One Size Fits One – a Lesson in Online Customer Service
I was actually pretty happy with your customer service, up to the point where you asked me to take a survey about your customer service. – Bill Maher
By now, you must have analyzed your holiday sales data to figure out what went right (and wrong) during your busiest season. So if you don’t mind me asking – how did you do? Did your ecommerce site crash under the weight of higher traffic? Did your order fulfillment team pick and pack the right products, to the right people, on time? Did your contact center get inundated with calls and sky-high hold times? What is your data telling you about your retail operations?
As customers become less brand loyal and more demanding than ever, retailers can quickly get the impression that they’re not getting customer service right, period. If you ask for feedback in the form of a survey, chances are you will end up miffing some of your customers. But if you don’t? Well, then someone somewhere will probably be upset about that, too. Same goes for your shipping and return policies, contact center interactions, and quirky marketing promotions – every well-intentioned move seems to drum up customer ire from someone. So what will really make customers happy?
“Excellent customer service” might be the right answer, however ambiguous that answer may be. According to American Express’ survey on customer service released last May, nearly two-thirds of those surveyed believe companies are not paying enough attention to customer service. Almost 78% of Americans say they will cancel an order if issues arise with a retailer’s customer service team, while almost 60% would take their business elsewhere (aka, to one of your competitors!). Not only do customers always want to be right, but they’re willing to pay more to ensure it – in fact, they’ll pay up to 13% more for the same product if it means getting treated better by an online retailer’s service team.
As you streamline your customer service team for 2012, here are some considerations to keep in mind:
- Customer service is a business function: Retailers now view customer relationship management as an investment in business growth, similar to sales and marketing. Makes sense, considering consumers are twice as likely to socially pass on a bad service experience as they are a good one. So let keeping the customer happy permeate every part of your business model!
- Focus on hiring people with the right mindset: While retailers are doing everything possible to draw in customers via creative marketing messages, promotions, free shipping etc., getting the right people with a customer-centric mindset will turn good service into excellent service. That’s why retailers have already started adding “customer experience” executives to their teams.
- Consider a customer from all his behavioral aspects: Your customer’s physical location is just one contributor to his shopping behavior. Consider his temporal (having a baby, moved to a new city), individual (sports enthusiast, avid reader) and cultural (race, religion, lifestyle) interests and needs when creating campaigns with a personal appeal.
While it might sound trite to say your people make the difference, they actually do! For 65% of those surveyed, excellent customer service means friendly representatives who solved their problems quickly. At Fifth Gear, we treat our client’s customers as our own – the way any outsourced fulfillment provider worth their salt should!
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