A lot of companies view customer service as a necessary evil. They view it as little more than "housekeeping," so to speak.
But the reality is, customer service is a great opportunity to for a company to separate itself from the competition.
This is particularly true in today's day and age. You are conditioned to calling a company to report a mistake and winding up with a "call center" rep on the other end; someone that, while totally polite and knowledgeable, likely doesn't care too much about you.
That's where the opportunity comes in.
Because you don't turn on companies for making mistakes, or selling defective products. You're human; you know mistakes are inevitable.
You get frustrated and angry when the company doesn't make a solid effort at correcting the error.
To avoid this, when fielding a customer service request, a rep must make believe that the customer is their own mother.
If you're mother called you with a problem, you wouldn't just run through some boilerplate questionnaire and pass her off to the next person. (Let's call that person "Anton.")
Not at all. "Mom, I hear you," you'd say. "I'm so sorry this happened. I'm going to walk over to Anton, ask him how we can correct this, and I'm going to get back to you personally. ASAP!"
If you can get that across to a customer - that feeling that you care about them as much as a family member - you'll have a customer for life. It won't even matter how many times you screw up - they'll come back for that feeling alone, because feeling cared about surpasses any feeling a product can give you.
So - does your company run its customer service this way?
Which companies do you know of that treat their customers like family?
Tell me in the comments section of the online version of this post:
One (1) commenter will win a $100 gift certificate to Steiner Sports!
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(COMMENTS MUST BE ON ONLINE BLOG.)
