The danger of being average, and how to create amazing experiences for your customers.
By Pete Mercer
If there’s one thing that we can rely on year after year with any amount of certainty, it’s that things will change. Change is inevitable, especially in business. For business owners, embracing that change is part of the daily challenge of operations – finding the solutions to meet those challenges is an equally complex part of the puzzle.
Every year, businesses across the world spend months planning and strategizing the best ways to attract and retain customers in an increasingly competitive market. Customer service and the customer experience are at the forefront of conversations about success and excellence in business. How can business leaders shape the future of their organizations using a customer-centric approach?
Repertoire Magazine recently sat down with Shep Hyken to discuss how sales leaders can meet the rapidly changing environment head on and deliver better results for their customers and their businesses. The founder and CAO (Chief Amazement Officer) of Shepard Productions, Hyken is a customer service and experienced speaker.
How customer service has changed over the years
When you think of the recent hyperfocus on the quality of the customer experience, what is the catalyst for this shift? For Hyken, it’s a number of companies that have made great efforts to create a streamlined and unique customer experience. Companies like Apple, Amazon and Netflix have created dynamic shifts in the way that consumers operate over the years. Each of these companies shares that unique qualifier as a disruptor for the customer experience, creating a focused, personalized experience for consumers based on what their preferences are.
This creates an expectation from consumers that businesses provide an “experience.” Whether it’s in video streaming, online shopping or healthcare distribution, consumers are expecting personalized experiences from the businesses they purchase from.
Hyken said, “Every year, I make 10 predictions for what that year will hold for customer service, and the first one is always the same: customers will demand more than ever before. I don’t care what kind of business you’re in, whether it’s healthcare or selling washers and dryers, you have a consumer. The consumer knows what the best experience looks and feels like, and they expect that from everybody now.”
Recently, Hyken was working with a group of executives at a major healthcare system. They had bought a piece of imaging machinery that was worth more than half a million dollars and were in the process of building a space for it in their hospital. The equipment showed up two weeks earlier than planned, frustrating and upsetting one of the executives. Hyken told the executive team that it was better to have something show up two weeks early, rather than two weeks late.
The executive team looked at Hyken, and one of them said, “You don’t understand. They knew what our schedule was. They knew when we could accept delivery. If I buy toilet paper from Amazon, they email me to tell me it’s on the way. Why couldn’t this company do the same thing?”
This experience is exactly why it’s so important to keep up with changing customer service trends. Understanding what the consumer expects from the details of a transaction is critical to the future of your relationship with them. It doesn’t matter whether they’ve spent $2 or $500,000.
Nailing the experience
Hyken is in the business of helping his clients create amazing experiences. He says that doesn’t mean the experiences are over-the-top, high budget extravaganzas, but closer to a consistently great interaction between your team and your customer.
He said, “It means that when our customers and clients refer to us, they’re going to say, ‘I like doing business with them because they’re always friendly. There’s always a fast response. They always take care of me.’ There is consistency and predictability in every interaction, which I call ‘moments of truth.’”
A “moment of truth” is any time a customer, patient, or guest comes into contact with any aspect of a business and forms an impression. This concept was conceived by Jan Carlson, who posits that this impression can be good or bad. Hyken takes it a step further, saying that there is a third result: good, bad, or average.
A good experience is great, a bad experience is something you can fix, but it’s hard to come back from an average experience. Hyken said, “An average experience is very dangerous, because customers don’t complain about that. They just disappear once they’ve found something better.”
Where sales reps get it wrong and how they can improve
“Customer service is not a department, it’s a philosophy.” For Hyken, this is one of the biggest areas where sales reps miss the mark. “When you tell them you’ve got to give better customer service, they think, ‘Well, my customers aren’t calling me to complain or ask questions.’ But that’s not what service really is.”
The biggest hangup here is the difference between the terms “customer support” and “customer service.” According to Hyken, when sales reps get this terminology wrong, they can completely misunderstand how to deliver a better customer experience.
Hyken works with companies to help build confidence in their sales leaders. It starts with seemingly simple concepts like being polite and doing what you say you’re going to do, followed by being proactive with communication. If there’s an issue, call the customer. If it’s bad news regarding the availability or functionality of one of your products, contact them before they have a chance to contact you. If something goes wrong, fix it.
He said, “Here’s what you want your customers to say about you: they’re always knowledgeable, always friendly, they always call me back. They always do what they say they’re going to do, even when there’s a problem. I know I can count on them. That we’re always followed by something positive is what we’re looking for. More confidence builders, being proactive.”
Use modern tools to your advantage
In the digital age, we have a litany of tools at our disposal to make the job easier. Automation is helping customer service interactions, improving the experience for customers by being available to field simple frequently asked questions 24/7. Using modern, digital tools to your advantage is critical to success in 2023.
Even when you’re reaching out to cold prospects, digital tools are a great way to easily start conversations and build bridges. LinkedIn is an invaluable resource for sales reps that are looking to quickly generate leads and respond to customer questions. You can use digital tools to book your calls for you, taking away the administrative burden of getting on someone else’s calendar.
“Using technology to book appointments is so much easier. I used to have to call in and talk to someone that’s already busy, and I would probably be put on hold. They come back on and then we have to compare calendars, back and forth. It’s so easy to create an appointment now,” Hyken said.
“If I’m a salesperson in the healthcare industry, I send somebody my calendar link and they can sign up when it’s convenient for them. There are so many ways that technology can ease parts of the process.”
Finding the differentiator
Do you know why your customers choose to stay with your company? Better yet, do you know why some customers leave for other companies? Hyken and his team facilitate workshops for clients by walking them through a six-question process that is designed to help business leaders find what sets their companies apart from the competition:
1. Why would someone do business with me over someone else? This is your competitive advantage – find something unique to the experience that your customers have engaging with your brand. Hyken said, “Don’t say, ‘Oh, we have great customer service.’ Everybody says that. You need a true differentiator.”
2. Why would someone do business with someone else over me? You need to know the competitive advantages of your competition. What makes what they offer more attractive to your customers than what you offer? Do they have different processes? Better customer service? A different array of products?
3. What is the competition doing that I should be doing? Is your competition doing something unique to draw business in? This isn’t an opportunity for you to copy exactly what your competitors are doing, but it’s important to understand how they approach marketing and selling a product that might be similar to yours. This is part of the equation where understanding your differentiators can be very useful.
4. What are companies outside of my industry doing for their customers? Looking at a different industry can give you a fresh perspective on what customer service and the customer experience should look like. “If we open these up to an audience, they’re going to say things like, Amazon and Apple,” Hyken said. “Or their favorite restaurant that recognizes them when they walk through the doors. We write down all these companies and we add why we like them. What are they doing specifically? Let’s get really tangible with our examples.”
5. Is there something they are doing that we could be doing? Bring in ideas and solutions from outside of your industry. When you look at the companies that are doing the best work in customer service, you can redefine what the customer experience looks like for your customers.
6. Why would someone do business with me over someone else? The circular nature of this process is intentional. By taking your ideas back to where it really matters, you can have a much clearer, thoughtful discussion on why someone would choose to purchase from your organization.
“What you’re doing with this process is having this nice little conversation that leads to what some project takes months to, if not even a year or more, to really get focused on the ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors,” Hyken explained. “Most of the time, the only thing that’s going to differentiate you is all things being equal. Everything may be the same, but the experience is better. We want to create a better experience at every level, if possible.”