Tagged : service

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 Customer Experience, Customer Service, Excellence, Reviews

Finding Lifetime Customers in the Lost & Found

Have you ever lost something on an airplane and tried calling the airline or airport lost and found? I think that the lost and found at airports and for airlines are open for about 30 minutes 1 day of the week. You can rarely reach anyone and you almost never get your lost item back.

Lost and Founds should usually be renamed “Lost and Forget About It”.

This is NOT the case at Disneyland and their Grand Californian Hotel.

I want to lose more things with them.

My family and I recently stayed at the Grand Californian Hotel at Disneyland. On our last day at the hotel, I wanted to check out as quickly as possible so that we could get to the park as soon as possible one last time. A few days after I was home, I realized that in the final rush to the park, I had left two of my daughter’s school books and a stuffed animal in our hotel room. My wife urged me to call the hotel the next day and see if they had the lost items. I worried to call. Having lost multiple computer power cords, cameras, and other items at various hotels and having the hotel “never find” the items, I didn’t want the disappointment to tarnish my Disney service experience.

The next business day I called the hotel and was quickly transferred to the lost and found attendant. I left the person know that I had left some items in my room when I checked out the previous week. The attendant asked me for my room number and had me confirm the items. The attendant then asked for my address and said that they would have it in the mail that day.

  • No hassle.
  • No fuss.
  • No hoops to jump through.
  • Actual people you can call…and actually TALK to someone.
  • Simple cataloging system of lost customer items (it doesn’t cost much to do this).

Oh, and our friends who were at the park with us also lost a brand new iPhone 4S at the park. They got it back first thing the next morning.

Disney has a customer for life. I think my friends are Disney lifers too.