4 properties of superior customer experience

“Customer experience, customer experience quality” these days is a buzzword for marketing strategists, and “customer service quality management” is the latest fashion statement in many marketing discussions. “Excellence in Customer Service” is one of six categories that each year is awarded with “ Gartner and 1to1 Media Awards for Excellence in Customer Relationship Management ” ( Gartner & 1to1 Media CRM Excellence Awards ) (along with other categories Efficiency of sales service, Client analytics, etc.).

But what is “superiority” in the quality of customer service, in fact?

To answer this question, which lies at the heart of many, if not most marketing strategies, you need to look at this through the eyes of a client . And from the client’s point of view, excellent customer service is something that just happens like clockwork, without friction . No customer wants to be required to experience additional difficulties, or fix problems, or repeat things that he has already reported. The best type of service that a customer wants to receive is one that meets his needs or solves his problems completely without his efforts, without the need to go all out or overcome obstacles. Obstacles - they are the very "friction". No one has time for obstacles.
')
To remove friction, manufacturers, suppliers, and sellers should focus on the four basic properties of superior customer service:

• Reliability Your product or service should behave as advertised, without interruption, without falling apart. You must pick up the phone, your site should work, the service will be performed on time, and so on. Reliability for a client comes from what we would call “product competence” in a company. Are the systems and processes of the company capable of producing and delivering a product or service on a schedule, without hesitation through several channels and uninterruptedly for a long time? Moreover, in such a way that it (the product) or it (the service) does not require a large amount of maintenance, repair, correction, or excessive attention from the client, only to satisfy the very need or solve the very problem for which they were created.
• Relevance . If reliability speaks of product competence, relevance speaks of “customer competency,” and the vast majority of companies operating today are simply not very competent in customers. Many companies still work according to the principle that Martha Rogers and I call the “ Golden Fish Principle ” because (like little fish without territorial memory) they do not cope with memorizing their client territory, requiring the client to re-enter information or search for things that The company must know about them. Every time when you need to call the contact center agent your account number again, immediately after dialing it on your phone, you come face to face with the company's incompetence. Client incompetence is also “friction,” and the most effective way to eliminate it is to memorize individual requirements and customer needs as soon as you identify them.
• Value No one likes to feel ripped off, what happens when you find out that you paid for a product or service more than what it cost. Thus, in an excellent customer experience, the price / quality ratio plays an important role. When you go to a discounter, you, as a customer, do not expect service, as in an elite boutique. But when you buy a Lexus, you expect more than a Ford experience. Whatever product or service you buy, he or she should have a good value for money. They should be economical for those who are interested in price, and they should have “decent value” for customers who are more interested in quality, status or other attributes.
• Ability to trust . In today's hyper-interactive world, simple trustworthiness, namely, doing things you said you would do without breaking the law, is no longer enough for the customer to have an impression of your product or service. Expectations are growing, and customers expect you to be proactively trustworthy or trusted . When servicing, in which you can trust, the client knows that the company provides complete, accurate and objective information and helps him avoid mistakes and oversight . If the client has to recalculate the change or recheck if he does not do something that he regrets in the future, then this is an extra hassle for him. And this is not at all like clockwork. Good service examples to trust in include:
  • promoting objective product or service reviews ;
  • reminding the customer that the warranty period will end soon ;
  • or prompting a customer to buy more than he needs.
  Some companies (AOL, Vonage, Stamps.com, etc.) make unsubscribing their services very challenging , and this is a behavior in which one cannot trust, a behavior that is guaranteed to produce "friction".

As manufacturers, suppliers and sellers, we all want to be sure that our products and services are positioned and provided in such a way that customers get excellent impressions from them. And from the point of view of clients, the less “friction” occurs, the better their impressions will be. It is so simple.