Consistent "Easy" Service THEN Customer Delight
Did you happen to catch the recent Harvard
Business Review (HBR) article entitled "Stop Trying to Delight Your
Customers?" The article, based on research with 75,000
customers who had interacted with call-centers or self-service portals
like on-line chat, email, or voice mail prompts, offers findings that
address 3 key business questions:
1) How important is customer service to
loyalty?
2) Which customer service activities
increase loyalty, and which donÕt?
3) Can companies increase loyalty without
raising their customer service operating costs?
In a nutshell, the answers from the
research are as follows:
- Delighting customers doesnÕt build loyalty,
- Reducing your customerÕs effort to get their problem
solved does make them more loyal, and
- Acting to reduce your customerÕs effort can reduce
service costs.
To save your customer unneeded effort,
the HBR researchers suggest that you:
- DonÕt just resolve the current issue but also head off
the next,
- Equip customer service professionals to handle the
emotional side of customer interactions,
- Minimize channel switching by increasing self-service
Òstickiness.ÕÓ For example, make changes on your website so
the customer doesnÕt feel that the only way to really get served is
through a call to your call-center,
- Use feedback from disgruntled or struggling customers to
reduce customer effort, and
- Empower (and incentivize) the front line to deliver a
low-effort experience.
If that isnÕt enough to think about, let
me throw out a way of measuring customer effort through a simple tool
called the CES or Customer Effort Score. The CES is a single
question to ask your customers:
On a scale of 1 to 5, how much effort did
you personally have to put forth to get your needs meet?
Ask your customers....you might be
DELIGHTED by what you hear and if not they may be DELIGHTED that you are
looking for ways to make their experiences more consistent and EASIER!
Last quarter, I announced my newest book deal
"The Zappos Experience: 5 Leadership Principles for Serving
Billion Dollar Outcomes" to be released as a lead business book
for McGraw-Hill in the fall of 2011. My team and I have spent
a considerable amount of time with Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, and his team
and we are still looking for your stories or insights about Zappos
for possible inclusion in that book.
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Prior
to the Zappos book, look for my book with the working title "UCLA's
Healing Humankind...One Patient at a Time: Business Lessons for All
From a Leader in Patient Care." That book is wending its way
through the publishing process and I will keep you posted on its
targeted release date.
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Next Newsletter
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I
will visit your inbox in about 90 days. Until then, thanks
for all the people who have come out to my events this quarter in
places such as Bolivia, Singapore, Manila,
Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, Cape Cod, Lake Tahoe, Portland, Denver,
Columbus, Los Angeles, Toronto, Lansing, and Tucson.
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In your service,
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