Forget Customer Service: Learn How To Think Like Your Customer

Introduction

“Customer Service“ is not about “serving” customers. It’s not something you do to or with customers. It’s not about “keeping customers happy” or “looking after customers” It’s a mindset. You must think like your customer.

True Customer Service

Customer service is far more important than any or all of those trite phrases. It’s what distinguishes your business from all of your competitors. It’s what keeps customers coming back again and again. It’s what makes customers refer to your business as “my” plumber, accountant, stationery supplier, printer, pharmacy or whatever. It’s what makes customers think immediately of your business the moment they need what you provide.

A Mindset

It’s a mindset: your mindset, not the customers’. And it must be the mindset of every one of your employees too.  Creating the mindset is what matters most.

The Mindset Question

“What can a customer expect when they deal with my company?” Another way of asking is …

“If I were a customer of my company, what would make me want to use only my company in the future?” That seems straightforward, doesn’t it? Be careful.

The Problems

• The first problem is that you’re not the only plumber, printer, web designer, accountant or whatever that your customer or prospect can use. In case you think you are, remember all the services that are available online these days. But every printer says that.

• The second problem is that your prospect or customer doesn’t evaluate your business or service in the same way that you do. You know that your printing business has the very latest technology and produces the best finished printing within a hundred miles.

• The third problem is that the client wants only a “good job” that’s “ready on time” and “is reasonably priced”. To the customer, it’s not important that your printing is without peer. Customers can’t tell the difference between “the best” printing and “very good” printing anyway. But they can tell if it’s ready on time, competitively priced, looks OK and does what they want it to do.

The Lady And The Flower Girl

In his play “Pygmalion”, later adapted to become the famous musical “My Fair Lady”, George Bernard Shaw said, “The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves but how she’s treated”. You must create an expectation that you’ll treat the customer unbelievably well. That’s the customer service mindset. As famous salesman and sales coach Bill Gove first said back in 1954: “Serve ‘em to death, Billy!”

The “Serve ‘Em To Death” Conundrum

“Serve ‘em to death” sounds wonderful. The real issue is who decides exactly what “serve ‘em to death” means? The answer is simple: the customer decides what it means. But there’s no real value in asking them.

There’s a huge difference between what a customer says or writes on a survey form about what they expect when a toilet overflows and what they actually want to happen when they’re up to their ankles in ……… that’s spreading  like wildfire all over the bathroom floor. There’s also the problem of clients trying to “help” by telling you what they think you want to hear or what they’ve read or heard from an “expert”.

The Apple Example

Steve Jobs always said that he tried to see himself as an Apple customer. Apple doesn’t undertake customer surveys to develop new products. It tries to anticipate what would be the “next step” for the customer. This isn’t new. There’s a story about Henry Ford and customer surveys. He didn’t use them because as he put it, “They’d have told me they wanted a faster horse.”

A Customer Service Exercise

If you really want truly satisfied customers in your business

1.    Imagine you are a customer of your business. Write down everything you’d like to happen from the moment you contact the company  until your interaction is complete.

2.     Use as much detail as possible. “Greeted politely by the person answering the phone isn’t enough”, Say, “The person answering the phone names the company, finds out who I am, why I’m calling, whom I wish to speak to, what result I’m trying to achieve, gives the name and title of the person they’re referring me too, tells that person what they’ve already learnt about me and my reason for calling, transfers me promptly and professionally makes me feel personally important and that my reason for calling is very important to the company.”

I know that sounds long-winded. It isn’t. Any worthwhile receptionist would try to do that.

3.     Then proceed through every part of the interaction between the customer and the various employees involved in  the transaction with the customer. Make sure you cover what happens if there’s a delay, rescheduling, callback or any event that’s likely to inconvenience the customer.

4.     Include follow up contact you may use to check customer satisfaction and how you ask for testimonials or referrals to new prospects from the customer. And pay particular attention to how complaints are handled and resolved.

Please don’t delude yourself into believing that “everybody knows that”. Everybody doesn’t. A slight error by only one staff member can have a negative impact on perceived quality of the total customer service experience.

5.       You may need to write scripts for staff to use. You’ll almost certainly need to alter systems to meet customer requirements or introduce incentives to help staff “do it right first time”. You may need to conduct training so that staff know exactly what to do, and how to do it.

6.       You may find that some of your staff place great stock in their technical competence or expertise. They may find this customer centred approach a little confronting. They believe that being technically brilliant is enough. It’s important that such staff realize that technical competence, innovation and superior performance in speed, volume and calibration is determined primarily by the customer.

7.       It’s a question of value. Few of us would question the quality of a Rolls Royce motor car. But to the ordinary person it represents poor value. Value is determined by the customer. Technological advancement and quality matter only if they constitute value to the customer. Customer service permits you to enhance value.

8.       Finally, determine how you’ll know for certain that the customer was satisfied with your “customer service”. If the customer’s not satisfied, your customer service system has failed, no matter how good you think it is.

9.       Involve you staff as much as possible in setting standards and customer service processes and goals. The staff will ultimately be responsible on a day to day basis for ensuring complete customer satisfaction.

10.       Remember this: you and your people are responsible for what your customers expect when they do business with you. Create high expectations and meet them. Tell your customers what they can expect. That’s your job.

An Ongoing Process

As you embed real customer satisfaction in your business you have a new question to answer. “How can we do it properly?” becomes “How can we do it better?” and “How can we improve?”

As you become the leaders in customer satisfaction in your industry, competitors will try to copy you. That’s inevitable. Once you establish leadership in customer service you must continue to improve to maintain your position.

That’s the mindset you and your staff must have at all times to satisfy the customer mindset. That’s the way “customer service” or “customer satisfaction” stops being merely a catch-cry. It becomes the essence of how you do business.

Conclusion

There are all sorts of  methods for “keeping customers onside”: newsletters, rewards, contests and customer feedback meetings are the most commonly used. But they’re merely window dressing without a customer service mindset.

Way back in 1908 famous hotelier Cesar Ritz said, “The customer is never wrong”. That’s a useful expression of the mindset I’m talking about.

What To Do Now

Complete the 10 point Customer Service Exercise I outlined. Get other senior managers to do it too. And please leave a comment below.

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