Each week I read a number of customer service and customer experience articles from various resources. Here are my top five picks from last week. I have added my comment about each article and would like to hear what you think too.
The Customer Journey Begins – and Sometimes Ends – With Your Employees by
(CMSWire) Today’s customers don’t just expect high quality and excellent service at a fair price — they demand it. Luckily, today we know far more about how to provide people with the experience they want. And it all begins with employees.
My Comment: Every year the stats from numerous reports remind us that a good customer experience starts with a good employee experience. There’s plenty of proof and ideas in this article that will help you realize that what’s happening on the inside of the organization is going to be felt on the outside by the customer.
Service with a Simile. by Bruce Turkel
(Bruce Turkel) Willy went on to talk to his folks about what they had all accomplished over the last year and where they were going in the future. He used the Ritz-Carlton story as just one interesting illustration of how an All About Them culture was an important part of Walker & Dunlop’s client service and its business.
My Comment: Bruce Turkel is a branding expert and writes a weekly informative and often entertaining (and sometimes edgy) blog post. In this article, he shares a Ritz-Carlton story, which as usual, is a model for how to deliver a memorable experience that gets talked about.
Is Your Social Media Customer Service Helping or Hurting Your Customer Experience? by Sue Duris
(ICMI) We’re almost to the mid-point of 2018, and it still amazes me that many brands either have no social customer service or ineffective social customer service. For the record, contacting brands on social media only to be passed off to someone else is not social customer service.
My Comment: Social Media Customer Service (Also known as Social Customer Care) continues to grow in popularity. This article highlights a recent J.D. Power survey that says 67% of consumers have used social media to resolve customer service issues. And one-third of customers prefer to contact brands using social media rather than using the phone, email or website. Whether you are delivering a high-level of social customer care experience or not, there’s plenty of good insights, stats and facts that you need to pay attention to. (Pay close attention to the stats on response times. This is a “miss” for most companies.)
Ten tips for delivering a good customer experience by
(IT Pro Portal) In an effort to help others on their own journey, we’ve taken some of the key pieces of advice that we’ve read over the past year and a half and put them all together in bite-size chunks.
My Comment: I always love a good list of ways to deliver a great customer experience. This starts with a tip that many companies forget. To have a good customer experience, the product needs to work and do what it’s supposed to do. If that fails, all the great CX and service in the world doesn’t matter. And, there are nine more that are just like that. Common sense that sometimes isn’t so common!
More Than One-Third Of Shoppers Would Pay For Enhanced Loyalty Programs by Marie Griffin
(Retail TouchPoints) With the benefits of loyalty programs well known, competition among brands for members and a larger share of their spending is fierce — and consumers know it, so they are expecting more in return for their loyalty.
My Comment: Loyalty programs can be powerful. Consider that consumers spend 37% more with brands when they are loyalty program members; 70% of members say they are more likely to recommend brands with good loyalty programs, and 77% say loyalty programs make them more likely to continue doing business with a brand. Those stats and more can be found in this excellent article that delivers plenty of insight into what drives a successful loyalty program.
Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, professional speaker and New York Times bestselling business author. For information on The Customer Focus
customer service training programs go to www.TheCustomerFocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken
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