- Talking about customer service may sound like the most boring topic we could cover
which is exactly why we're tackling this head on and I'm giving you my three-part system
to turn ordinary, bland, and boring customer service into a customer service experience
that wows your customers and clients all the way to the bank. Let's get to it.
- Hey there, my name is Adam Erhart, Modern Marketing Strategist and welcome to the Modern
Marketing show where we help you make marketing that matters. So if you're interested in learning
the latest and greatest in marketing strategies, tools, tips, tricks, and tactics, you may
want to consider subscribing and hitting that little notification bell so you'll be the
first to know when new content comes live. Customer service is something I feel pretty
strongly about. After all, I've spent most of my professional career working in some
form of the customer service industry, whether as a professional business captain, an agency
owner, a consultant, I even wrote a book on the subject, conveniently located on Amazon
for only a few bucks. So what I want to share with you today are a few different strategies
from three key areas of your business' customer service area in order to switch it from customer
service to a customer experience. And the three areas we're going to cover are mindset,
marketing, and mechanism. So enough chitchat, let's get to it. Alright, so the first thing
that we need to talk about when it comes to getting your customer service right and transforming
it into that customer service experience is all about mindset. Now the reason mindset
is so important and we have to discuss it here is because if you don't get the mindset
right, you don't get kind of the vision and the mission and all the stuff behind the scenes
kinda dialed in, well none of the stuff we're gonna talk about later will really matter
because it's all gonna be built on a really shaky foundation. So when it comes to mindset,
there's four different areas that we've gotta cover. Number one is priorities and processes.
Now when we're talking about establishing the priorities and processes for your business,
these are uncovering different types of scenarios and different types of priorities that you're
gonna place on where customer service fits into your overall business model. As an example,
is the customer always right? Now anytime I'm on stage and I ask the audience, "Is the
customer always right?", I always get a mixed response. Some audiences all say yes. Some
all say no. Sometimes it's a mix of yes and no and the answer is, well, there's no definitive
answer because it's completely relevant and completely based on you and your business
and your overall business model and where you're gonna prioritize customer service.
Now the reason this is so important to really dial in and really kinda nail down is that
there's gonna be situations where the customer may be right and there's gonna be situations
where they're gonna be just flat-out wrong. For example, a customer may be wrong if they're
abusive or threatening or using really rude language. And these are all things you need
to clarify and you've gotta kinda nail out in your company's Standard Operating Procedures
or SOPs. This will avoid confusion down the line, it will also give you really clear guidelines
to stick to so you know when to bend and when to break. Alright, part number two of mindset
is the platinum rule and this is we don't want to abide by the golden rule, which is
treat other people how you want to be treated, but rather treat other people how they want
to be treated. This is what truly differentiates ordinary customer service from true customer
experience. Everybody's different. We all know that. And yet, sometimes we try to treat
everybody the same and the reality is that by using a more personalized and a more customized
and kind of a more empathetic approach you're going to be able to deliver far superior customer
service by basing it and tailoring it for the unique customer or client. Alright, point
number three behind mindset is you've got to focus on the customer service packe, which
is P A C K E. Let's dive into them now. The P stands for passion and there's no faking
passion. And this is why you've got to have some energy and some enthusiasm behind what
you're doing and behind what you're selling because that's really gonna be communicated
when you're talking to your customers. The A stands for attitude and we all know the
importance of a really good and positive attitude. This is especially true in the customer service
and customer experience industry. You've gotta have that good attitude. So hire for attitude,
train for skill. C is care and really what we're doing here is we're just taking that
passion and that attitude and we're really kinda trying to drill it down and package
it into a form of care where you actually genuinely care about the person that you're
solving. This cannot be faked so do your best to truly try and be empathetic of where the
person's coming from and really care about them and about the results you're helping
them get. K is knowledge. This one may be self-explanatory, but the reality is you have
to know about what you're talking about. Otherwise, you're not gonna be able to provide true customer
service if you're kinda searching for the answers or you're not able to kinda help the
customer with what they're looking for help with. And finally E is etiquette and this
is all just about being polite, about smiling, about saying please, about saying thank you.
Enough said there. Alright and the fourth and final thing we need to talk about when
it comes to mindset has already been said but we need to say it again and really give
it it's own point which is attitude. Now I know I beat this up in the customer service
packe but the reality is that attitude is by far the single most important element when
it comes to transforming your business' customer service into that customer service experience.
So really focus on making sure you're delivering the right attitude or your sales team or your
customer service staff, make sure that they've got the right attitude for the job or that
you've got the people with the right attitudes in the right position. Alright, so let's move
on to point number two which is marketing. Now the first thing you need to understand
when it comes to investing in and essentially transforming your customer service to that
customer service experience is that marketing is a significant competitive advantage in
the marketplace. This is because as much as people like to claim they've got phenomenal
customer service, well, the statistics say otherwise. Which is why true and amazing customer
service is a rarity and therefore incredibly valuable in the market. The next point that
we need to understand and leverage is the social media aspect of that customer service
experience which the reality now is that a lot of customer service is going to take place
through different social media channels, whether it's through a chat bot or whether it's through
a channel that you use to answer questions or deal with complaints. And the other side
of the coin is that customer service now and good customer service and bad customer service
can be communicated instantly because it doesn't take long for someone to go out there and
make a post or make a video or make a tweet or whatever it is to either praise your company
or discredit it. So you've got to take that into consideration and this is why kind of
building that customer service experience is so incredibly valuable. The next point
about marketing, when it comes to that customer service experience is understanding the lifetime
value of your customer. This is an exercise that I like to walk all of my clients and
all of my students through and what it really comes down to is identifying the true lifetime
value of that customer to your business. Not a one-time transaction. Not a one-day or a
one-week or even a one-month transaction value, but rather the entire value of that customer
over their entire lifetime of dealing with your business. Now here's the kicker. If you've
never done this before, I'm pretty sure you're gonna find the lifetime value of your customer
is significantly more than you might have thought. Now the beauty of doing this is that
when you understand the true value of a customer to your business, well it makes you prioritize
creating that customer service experience because you know the true value and the true
revenue that they're bringing to your bottom line. Alright, and the fourth and final point
when it comes to marketing is touchpoints. Everything is marketing. Every interaction,
every post, every tweet, every message, every video, everything is marketing. And everything
is gonna communicate your brand and your values and your customer service and the priority
you place on it to your customer. This is the reason it's insufficient to be really
exceptional at customer service in this area but then to completely drop the ball over
here. Rather, you've gotta be equally good across all of the platforms you choose to
present yourself on. Now the quick fix here is that if you're not so strong on, say this
platform over here, well just drop it, and rather focus on where your customers are and
where you're truly gonna be able to shine and deliver the best and most value to your
customers. Alright moving right along to point number three of creating that customer service
experience which is mechanism. Now the first thing we've gotta talk about when it comes
to mechanism is the support tools and what are available. Now there's a number of amazing
companies out there that all have some form or some different variation of customer service
tools, whether we're talking about Zendesk or Rhino Support or Salesforce or Zoho or
any of the other millions out there, all you've really gotta do is go to Google and do a quick
search for customer service tools and you'll find them. Now the beauty of using and leveraging
these tools is to make sure that nothing falls between the cracks and gets lost. What I mean
by this is that if someone sends your business' support email an email with a question, well
you don't want it to get lost, you don't want it to get handled later, so what these tools
allow you to do is to assign it to different people on your team, to mark it as resolved,
to send it to the right person to make sure that it gets handled, whatever it is. Basically
it keeps everybody on track and in line so nothing gets missed. The next tool that we've
got to talk about is one that's freely available to you and to everyone and that is Facebook
Messenger. You see, there's been an interesting trend and an interesting change in the way
that customers want to react and engage with businesses and this is switching more and
more to kind of those online chat features. And Facebook Messenger is kinda leading the
pack here. What this means is making sure your business is accessible via Facebook Messenger,
whether you're going to use it to answer questions or to just engage with your community, whatever
it is. And there's also a number of amazing chat bot tools out there that allow you to
kinda pre-qualify or pre-segment people based on their different questions so you can make
sure that they're answered quickly and efficiently. The third tool that I want to talk about here
is YouTube. Now the beauty of using YouTube as a customer service tool is that it allows
you to freely and easily upload videos like Frequently Asked Questions or how to's or
tutorials or anything else that your customers may benefit from. The benefit here is this
is gonna dramatically cut down on the amount of customer service staff that you're gonna
need to support all of the questions that you get in on a regular basis. Alright and
the last thing that I want to talk about when it comes to the mechanism is something called
the net promoter score. Now the net promoter score is actually really simple. All you need
to do is ask your customers or ask your clients, on a scale of one to ten, how likely are you
to recommend us to a friend or family member? Now here's the kicker. Anything less than
an eight, no bueno. This means the only acceptable answers to this question are an eight, a nine,
or a 10. Anything else, whether we're talking about a five, six, seven, one, two, three,
whatever, anything else requires immediate and dramatic corrective action. You see, to
succeed in business today when it comes to customer service and creating that customer
service experience, anything less than an eight is simply not acceptable because there's
other people out there that are willing to raise the bar and go that extra mile. Alright,
so there we have it. My best tips in transforming your business' customer service into a true
customer service experience. Let me know in the comments section below, which tip did
you find the most helpful? And which one are you gonna try to apply to your business and
preferably sooner than later? And lastly, thanks so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed
the episode and got some great value from it. If so, be sure to give it that thumbs
up button. Subscribe to the channel and hit that notification bell. Also for more great
marketing strategies, tools, tips, tricks, and tactics, make sure to head over to adamerhart.com,
which is packed full of more videos and podcasts and articles and all sorts of resources to
really help take your business and your marketing results to the next level and way beyond that.
So thanks so much for watching and I'll catch you next time on the Modern Marketing show.