Whether you are working with your clients: tips Seth Godin Bashny.Net

Why do you need customer service? Meets the famous entrepreneur and writer Seth Godin.

Customer service is difficult, expensive and unpredictable. But it would be a mistake to believe that a particular example is automatically good or bad. Some companies spend almost nothing on customer service, but still successfully solve their problems.





Customer service brings success when it gives the organization the results that focuses. Google has no phone support, and the company doesn't want to get in contact with most of its users. McDonald's does not give linen napkins. Fedex previously posted to customers after one beep, and now — through 81 second. Not to say that any of this is bad enough — these are only examples of compliance (or noncompliance) of the service objectives of the company.

Company start advertising company inadvertently not put in a box of cereal twice as much (or twice as less) than you need. So no need to build a system of customer support that meets your objectives.

Here are a few applications of customer service.

— To create significant competitive advantage, communicating with customers like can't or don't want others. This advantage has created for Zappos their exaggerated attention to customers. They turned from a regular store (shoes to buy from anyone, we have this anyone) in a company that delights its customers, and simultaneously sells shoes. Rackspace does the same thing in the field of technical support.

— To simplify the supply of cheap goods produced by industrial methods. So most of the fast food networks. Fast and good deal with exceptional cases, and most importantly — to have the queue move on. Part of this approach is to make the complaining was not very easy, and to treat all complaints the same. When you get damaged goods, you go to the site, make a couple of clicks, fill out a form and waiting for an answer, but the company does not use this opportunity to conquer your additional loyalty: "Here, take a few coupons on your next purchase, and everything, goodbye."

— To lower expectations and give customers exactly what is promised (and it's not too much). This model of automatic customer service in most large web companies. They will do anything to avoid human interaction, and they are clearly given to understand that they will have only those customers who are satisfied with it.

— To raise expectations and impress clients, giving them more than they hoped (and it's already a lot). It is extremely difficult to maintain constantly (though once it was possible Apple in their stores). The secret is to find a point of focus, budget and the scale at which you will really be able to identify talented employees for the fulfillment of this promise.

— To fulfill customer dance of co-creation. This part of the secret 37Signals (the founders wrote the besteller ReWork). Everywhere, from his books and blog to their distinct positions on the platforms and on business, they invite clients to participate with them in continuous dialogue, in the search for the Platonic ideal of useful software. They do not promise a perfect product, they promise involvement and participation. Continuous awareness. Respectful conversations. Clearly marked invitation. This is a very special kind of work with customers and many companies think that they are doing so, but in the end they cut corners and disappoint those who would prefer really to participate in the process.

— To neutralize the negative rumors and the effect of "word of mouth". This involved many large organizations is the last step in this sad way. As soon as the wheel starts to squeak, they smeared him. But don't do anything, if not faced with pressure. But the problem is that many of your unhappy customers are too busy to squeak — they'll just go somewhere else, and those who you finally decide to help, it's too angry, and too late.

— To build extraordinary trust. This is when the organization does much more than it is expected, on the personal, human level, to win the privilege of serving you again. This is when the banker comes to visit you in the hospital, having heard from another client that something happened.

— To work with different people in different ways. One of the ways to reward your best customers is to work with them in a different way than the rest of us. Then others will want to join this group, and those who it is already, it will be harder to switch to competitors. But if you give such a promise, you have to redouble its efforts to work on it and continuously improve conditions for their favorites.

— To reduce the maintenance costs of a little more than the competition, and win this race. We are now seeing among the industrial giants, for whom customer service is a source of costs, not profit. If you begin to measure these costs, you will inevitably want to reduce them, and only slightly faster than your competitors to do it too fast means to risk universal condemnation. Alas, in almost any industry, from which the Internet has sucked the profit, we see this pathetic competition. And it will end badly.

— Just because you can. It is terribly rare among public companies, but eats a lot of organizations that treat people the way they wanted to. Not in order to increase their market share, but simply because it is right.

It is therefore clear that good clients with acute problems which Fedex makes wait — is the mismatch between what they have created their support system, and what it becomes. And that his business occupied a startup that invests enough time in communication on the joint creation of a product good enough to fulfill the goals of its beta testing. On the other hand, a novelist, who does not invest time in responses to readers ' letters, probably working with their clients correctly — after all, so it saves more energy to write another good novel, and this is his promise.

Every person who takes decisions on budget, HR and customer service should clearly define what strategy he chooses, and should be able to say, "We do so because it corresponds to what we generally serve customers".

Obviously, it is possible to some mixture of these options and a possible new. But what not to do is to plan one thing, but then in an attempt to save time or money to do something else, hoping that there would be an initial goal.

Customer service, like everything, what does effective organization, changes people. Declare about the change you want to achieve and then properly invest it in the system that will give the announced result.

Make promises and do them.published

P. S. And remember, just changing your mind — together we change the world! ©

Source: ideanomics.ru/?p=3974