Tagged : effectiveness

in Customer Experience, Customer Service, Excellence, Management

Excellent Customer Service Begins with Effective Status Updates

Too often excellent customer service is seen as just doing whatever the customer asks. It isn’t. And that’s not realistic.

Every organization can have excellent customer service, even those working with the most complex customer processes, if they can provide effective status updates to the customer:

(As I go through these, I think of banks, mortgage companies, airlines, telecoms, and other service companies with traditionally bad customer service reputations.)

The Need for Useful, Specific Status Updates

Customers want to be able to track the status of their process/service/product. They want to be able to get an update on that item when they contact your organization.

GOOD STATUS UPDATES:

  • CUSTOMIZED UPDATE
    “Thanks for contacting me! Your item just left our warehouse and has checked in to the processing facility. It should be there in X days.

  • SPECIFIC UPDATE
    “Thanks for calling/emailing! It looks like we’re at step 2 of 4. The final steps normally take 2-4 hours and then it should be ready.”

  • QUALITY UPDATE
    “Thanks for checking! Our X team is reviewing that right now and they normally finish processing it by the end of the day. If they run into any issues, you’ll get a phone call.”

BAD “STATUS UPDATES”

(Notice the “” in Status Updates, since these examples aren’t really statuses, nor are real updates.)

  • GENERIC UPDATE
    “Thank you for your inquiry. Orders are normally processed in 24-72 hours.”
  • NOT SPECIFIC UPDATE
    “Thank you. Someone will be in touch shortly.”
  • NOT A REAL UPDATE
    “Our X team is reviewing that. I don’t know when it’ll be done.“

Getting and providing effective status updates to provide excellent customer service is based on CARING about the CUSTOMER. You always ask yourself if your process is making the customer happy, or if you’re frustrating the customer. Customers want to be kept in the loop. They’re making an investment with you. Whether it’s money, time, emotion, goods, or services, there’s always some type of investment that the customer makes with the organization.

Customers want to know that their investment will pay off for them.

in Culture, Customer Experience, Customer Service, Training

Disney’s 3 Keys to Magical Service Experiences

I recently spoke to a rock star customer service team at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel on the Disney property in California. Disney is famous for their customer-focused training regiment for all of their employees at their resorts and theme parks.

People come from all over the world, and many plan years in a advance before visiting Disney’s theme parks and resorts. Because of the expectation of a magical experience, Disney’s customer service focus HAS to be based on creating magical experiences for all of their customers (“guests”).

Service at Disney, involves a number of “Magical” aspects, of which I’d like to touch on 3 of them.

The Magic of Setting

At Disney’s parks, guests are treated to re-creation of famous Disney settings. Visiting the various areas of the park, guests are immersed in the Disney experience and feel as if they’re a part of Disney. Every detail of the settings counts towards creating that magical customer experience.

Your customer experience setting will be wherever your customers interact with your people and systems. Every detail of the encounter sends a message to the customer. Phone calls, emails, live chat, even Web sites speak to customers. What’s the message you’re sending? Does it say “we care about the customer”?

The Magic of Cast

Think of your last Disney experience? What were the people like? At Disney, all “Cast” Members (Employees at the Park) are friendly, approachable, and helpful without being condescending or mechanical. I recently was at Disneyland with my family and as we entered the park at opening time, we were greeted as we walked down Main Street by smiling, happy, employees waving to guests with giant Mickey Mouse hands.

at Disney, every team member knows, studies, and understands the behaviors, mannerisms, terms, and values that are specific to his or her job function.

Every job function is measured against the core service values of the organization.

The Magic of Action

At Disney, team members are trained to look for combustion points. Combustion Points are where even finely tuned, positive customer experience processes break down, creating negative customer experiences.

Where are the combustion points at your organization and within your team? What are your positive customer experience creating areas where because of break downs, system failures, or poor performance by team members, negative experiences breed?

Disney focuses on uses cast-guest communication, guest-flow, and service attention processes to eliminate or control these points.

Your customer service can be magical too!

Disney sets the customer service bar high with their attention to every detail of the customer experience. But their successes are focused around effectively implementing these keys to creating amazing and magical experiences for all of their guests. The Disney service model can be applied in any organization if management and team members are committed to creating magical experiences for their customers. The model isn’t expensive or complex. It simply requires commitment on the part of the individuals involved to creating a magical experience for each customers.