Great Customer Service is All About the Details

The highest margins that are available today to a business, are to be had when you and your team can deliver value consistently over and over.

There is tremendous pressure on leaders and businesses to deliver ever-increasing revenue and profits.  Talent to do this is harder to find.  Customers seem to be harder to please.

Yet, there are businesses that are able to consistently retain top talent, satisfy customers and grow their bottom line.

Organizations like: Netflix, Airbnb, Google, Apple, Aldi, Disney, Zappos, Four Seasons, Southwest Airlines and Clearly are able to consistently deliver growth and… have a long line-up of talent that want to be part of their teams.

How do they do it?

They stress over the details.  All of them.

They start by building a culture that is aligned with who they are and why customers buy from them.  They stress over the people they hire.  Looking deeply (and slowly) for people that align with their core values and purpose.

Then they train them extensively on the little tiny details. The Four Seasons Hotel organization trains their new team members for six-weeks before anyone can be customer-facing…they even include a two-hour workshop in their new employee training on ‘how to close a door.’  Yes, two-hours on how to close a door.

How do they deliver great customer service?

In the consistently great businesses, they obsess over every step in the customer journey.  Touch-points along the way where customers experience your product or service.  Some experts say there may be as many as 72 customer touch-points with a business.  Everything from Social Media, traditional marketing, websites, sales, operations, customer service to invoices.  72 touch-points.

1. Have you identified all the possible places your organization touches the customer?
2. Have you identified how your business responds in each of the touch-points?
3. Have you built a scripted response?
4. Have you trained your team on how to deliver in each case?
5. Have communicated over and over (and over) again?
6. Have you developed a way to measure customer satisfaction so that you don’t find out about how you’re doing from sites like www.glassdoor.com?

Business has never been as hard as is it today.  The winners will be the ones that get it that talent is attracted to organizations that are tuned into serving employees and customers better than anyone… consistently.

Robert Murray is a Vancouver, BC based Business Strategy Consultant, #1 Best Selling Author, International Keynote Speaker, and TEC Top Speaker of the Year for 2018. For further advice, insight and inspiration on how to unlock your inner leader, follow Robert on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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