business; after all, serving customers — the lifeblood of business — is what we should excel at (if we plan on keeping them, that is). Yet, sadly, the obvious often evades us. A quick Google search for the definition of “customer service” is surprisingly insightful:

Customer service is the support you offer your customers — both before and after they buy and use your products or services — that helps them have an easy and enjoyable experience with you. Offering amazing customer service is important if you want to retain customers and grow your business.

Notice the before and after terminology? Before your customer engages with you, what foundation have you laid to build trust? And after they engage with you, are you willing to be there for them? Great customer service extends beyond the momentary exchange of goods or services; it’s the intangibles of the experience. How has the entire experience left them feeling? Did they enjoy it? Pulling up at a drive-through window to receive a latte can be pleasant, off putting, or somewhere in between depending on the server’s mood, the heat of the milk, the speed of the interaction, and the tone of the exchange. A great latte with terrible service won’t have you coming back, but a fabulous experience can cover a multitude of espresso sins — it’s how you feel about an experience that matters.

Whether what you are selling takes minutes, months, or years the joy of the experience is always critical to customer retention. Does this mean if you have a misstep that you have lost your client forever? Thankfully, no — with a qualifier. If you’ve been giving your client a steady diet of missteps, your probability of recovery goes down exponentially. Conversely, your chance of recovery goes up in proportion to good joyful experiences. Over 60% of business sales go to existing clients, meaning your most valuable customer isn’t a new one; it’s the one you already have. If you consistently provide positive experiences, you build trust with your customer. If you have strong trust, there’s grace for the occasional disappointing or joyless experience.

“When you make customers happy, they talk to their friends, family members, and colleagues. This is amplified through social media. And, your best marketing is going to come from customers who sing your praises, which creates brand ambassadors.” — -Forbes

The collection of good client experiences is termed “social capital.” Think of social capital as deposits in your customers bank account, the more positive deposits the greater your trust. Deposits of kind gestures, delivering on time, and enjoyable interactions are all meaningful deposits. The next level is shared values. While they take longer to develop, traits like trustworthiness, shared identity, common norms, and mutual relationships create an even firmer foundation of goodwill and ambassadorship.

The ‘joy’ element of customer service is essential to long-term customer retention. Enjoyment, purpose, and passion are established through intentional internal work that spills over to the clients. If you aren’t enjoying your work or your teammates, chances are your clients won’t enjoy working with your company either. The push for enhanced company culture isn’t just about the employee experience, it trickles to the client experience as well. A healthy, fun, joy filled culture is good for employee retention, productivity, problem solving, mental health, and your bottom line. For yourself and your customers — enjoy where you work or work where you find joy — it’s essential to a company’s longevity as a service provider!

It’s been our honor and privilege to work with immensely talented designers over the years, and we’ve come to recognize perfection as the great thief of joy — a thief especially effective with designers.

Perfection is never fully attainable, yet a designer wants perfection for their design and their client, despite the obstacles that lie in the way. Joy is hard to harness when the target is perfection and relationships are often most at risk.

Research is finding, however, that joy is linked to giving. We love this quote written on the side of a team member’s portfolio:

“Design is a selfless act, it’s for others.”

This quote radically shifted our thinking, moving design away from an internal “pretentious” endeavor to an “others-centric” effort. When we take the focus off ourselves and put it on others, a joy takes hold within us. We began to see the act of designing as intrinsically selfless. With this perspective, we were able to rediscover joy in the process and pride in the final products — it isn’t about what we want to design, but about what the customer wants to see come to fruition. This intrinsic joy spread from our work to our customer relationships, fostering fulfilling projects, innovative solutions, deep partnerships, and profound trust within our team.

Don’t underestimate the power of generosity to create joy, and the power of joy to drive positive customer experiences. As a company, your most precious resources are your team and your clients, both of which are relationships. These relationships require care, dedication, trust, and positive experiences. We like to think the perfect product will make someone happy, but we like to argue that the meaningful moments win out every time.