Posts tagged as:

Customer Service

Trust Shouldn’t be a Missing Ingredient

by Daria Steigman on January 7, 2013

Ingredients Laid Out for BakingThe lines were long, and getting longer.

No surprise, really, as there were only two open checkout counters in the grocery store–one for customers with 15 items or fewer, the other for everyone else. As I stood there, I remembered that the last time I got stuck in the store the same thing happened. Only that time the store manager told me when I suggested they open more lines that it was the checkout clerks’ fault for not asking for help. The manager, I might add, who was standing at the front of the store ignoring her staff–and her customers.

My grocery bag had 4 of one item, 3 of a second item, and 1 of one item. (Yes, there’s a reason I’m telling you this.)

As I was waiting my turn, I asked the clerk if he could scan an item and cue in the multiple of numbers to save time for everyone. His response: Everything has to go on the conveyor belt because you never know when security might be watching.

Huh?

Trust shouldn’t be a missing ingredient in your business.

I don’t know if the store thinks its customers are all thieves or if its employees are giving food away for free. What I do know is that, unlike this store, they are empowering no one to make the experience better for everyone.

Photo by Andrea Goh (Flickr).

Have you grabbed a free copy of Your Social Media Checklist? Download it today to get 9 tips for being findable and attracting the right customers for your business.

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The Crankiness is Universal, But…

by Daria Steigman on June 20, 2012

Clock: Losing Precious TimeMy friend Mike Schaffer was an hour late to work this morning. Sadly, that’s not unusual (and not because Schaffer is lazy, passive aggressive, or hates his alarm clock).

The problem is the city’s train system. Washington’s Metro  system was poorly build, and it is managed even worse. So the line employees get all the grief, and many of the “white collar” staff seem little more than snarky and incompetent.

This exchange is typical:

 

Really, that’s the best response? What happened to “I feel your pain?”

There’s a bigger problem: While the crankiness is universal, the impact is not always the same.

An hour late for some people is an inconvenience. But for others, it’s lost income.

 

I don’t have advice for WMATA’s management team because, frankly, I don’t think they’d listen. But  my takeways here are (1) snarkiness does nothing to diffuse a situation; instead it makes it harder for your front-line employees to do their jobs; and (2) the crankiness may be universal, but every customer’s pain point is not the same. Washington’s transit authority may have a relatively captive audience, but your customers have other options.

Photo by mRio (Flickr).

Have you grabbed a free copy of Your Social Media Checklist? Download it today to get 9 tips for being findable and attracting the right customers for your business.

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13 Ways to Wow Your Customers

by Daria Steigman on May 21, 2012

Wow!Sometimes the best customer experiences happen by serendipity.

I recently pooled my Amazon gift cards to purchase the complete 5-DVD collection of the Best TV Show Ever. When it arrived, I put disk one into the DVD player I rarely use with huge anticipation. Then. Nothing. Happened. (Yup, the DVD player wasn’t working.)

So I headed over to my local Best Buy. I walked in, asked for help, and said I just wanted a basic DVD player so I could watch one TV series.

Which one? asked the sales associate.

Babylon 5.

Turns out he loves Babylon 5 too. So does his colleague, and they talk about it all the time. So the three of us stood around for five minutes comparing episodes and talking about the brilliance of J. Michael Straczynski’s vision.

I walked out of Best Buy smiling.

Wowing your customers should happen every day.

In What’s Your Purple Goldfish, Stan Phelps argues that companies need to stop spending so much time on acquiring new customers and spend more of it wowing the ones you have. He identifies 12 ways to wow your customers, including  throw ins, guarantees, ways to ease the pain of waiting in line, and more.

There’s a 13th way to wow your customers: encouraging your employees to be themselves. If you hire wisely, they will bring your brand to life.

Photo by Eric Ferdinand (Flickr).

Have you grabbed a free copy of Your Social Media Checklist? Download it today to get 9 tips for being findable and attracting the right customers for your business.

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Don’t Cheap Yourself Out of a Customer

by Daria Steigman on April 23, 2012

One More (5-cent) Check to Solve a Tacky Brand ProblemI’ve been trying to get “free” checks from PNC Bank for six weeks. Free, apparently, is a very relative term.

PNC Bank has lost a lot.

Here’s a brief chronology of what happened:

1. Mid-March: Call 800 number to order more checks. On hold, on hold, on hold, automated information, more automated info, more automated info, transferred to a person. Person’s job is to try to get me to pay for expedited shipping (no thanks), shipping with tracking (no thanks). Warns me that checks might get lost.

2. Hang up phone. Figure I’ll never see checks.

3. Mid-April: Hmm… checks never arrive.

4.  Mid-April: Local branch manager puts hold on all the checks that were “lost” and reorders checks–jumping numbers.

5. Mid-April: Receive automated letter from PNC Bank saying they won’t send me new checks until I have one more check processed. Seriously, they wrote:

“Based on your current check usage, we estimate that a check reorder will be placed for you once 1 [sic] more checks are processed from this account from the time this letter was mailed to you.”

6. I immediately write a check for cash for $0.05–and go online to look at moving my accounts to USAA.

PNC Bank does one thing very right (and it’s not corporate communications). It invests in its employees.

So I’m in my local bank branch asking them to pry loose my new checks and getting ready to cash my $0.05 check.

They get it. The branch manager isn’t in yet, but her colleague whom I’ve dealt with before completely understands my frustration–from the upsell effort the first time to the auto-generated letter that has me shopping around for a new bank. (And he mentions his own bang-head-on-desk problem with a mobile company.) He looks at my account, and guess what? Apparently my checks are in the mail this time. We’ll see.

The banker realizes I’m a valuable customer. I just wish his bank did.

That PNC Bank invests in its employees might just have saved them a customer. But my feeling about the brand has changed completely. This “free checks” saga has cost me time (which equals money) and a lot of hassle. But it’s cost PNC Bank a valued customer. I may stay (undecided), but I don’t like them anymore.

Every touch point is part of your brand experience. Don’t devalue that by spending a lot of time, money, and effort to be cheap.

Have you grabbed a free copy of Your Social Media Checklist? Download it today to get 9 tips for being findable and attracting the right customers for your business.

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Forget Pricing and Focus on Customer Experience

by Daria Steigman on April 9, 2012

What Swimsuit Shopping Can Teach You About What Customers WantI went swimsuit shopping the other day. (Stick with me, I promise this post is not really about swimsuit shopping.)

The first store specialized in utilitarian swimsuits, which on paper made sense as I was looking for something to actually swim in. But many of the suits looked like overstock rejects and the staff was poorly trained. For example, lap suits are typically marked in European sizing even in the U.S. market. But the staff didn’t know what the equivalences were and took a couple of minutes to locate a conversion chart. I tried on a few swimsuits and realized that this was not the place for me.

The second store specialized in fashion swimwear. A lot of the suits were very cute. When I told the salesclerk that I was looking for something I could swim in, she warned that her suits were fashion-focused and priced as such. She said she would hate to have me spend a lot of money and have the suit ruined by chlorine. She recommended another store. (Unfortunately, it was the store where I’d started my search.) I liked her immediately.

Since store one hadn’t worked out so well, I gave the clerk a couple of parameters and asked if she had anything that might fit. She showed me something that was close but not quite right, and then I spotted three potential options. And she knew her suits, telling me that one ran small and I would need the larger size.

Two of the three suits I tried on fit great, and five minutes later I was out the door with a new swimsuit.

Companies can focus too much on one aspect of their business, be it their niche or their pricing. But good customer service and a good customer experience will often trump everything else.

Photo by Jim Bahn (Flickr). 

Have you grabbed a free copy of Your Social Media Checklist? Download it today to get 9 tips for being findable and attracting the right customers for your business.

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