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To create customer loyalty and leverage exceptional customer service as a competitive force to dominate the market, follow these steps: multi-stage process it starts with creating a foundation for satisfying customer service.
Let’s start with this.
Creating a satisfied customer is easy and achievable. This depends on 4 fundamentals that must exist in customer service and the overall customer experience:
The first essential thing is what I counsel you to call a excellent product.
Nothing in this world is perfect, so let’s be clear about our definition: a device is designed and manufactured to operate properly (“perfectly”) under reasonably expected circumstances. You may think you are not selling a product, but I expect you are and you could confirm that the “product” portion of your offering meets the definition of a “perfect product.”
Let’s say you are a financial advisor: beyond planning and investing services, this includes the product aspect: online support options, design, how easy it is to search out and use disabled parking (if your clients are visiting you in person), how your invoices are structured, and whether Your billing is routinely accurate.
Secondly, customer satisfaction depends on delivery of your service by caring people. (Or at least individuals who care about customers; it doesn’t matter what’s on your mind; implausible actors are most welcome.)
The third element is topicality. The The complicated thing is that timeliness is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder, in this case, is your customer. This signifies that to realize the level of on-time performance that will result in a satisfied customer, you should hearken to how customers perceive your schedule and adjust it as needed.
The fourth and final element is a approach to service recoveryan effective framework that prompts and guides you to effective actions every time something goes mistaken in the eyes of your client. Once you implement this service recovery framework, you will be ready and capable of resolve almost any situation where your customer is disenchanted, upset, or even offended. Even with your perfect product, things will go mistaken and your answer matters a lot in the end.
If you do not already have a service recovery method that works for you, consider my MAMA method:
- Mtake time to listen
- ANDacknowledge and/or apologize
- to have Mmeeting of the minds with the client
- ANDct! And follow. You can receive a full description of this framework as a gift at this link.
So now we have built a satisfied customer. However, a satisfied customer is not all you hope to create, so to talk, and leverage as a reliable, lasting competitive advantage.
A satisfied customer will come back to you as a regular customer, all things are equal but this statement that “all things being equal” is unbelievable: on any given day, a satisfied customer could also be attracted by a barely lower cost, a barely higher location, or really nothing else to define aside from that they think you possibly can get replaced by other Tam brands.
So if you ought to use customer service as a competitive advantage, you could get as many customers as possible out of the zone of satisfaction and into the zone of customer loyalty and engagement. A loyal customer is less price sensitive, more forgiving when you mess up the occasional order, and is more than likely to try your add-ons and line extensions.
There is also what I call “everyday wow”: it adds a little extra to every interaction (at least every interaction where it seems like the customer has time to thrill).
Another essential thing is anticipatory customer service, which involves answering questions that have not yet been asked and meeting needs and wants that have not even been asked for. Anticipatory customer service is essential so that customers know you mostly have their interests (and wishes) in mind.
The particular form of anticipatory customer service is also one of the least effective. This recognition the feeling that the customer is seen each as a human being and as a specific human being. It at all times is unexpressed wish: no one says, “Hey, when I go into the parts department at your car dealership, I want to be recognized. I want to be welcomed and treated as an individual.”
But when you provide that recognition, it is a very powerful and secret (or no longer so secret) force that brings them back again and again.