A lesson from a customer service gripe
This could be a story about your brand.
The best definition I ever heard of a “brand” is what your customers say to each other about you when you’re not there.
Recently, I had a problem with a laptop I inherited from my parents from a reputable and popular company that prides itself on user experience. I won’t tell you which company, but it’s definitely a fruit.
I brought it into the branded storefront, which was clean, beautiful and high-tech. Smiling Millennials in matching shirts greeted me and checked me in efficiently. When my turn came, I needed to recover my ID.
They said it would take a week.
I have long been a PC user and a believer in “open source” rather than walled garden. This was the fruit company’s first opportunity to win me as a new customer. And they really messed it up. I can’t even leave a podcast review on their vaunted podcast service without this ID. I can’t use the function I needed on the laptop. I can’t do much of anything that I couldn’t already do on my PC.
You would figure that someone would respond when I tagged them on social media, but it was radio silence. This is where bad customer service spills over into the world of bad marketing.
On average, someone who has a great customer experience tells about one person. Someone who has a terrible customer experience tells ten. When you add in social media, it can get really out of hand fast. Just ask United Airlines.
What really floored me was that the person in the store seemed to think that not solving my problem for a week was just fine. It shows me that the company hasn’t trained their employees that the core brand value to customers is usability. That’s crazy considering how much they put usability at the center of their marketing.
When you say one thing about your brand in your marketing and sales, and your customer-facing employees say something completely different, it causes cognitive dissonance about your company that could be worse than no perception at all.
Making sure your customer service always aligns with your brand is really hard. Fortunately, there are some simple ways to start making it better today:
Align your strategy with your customer service by figuring out how you’re positioned (super premium? value? lowest cost? self-service?) and making a short, easy-to-understand statement about what you want for service. Examples: “We want customers to feel like kings.” “Customers should be able to access information quickly without a lot of cost for us.”
Spend lots of time educating your employees about how they can provide a level of service that matches your core brand value. It’s not wasted time. (Ask me about the FedEx driver who rented a helicopter to get a package to the customer on time.)
Do a simple customer service audit by calling, emailing, visiting or otherwise accessing your own customer service channels like your main phone line, customer service email and/or store. Then, talk to the people on the front lines to make straightforward, no cost fixes.
Give straightforward guidance to anyone who interacts with customers about what to do if there is a problem. Even though they have over 300,000 employees, I suspect that Costco does this well because I have had many interactions in which their staff acknowledge the customer’s complaint, try to minimize a costly fix, and solve the problem on the spot.