What We Learned from 200+ Car Dealer Service Department Mystery Shops Our team has conducted over 200 service mystery shops so far this year, and the great news is most were handled properly. Our shops included phone calls, chats, contact forms, and service schedulers – all with the goal of efficiently setting a service appointment […]
Great Leadership & The Customer Experience We debated including a list of leadership traits in Ridiculously Simple Customer Experience because so many ineffective managers are looking for shortcuts. There are no shortcuts to becoming a great leader. By listing the traits of great leaders, we run the risk of those who need these lessons most […]
Customer Experience Series: The Role of Leadership We began the When You Screw Up… post from this series with a lesson from one of Steve’s former bosses. A man with integrity. Someone who made sure the company he owned always kept their word, even when it cost him money. That’s leadership. He set the customer […]
7 Traits of a Great CSR: The Customer Experience Series Perhaps your business – because of its size or structure or services/products offered – requires some level of reactive customer service in the form of customer service representatives (CSRs). This doesn’t mean you can’t become a customer-first company. There are plenty of customer-first companies employing […]
Customer Experience Series: When You Screw Up… … and you will screw up (everyone does) … you solve it! Steve once worked for a company where the owner told him, “Even when it costs me money, we always keep our word.” While the owner was a folksy guy with lots of old adages at the […]
Delivering a Great Customer Experience Might be Easier than You Think Just Don’t Screw It Up Sometimes, all it takes is not screwing something up to create a great customer experience. We’ve written throughout this series that Chick-fil-A’s reputation for delivering a great customer experience is not about solving issues, it’s about avoiding issues in […]
Live Long and Prosper: Creating Lifelong Customer Relationships “Live long and prosper.” First Officer Spock, USS Enterprise, circa 1967. Rest assured; this excerpt from Ridiculously Simple Customer Experience is not about the television character Leonard Nimoy made famous in the 1960s. As only casual viewers of the multiple Star Trek series and movies, we’re not […]
How You Treat Your Employees Dictates How They Will Treat Your Customers Excuse the crude language, but there’s a saying you may have heard: “Crap rolls downhill.” We like to add the impact on the customer experience to this saying by amending it to: “Crap rolls downhill all the way to the customer.” Telling your […]
Improving the Customer Experience via Real Reputation Management As you read this post or embark on your own reputation management strategy, it’s important to keep one reality top of mind: The best way to manage negative online reviews is to never receive one. And although companies selling reputation management services will argue their approach is […]
Customer Experience: What to do When You Get Slammed Online Reviews matter. While an irrational or humorous one-star review of the Grand Canyon likely won’t dissuade anyone from visiting Grand Canyon National Park, a single one-star review of a local business could have a major influence on those who rely on reviews to determine where […]
How to Handle an Angry Customer Angry customers are a fact of life. You may be familiar with a Ben Franklin quote that ends with, “…nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” We’d like to amend this to include the Karen’s we face in today’s world to, “…nothing can be said […]
My Pleasure: How Two Little Words Can Improve the Customer Experience If you’ve ever purchased something at Chick-fil-A restaurant and thanked the cashier, you heard, “My pleasure,” as his or her reply. “Quick: We just need to teach all employees to say, ‘my pleasure’ instead of, ‘you’re welcome!’” If only it were that easy. (Creating […]
The Customer Experience and the Phone Yes, some people still use their phones for things other than just texting, social media, and games. How your team handles inbound customer calls is often an opportunity that gets overlooked for some otherwise well-meaning businesses. If you’re wondering how this valuable skillset could ever be overlooked, consider that […]
First Impressions Matter: Starting a Great Customer Experience on the Right Foot There’s a sign you may have seen on the front door of some establishments (mostly restaurants and independent auto repair garages) that sets customer expectations early in a friendly, tongue-in-cheek manner. It reads: We offer three kinds of service: good, cheap, and fast; […]
Understanding Today’s Customer to Create a Great Experience Every Time If you’re committed to becoming a CX juggernaut, it’s important to understand today’s customers versus the ones your industry served in the past. Simply put, today’s customers: Are more demanding. Have shorter attention spans. Are less tolerant. Have more knowledge about your products, you, and […]
Exceeding Expectations: Creating a Great Customer Experience Every Time Exceeding expectations is certainly easier when you and your team are allowed to set or reset what customers should expect. However, the opportunity to underpromise is not always available or easy; and it shouldn’t drive your overall strategy for becoming a CX juggernaut. In fact, customer […]
The Infamous Overpromise: The Most Avoidable Driver of Bad Customer Experiences There is a subtlety to properly managing expectations that some people just don’t understand. Every competent dog groomer, auto mechanic, barber, plumber, electrician, etc. that we’ve ever stopped using could not manage expectations properly. These otherwise well-meaning and (as we wrote) competent tradespeople continually […]
Improving Customer Communication: Nebulous Term or Primary Driver of Improved Customer Experience? Given that the cause of most customer service issues stem from misaligned expectations, and that customer-first companies both manage expectations and keep their customers informed, you might have concluded (correctly) that the successes or failures of your customer experience efforts depend largely on […]
Keeping Customers Informed: How Realigning Customer Expectations Drives Greater Customer Satisfaction Managing customer expectations is not just about setting them properly, it’s also about realigning the customer’s expectations as the situation warrants. Think of this as a series of minor course corrections in the customer’s mind – keep you informed, the third deliverable of customer-first […]
Viewing Your Business Through Your Customers’ Eyes If you read the earlier posts in this series, you already know that customer-first companies: Make “it” easy Manage expectations Keep you informed Keep their word In the last post, we learned that becoming a customer-first company (when your definition of good enough meets or exceeds the consumer’s […]