You can’t please everybody
but you can come pretty darn close
Introduction
Wouldn’t it be great if there was a formula or maybe 10 easy steps to perfect customer service? Really though, there is no one right way to provide outstanding customer service—only the right way for your specific situation. Different companies do it in different ways with mixed results—some very successful building a core of quality customers, some unsuccessful basically in business to lose their potential repetitive customers in a continual quest for the next customer to lose. To emphasize such a range of customer service let’s look at two national retailers that are consistently rated as providing top level customer service—a hip specialty chain that we’ll call Electronics Au Go Go (EAGG) and a long-lived general department store that we’ll call Skip’s Dry Goods (Skip’s).
Comparison: Electronics Au Go Go (EAGG)
and Skip’s Dry Goods (Skip’s)
When the two businesses are viewed objectively they appear to have nothing in common but a credo to provide good customer service. For instance,
1. One pays its people on commission, the other doesn’t.
2. One store looks like a warehouse, the other like a general merchandiser.
3. One store has merchandise displays that visually assault a discriminating customer, the other with low-key ambiance that hopefully subtly arouses customer interest.
4. One has acres of cluttered shelves and overwhelming banners and continuous sale signs and displays with salespeople in jeans, the other a grand piano in the middle of the store with distinguishingly dressed and well-behaved proper sales people.
5. One has, if you’re lucky, a soft drink machine that may or may not work or take your money, the other has a boutique coffee shop that provides customers free gourmet coffee.
Upon examination of the commonalities of the two chains, it was found that they both are attempting to follow the golden rule of customer service in their own way—making it easy for the customer to do business with them. Their customers want them to make it easy for them to do business with them. Let’s examine the traits they share, and see how they relate to our “Top Ten Things Customers Want From Your Business,” such as the following:
1. Both stores have a wide range of merchandise in their particular market niches—specialty electronics and general merchandise.
2. Both stores have customer flow and signage—one forcing you to canvass the entire store, the other allowing the customer room to roam.
3. Both stores have pricing policies that they believe make it easy for the customer—one with numerous sale displays with recalculated sales prices, the other one with everyday low prices.
4. Both stores attempt to appeal to both the shopper and non-shopper in the family—one with flat screen TV monitors displaying the merits of their merchandise, the other with knowledgeable sales personnel strategically placed around the store and spouse corners in every department with basic refreshments and reading materials.
5. Both stores have appropriate atmospheres for their identified customer base—the one using current electronic devices and displays, the other with a subdued upscale ambiance.
6. Both store’s employees are accessible, knowledgeable, and very well trained—one with primarily technical expertise, the other with seasoned shopping helpers.
Customers Want You to Meet Their Needs
Both of these companies take the time to try to understand their customer base so that they can provide their customers with exactly what they want in terms of merchandise and service.
EAGG has the types of products that the new customer looks for in the areas that they specialize in, that is electronics, entertainment, communications, small hand-held computer-based items, and computer related office products. They stock literally thousands of products, but it all comes down to those five categories. They don’t stock grills, lawn mowers, or tools—like a general department store. They don’t try to sell clothing or jewelry either. Rather, they’ve defined what they are, and they provide a more than adequate level of service and products (products that they stand behind) in those defined areas. They are not trying to sell all things to all people.
EAGG tailors their typical “big box” store to your marketplace. If you live in an upscale town, their store will have more plasma TVs and home theater components. If you live in a younger marketplace, their store will have a larger small computer-based devices section that will carry a more diverse range of products. This effort makes the shopping experience more focused to your needs.
Skip’s, on the other hand, knows their market and the customer base they wish to serve, the suburban middle- and upper-class subdued shopper. They deliver targeted products and services to this defined customer base, thereby making the entire shopping experience that much more pleasant.
Customers Want You to Value Their Business
and to Meet Their Expectations
Customers value their time; it’s a precious commodity and they see themselves as very busy people. The more pleasant and expedient the company can make their shopping experience, the more positive reaction to the company and the greater the possibility that the customer will return. A customer enters the store that displays the customer flow patterns and signage that correlate with the particular type of shopping experience—the customer relaxes as their shopping experience becomes easier. The care the store has taken conveys the message that they value your business. In effect they’re saying, “Hey, we know you’ve got other things to do, and we’re going to make it easy for you to get around.” Customers appreciate that. Since people are busier than ever now, the easier you make it for people to deal with your organization, the higher will be your level of perceived service. EAGG and Skip’s realize that their customers expect them to provide a pleasant and easy shopping experience. EAGG believes that more crowded merchandises space with good-sized aisles and abundant signage provides the right atmosphere. Skip’s takes a somewhat opposite approach that is wider aisles, less merchandise crowding display cases and racks, and more personal attention. They try to make it easy by leaving some open space with minimal merchandise and less signage.
Have Pricing Policies That Are Easy to Understand
At Skip’s, you aren’t going to run into overpriced merchandise that will soon be on sale at a fair price. Granted, their merchandise is not inexpensive by any means, but for the quality level of products and personal service, it is not over-priced. Skip’s knows what their customer expects to find, and they provide it to them at an expected price point. Skip’s may run periodic sales, but it won’t be on inflated priced items that can only sell when they’re ‘on-sale.’ They are not in the markdown business and their sales are always bono fide events.
EAGG, on the other hand, caters to a savvy customer base that knows prices, both from other similar retailers or the omnipresent internet marketplace. While they always attempt to meet their competitors’ prices, both retailers and internet sellers, with a guarantee to match the lowest competitor’s prices, they believe they have something more to offer in the realm of customer service—accessible and knowledgeable employees as well as a Wow! shopping experience.
Appeal to Both the Shopper and Non-Shopper
Aside from trying to make it easy on the customer, these stores are good at showing their patrons that they VALUE THEIR BUSINESS. Whenever one goes into a Skip’s, even if it’s the female partner doing the shopping, one always feels welcome there. There’s usually a comfortable chair somewhere close by, and some interesting reading material for all palates and no-cost light refreshments. It’s a far cry from what you encounter at most such general department stores—that is no chair available, nothing to read, all the other partner can do is stand and wait. And wait. And wait.
Those “husband’s corners” make it easier for my wife to get me into the store, and when she has me comfortably settled, she can have a more enjoyable and leisurely shopping experience. Skip’s makes it easy to do business with them, and they have shown the wife that they value her business. A “husband’s corner” is good business—not a waste of merchandising space.
Skip’s figured out that if you want to extend the shopping experience (remembering that the longer the length of stay in a retail establishment usually means the more that the shopper will spend), you make the non-shopper comfortable, or at least make them feel welcome in your establishment.
EAGG takes the position that their customers are savvy interested electronics customers—hip to the latest innovations. They don’t attempt to relax the non-shopper with hideaway places. They entice the non-shopper with electronic displays to wow the non-shopper as to the latest in electronic gadgetry, hoping to make a non-shopper into an ongoing customer. Their goal is to make your shopping experience expedient—that is get you in quickly, help you find what you want (not always what you need), and check you out efficiently. To them, this is a Wow! shopping experience.
Have Appealing and Appropriate Atmosphere
EAGG and Skip’s have taken into account that their customers WANT YOU TO MEET THEIR EXPECTATIONS. To accomplish this effectively, there is always the issue of your facility. When you walk into a Skip’s store, the lighting, the colors, the music—all help to set the mood for the perfect shopping experience. You know that you’re just not going to be rushed to make a purchase.
EAGG is a bit different. Upon entering the store, an employee immediately greets you, and you see every sort of tech and entertainment feature known to man. You know that you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for—or what you didn’t know you were looking for. But if you need a knowledgeable guide to help you through the maze of modern day technology, there’s always a good well trained one close by.
Employees Who Are Accessible,
Knowledgeable, and Well-Trained
Employees, from the top to the bottom (remember it is the nickel an hour employee that most of us have direct contact with) are always central to the issue of customer service. But beyond having enough of them, and sometimes too many is dangerous, they have to be trained well enough to answer questions, but also are trained to listen. Employees who automatically provide a stock answer to every question aren’t providing a level of service, but are just automatons. Surveys of customers indicate that they want the employee to listen to them—really listen to them—before they respond.
One is always ready to talk to an EAGG employee about computers and TVs because they are very well trained, and since they don’t work on commission, they’ll tell you the straight scoop on TV’s, DVD players, and computers and other stuff in the store.
Customers also want to be able to easily identify an employee in the store, which means that how they dress is important. Think of other chains, and how their employees are dressed in store-identified shirts. This fact was driven home to me not too long ago when I walked into a store, wearing a red shirt. In a matter of two minutes, I was approached no less than five times by customers with a question.
How quickly they greet you once you enter the store is also important, and then they have to be able to distinguish whether you are a customer who wants help right away, or if you’d rather browse around alone. How many times have we been shadowed by an employee, when the only thing we want to do is look around? This is something that Skip’s has taken care of exceptionally well. Their sales people never hover, but they’re always there with a smile and if you need them, they’re never too far away. The invisible but present retail employee is the best one.
Examples: Companies That Believe in Customer Service
These aren’t the only companies doing a good job in their market and customer niche. Here are some other examples of companies that I believe are growing thanks to their belief in the gospel of great, if not perfect, customer service.
Whole Foods
Creating a unique niche of service
a gourmet and natural food store
Whole Foods uses service to distinguish themselves from their competitors. While their competitors slog it out trying to get by on razor thin profit margins, Whole Foods is able to increase their profits because they compete on the unique niche of service, not lower prices. Their loyal customer base looks for service and is willing to pay a little more for it. Where I live, their customers refer to them as “Whole Paycheck,” but customers keep coming back for more.
Their culture of service is also creating new opportunities for Whole Foods with the emergence of stores in many major metropolitan cities. While they have traditionally preferred stand-alone stores with large parking lots, they’re now building stores atop major residential developments in large cities. Urbanites, and suburbanites, seem to love the stores because of their wonderful selection and outstanding customer service. Developers love them because when Whole Foods perches atop their buildings, they are able to attract a higher income clientele to their projects.
It’s worked out great for Whole Foods. Not only do they get a successful store, but they also command “deals” from developers, which decreases their occupancy costs, and increases profits.
Arizona Tile
Let the customer do the walking
The Arizona Tile Company, as far as I know, is the largest independently owned US importer of ceramic/porcelain tile and natural stone slabs and other tiles. They have multiple locations that are spread across the western states and provide an amazing level of customer service.
Here’s my experience at one of their stores. When I walked into their beautiful location, there was coffee, tea, and water set out to sip on as I walked around their large showroom. Their sales staff immediately offered help, but left me alone to browse in peace and quiet, as I desired. Appealing music—no elevator or rock—played in the background. Want to look at the large granite slabs that will make up your kitchen counter? They’re more than happy to help you out, or let you wander around. Want samples? They’ll be happy to give you as many as you want. Want to come back again and again and get info and samples and tours of the slabs. No problem. They also use all kinds of materials in their floors, walls, even the bathrooms, and they have them labeled (with the name and the price per square foot) so you know exactly what the material will look like in your home. It’s one thing to look at a tile on a sample board, another to see it on the wall. They even have sample kitchens set up filled with appliances, so you can see what the materials look like next to your stove or refrigerator. They have huge photos blown up and mounted, so you can see what other materials look like both in and out of the house. The sales staff is very knowledgeable, but they don’t pressure you. They believe that they are there to help you make the purchase, not goad you into it.
Arizona Tile believes that providing outstanding service means more than just answering your questions, but in general, making the whole experience as pleasant and easy as possible.
Home Depot Design Centers
What a difference a concept makes
While no fan of the level of service provided at traditional Home Depot warehouse stores, their Expo Design Centers are something else. Located throughout the United States, there are over 50 stores scattered from Massachusetts to California. Their marketing materials say that they are ten specialty stores under one roof, selling everything from kitchens to outdoor furniture. Through the financial press, much has been written over the years about the parent company’s struggle to get this concept right. However, in the right markets, they have a winner here. Particularly positive is the no-pressure style of service that they provide throughout the store. They offer a high level of knowledgeable service. It’s not surprising to find sales people who have worked in the industry selling products for 15–20 years, before coming to Expo Design to sell those same items. As a result, their sales people know their stuff and apparently are encouraged to share their opinions about products (both pro and con) with you before you purchase.
The above examples are just a few companies that in my opinion believe in the value of moving toward excellent customer. But I may be wrong. These same companies may be bad customer examples in your experience. So it seems that customer service is a moving target that must be focused on continual improvement.
Wouldn’t it be great
if all customers loved us. Wow!
Case Study: Lawn & Garden, Inc. (LGI)
Evaluating customer service delivery
the quest for excellent customer service
Previously we’ve looked at examples of many aspects of customer service and the touch points to consider in the ongoing quest for excellent (not perfect) customer service. For even the best examples can be improved in a program of continuous improvement. This is done by analyzing every aspect and touch point of your own customer-service delivery to identify areas for improvement as well as those of your competitors and others to achieve best in class customer service. It is not an exercise to meet competitors’ levels of customer service but to surpass them—and not to become strictly less inefficient than others.
Standing still
is losing ground
Now it’s time to evaluate the level of customer service for a case study of the Lawn & Garden, Inc. (LGI). To perform such a case study analysis one must be honest, without rationalization, and without making excuses. While looking at the case study materials try to step back and imagine yourself as a not-very-important customer of this company. It’s a very good sign if you feel indignant at the phrase “not-very-important customer.” For every customer, no matter how small, is vitally important.
Small nuts
become large trees
Such an analysis, for your company or this case study becomes more useful if you are able to divide the company into its various business segments. And then analyze each segment as to its respective delivery of customer service. For instance, a small manufacturer might provide its products to the price sensitive market, the repetitive ordering market, and a more luxury upscale market as well as business segments for replacement parts and repairs and service. In the extreme sense, you might only service one customer segment, for example, you have a retail storefront in a tourist area, and close to 100% of your customers are visitors—new, one-time only shoppers. However, for most companies, they operate with various business segments, whether they recognize it or not.
Most businesses
are in a number of businesses
Segmenting the Customer Base
Most businesses, if they analyze their customer base, realize that they follow the standard 80–20 rule (i.e., the top 20% of the customer base is responsible for 80% of the business,)—in terms of gross sales and profits. Typically, it is a good suggestion to concentrate on that top 20% in developing the delivery of customer service, but not to neglect the other customers.
As an example, let’s look at a building materials manufacturing business, where the segments of the customer base might be as follows:
Customer Segment A
This group is really one large home center chain customer that is responsible for a significant percentage of 80% of total sales. The large chain is demanding, with very specific customer-service concerns and requirements. They are important enough that company needs to consider how customer-service delivery relates specifically to them—possibly a separate set of customer-service procedures. Size does count especially if you are making good profits from real sales.
Customer Segment B
This group consists mainly of a significant (approximately 25–30) number of large to medium traditional building materials customers. These are primarily building contractors where quality, timeliness are most significant as well as good competitive pricing. Although these customers are considered wholesale customers, they contribute well to the bottom line. While some of these customers have similar customer service needs, each such customer must also be considered as to their individual customer needs.
Customer Segment C
This group consists of a number of big roofing distributor customers—from 10 to 15. This is a competitive area as these customers are usually shopping price, as they believe that roofing materials are roofing materials regardless of the source. The company can attempt to surpass the competition on quality but this might not be that valuable to the customer.
A multiple year (i.e., 25 years) warranty may be important to the ultimate user but to the customer it is merely passed on—with the company bearing responsibility. However, timeliness can provide a competitive advantage by delivering the materials just in time for the customer and maintaining a flexible return policy (no questions asked?).
Customer Segment D
This group, smaller than desired, consists of the rest of the customer base. Some of these customers may use the company as a backup to their regular suppliers. What can we do to become their regular supplier by emphasizing customer service rather than merely increasing small periodic sales? Others are simply small customers trying to compete with the big guys. What can we do to keep them in business and ultimately make them a large quality customer? The key in both cases is the appropriate customer service.
Customer service
is for every customer
Groups A–C are the company’s ongoing and repetitive customers, accounting for the largest amount of revenues, and in most cases largest profit margins or real profits. Group D is the other 80% of the customer base that accounts for no more than 15% of the business. For each of these groups, you must also consider the related costs of servicing these customer groups. If your direct product costs, and functional costs (i.e., billing, accounts receivable, and collections) and customer costs (i.e., pre-sale, during sale, and product support, and after sale) costs exceed revenues, changes need to be made. If the one large customer in customer segment A provides 80% of your gross revenues but encompasses 90% of aggregate costs this might not be a good customer—but a costly and demanding one. The greater the sales, the greater is the actual loss. However, getting rid of such a customer before it can be replaced might be foolhardy as this customer consumes a major portion of your business and supports a large piece of your facilities and efforts.
It’s not a profit, until
all costs are considered
LGI Case Study—Part One
LGI is a small manufacturer of products for the lawn and garden industry. Founded three years ago, the company produces decorative copper and wood fountains, decorative copper home accents (candlesticks, wreaths, table centerpieces, etc.), and imports a line of silk water lilies. As a result of producing these somewhat specialty niche products, the company avoids competing directly with the much larger companies that dominate the central part of the lawn and garden industry. LGI has sales of about 15 million U.S. dollars per year and competes predominantly with other similarly sized companies.
The company is run as a small manufacturing business, and has three full-time outside sales people, one of which functions as director of sales. The owner of the company is also the plant manager.
The company sells to the following market segments:
1. Home Center’s
LGI sells to one very large national home center and to five different regional home centers.
2. Distributors
LGI sells products to ten different distributors scattered around the country that sell LGI products to lawn and garden centers in their markets. These distributors all are “stocking distributors” which means that they purchase products from LGI and are then responsible for delivering those products to their lawn and garden customers who eventually sell the product to the end-user consumer.
3. Catalogues
LGI currently sells to a number of lawn and garden catalogue companies. When the consumer purchases an item through the catalogues, LGI drop ships it directly to them.
4. Direct sales to small gift stores and lawn and garden stores across the country.
These relatively small customers purchase product directly from LGI. The company reaches these customers through direct mail, sales calls, advertising, and through the 20–30 trade shows that the company participates in each year.
It is usually company management, hopefully with input from operations personnel that can judge what works best for the business. The company can create customer segment groupings as management thinks best, with as many segments as they believe is needed. They might separate customers by retail versus wholesale, by type of product and sales volume, or separate categories for new customers and existing customers—each segment having different customer-service requirements.
Based on the LGI case study materials, the customer groupings might be as follows:
A. Home Center’s–Large
B. Home Center’s–Regional
C. Distributors/wholesalers/jobbers
D. Catalogue companies
E. Small gift stores and lawn and garden stores—direct sales
Based on an analysis of these identified LGI business segments, the estimates for profitability and revenues are shown the following table.
|
Segment name |
Percentage of revenues % |
Percentage of profitability % |
|
A. Home center’s-large |
15 |
15 |
|
B. Home center’s-regional |
5 |
17 |
|
C. Distributors |
45 |
33 |
|
D. Catalogues |
20 |
25 |
|
E. Gift stores/lawn & garden |
15 |
10 |
Now that the business segments are defined together with their contributions to the business, a list of areas and related touch points can be developed that relate to how to provide customer service to each of these customer groups. For our case study purposes, we will consider developing an effective customer service plan related to the customer service Touch-Points previously discussed. To refresh you, a touch point is any point of contact at which a customer or potential customer comes into contact with your business.
Looking back at the list of touch points listed in this book, we will provide examples below of the types of Touch-Points that should be considered by LGI. Some Touch-Points are vital to LGI’s business and some aren’t extremely important.
Once LGI has identified the Touch-Points to consider for each customer segment, a good idea is to rate each customer category in how well LGI is doing in two critical areas:
1. Importance to the customer and
2. How well the customer service is delivered
Decide on a rating system (i.e., using a scale of 1–10; 1 being the lowest and 10 being the very highest). When you’re rating LGI’s business, try to see it through a customer’s eyes.
Now before we assign ratings in each Touch-Point element, let’s consider Part Two of the LGI Case Study.
LGI Case Study—Part Two
LGI does not have a phone answering service, but instead has a dedicated person there ready to receive calls from Monday to Friday from 8 am to 6 pm. LGI has a detailed training program that begins with an orientation program on the new hire’s first day on the job. Employees are continually offered opportunities to improve themselves through both in-house training programs and classes at local colleges, which LGI pays for. However, recently there was a push made to unionize the shop, and while it failed, it created tension within the company between management and the labor staff, which has yet to be eliminated.
The company believes that the internet will one day replace many of its traditional retail gift customers, so it has developed a web site that a trade group rated as being **** for similar small-sized companies.
The Home Center (let’s call it ABC Home Center) is continually asking that LGI upgrade its in-store displays, something LGI has yet to do. ABC is also requesting that the company develop a brochure exclusively for their stores within the next six months. They are also requiring changes in LGI’s packaging, as the current dark brown boxes provide no information to potential customers of the fountain products. Its “all brown” packaging on the silk water lilies, also do not tell customers how to use them, and as such, must also be changed.
The ABC Home Center is very pleased with LGI’s assembly instructions, and in fact, the ABC buyers use LGI’s instructions as an example for other vendors to follow. It is also rated in the top 5% class of vendors in regard to shipping to ABC, something on which LGI’s management prides itself.
LGI has a “no questions asked” return policy, and its prices are generally considered to be at the forefront in the industry, providing an excellent mix of quality and value.
Touch-Point Evaluation
Customer Grouping
|
Home center large |
||
|
Importance to customers |
How well it is delivered |
|
|
Facility: |
||
|
A. Parking lot |
1 |
8 |
|
B. Signage |
1 |
6 |
|
C. Phone service |
9 |
8 |
|
Employees: |
||
|
D. Employee training |
8 |
8 |
|
E. Employee attitude |
8 |
4 |
|
Operations: |
||
|
F. Operating hours |
9 |
8 |
|
Sales and marketing: |
||
|
G. Web site |
3 |
8 |
|
H. Display and materials |
9 |
4 |
|
Product: |
||
|
I. Assembly instructions |
9 |
9 |
|
J. Packaging |
8 |
3 |
|
K. Shipping |
9 |
10 |
|
L. Return policy |
8 |
9 |
|
M. Pricing |
8 |
8 |
Plotting the Touch-Points
Now, taking those values, we’re going to plot them on a grid with an axis for Importance to the Customer and an axis for How Well It Is Delivered.
Quadrant map.
Now that we’ve plotted the Touch-Points on the axis above, let’s look at the four quadrants and see what they mean.
Quadrant A: This is the happy quadrant. If something falls here it means that it is important to your customer, and you’re doing well at it.
Quadrant B: Imagine this quadrant with each plotted point flashing yellow. Take heed, beware, caution as these are Touch-Points that are important to your customer, but you aren’t doing a good job in those areas. Take a look at these; they should be high priority for improvement.
Quadrant C: This is the good news, bad news quadrant. The good news is that you are doing a great job in these Touch-Points, the bad news is that your customers don’t care. The trick here is to try and attract customers who will care about this category. ABC Home Centers did just that: they had a store design with bright lights and wide aisles—but their typical lumberyard-type customer couldn’t care less about it. So they broadened their marketing and reached out to women. The women thought the bright lights and wide aisles were very important. ABC took a non-factor, and turned it into a huge customer service plus. Maybe you can’t always use your Quadrant C Touch-Points in that way. Then you need to look closely at them and make sure that you’re not putting a lot of time, effort, and money into those unimportant categories.
Quadrant D: Just forget about this quadrant. Here the Touch-Points don’t matter to your customers, and you’re not very good at them anyway!
LGI’s Touch-Point Review
If we look at the axis above that deals with the Home Center-Large customer grouping, we see that LGI is doing pretty well. They have seven Touch-Points (C, D, F, I, K, L, M) that fall into the A Quadrant. They’re doing well in those areas, although in the case of their Operating Hours (F), they have to be careful because it’s dangerously close to falling out of what we called, The Happy Quadrant.
LGI has three Touch-Points (E, H, J) that are in the B Quadrant, and management needs to address these right away. These are the Touch-Points that are important to their Home Center customer, but LGI isn’t doing a good job in delivering in those areas.
Looking at the C Quadrant, LGI has three Touch-Points (A, B, G) that fall in that area. These are things that the company does well, but for whatever reason, aren’t terribly important to the customer. In the case of signage and parking lot, it’s understandable. But in the case of the web site, if LGI feels it has a great web site, then they should make an effort to find a way to make it important to the employees of the Home Center and their customers. One way it could be made more important is to use the web site as a tool to train the ABC Home Center’s employees on LGI products. One of the major problems Home Center’s have is a high turnover rate. Knowing this, LGI could build into the web site some particularly helpful training information that would give new Home Center employees all they need to know so they can confidently sell the LGI product to the Home Center’s customers.
LGI might next go on to plotting the other four customer groupings to show them what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong for each grouping.
Looking at Your Competitors
Now that LGI management knows how they are doing in terms of customer service, it is a good practice to determine how they compare to their competitors. Let’s face it; we’ve always got an eye out to see what’s going on with our competitors—so we may as well take a hard look. If you know your competitors’ customer services strengths and weaknesses, it can give you a real competitive advantage. Use the same procedures as above, but this time fill out the form as if you’re a customer of your competition.
Don’t just match the incompetence
of your competition,
but surpass them
Conclusion
In this chapter we looked at two different but similar companies—EAGG and Skip’s—one a fairly new “with it” electronics retailer and the other an older steady semi-upscale general department type store. While the two businesses are not the same, we can learn quite a bit looking at other businesses as related to our quest for excellent customer service. By keeping our heads in our own business and ignoring other businesses out there, the only things we learn are those that we already believe we know. The more different businesses we investigate the greater the opportunity for learning customer best practices that can be incorporated into your business’s customer-service practices—on the road to excellent customer service.
It is not what we know that usually gets us in trouble,
but what we don’t know,
or what we know but it is just not so
In addition, we looked at three other companies that I believe exemplify good, if not excellent, customer service—Whole Foods, Arizona Tile, and Home Depot Design Centers. While these companies may not specifically pertain to your business, it is always advisable to learn from others in our quest for excellent customer service. The more examples of what is good we can pack in our customer service toolbox, the greater the opportunity to enhance the delivery of excellent customer service.
One can learn from others
if one can unlearn from themselves
We also looked at a case study of LGI to help us understand how to analyze a business’s delivery of customer service. By segmenting the customer base, we can determine customer’s needs for the different business segments within the overall business. Keep in mind that most businesses are in more than one business and each of these segments may dictate a different type and level of customer service. One way to evaluate the providing of customer service by business segment is to evaluate the delivery of touch points by business segment as to the degree of success for each one. In addition, it is always helpful to perform a similar analysis of your competitor’s touch points to help you learn what you need to do to not only match your competitor’s touch point by touch point but to surpass them for each touch point.
Customer service is not meant
to match our competitors
or to become less inefficient
but to surpass our competitors
touch point by touch point
on the road to customer service excellence
Strive for perfection
But settle for excellence