Observations
- Premise: Clients are becoming ever more quality-sensitive.
- Challenge: How an organization with a standardized service model can repeatedly delight customers whose expectations grow with every interaction?
Critical aspects of client experience:
- Smooth onboarding – a warm welcome
- Service excellence – a zero-error product
- Anticipatory service – a proactive approach
- Graceful separation (if need be)
Delivering world-class service interactions:
- This largely rests on the skill and dedication of employees, which in turn depend on:
- Hiring
- Job design
- Training
- Performance management
- Culture
- Continuous improvement
Key ideas & takeaways:
- Give the freedom for people to create WOW moments for clients
- Create a point or dollar system so each individual who interacts with customers can offer them a small token like free service or product
- Establish and maintain a list of rules of thumb that build on your values
- Examples:
- If something takes less than 5 min do it, instead of submitting a ticket
- Explore alternatives to any request that cannot be fulfilled
- Always provide an ETA for request and provide updates when an ETA is not going to be met
- Everyone loves ETAs
- Nobody will ever say: I wish I did not get an ETA for this request
- Take ownership of mistakes made by your team
- Do not point fingers – offer a path to a solution instead
- When a request is completed always ask if anything else is needed
- If you can show someone how to do something instead of sending them instructions that is always better
- Create taglines that reinforce these and circulate them – make them part of the culture
Milen Vasilev