Ep 195 | Commit to a Better Customer Service Experience

Thank you for joining me today. It's Brian Gubernick, and welcome to the No Days Off podcast, where we believe that every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. Let's get into it. Today I want to get better at business, and I want to do so by talking about great customer service. Those of us listening to this podcast, part of the No Days Off Nation, you're all in some sort of business that requires customer service, customer experience being, you know, at the top or as best as you can possibly make it. Whether you're selling a product, whether you're selling a service, we all want our customers to have a great experience, one that they rave about to their friends, their family, their peers. Over this holiday season, I've had the opportunity to frequent a number of different businesses as I've been shopping, uh, had a number of different experiences as I've been online or I've been on the phone with different companies. And I've had some really, really solid experiences. And frankly, I had some really lackluster ones. And so today I want to talk about what I think makes for a great customer experience or what we as business owners can be doing to improve the customer journey of the experience of those that work with us. Okay. First and foremost, the very first thing that comes to mind for me when I think about understanding the customer experience, we've got to understand our customers. Now that seems pretty obvious, but I think it's neglected. We say understand your customer, but do you really take the time to develop a deep understanding of your customers' needs, of your customers' preferences, or more specifically, your customers' pain points. Why are they coming to you? What are you aiming to solve for with your service or your product? I think those that provide a great customer service experience foundationally, like baseline level customer experience, those cus— those companies have to have an understanding as to why their customers even showing up at their doors to begin with. So why are we— why is the customer there? What do they prefer? And most importantly, what is their pain point? Why did they show up at your door and say, hey, I need your product or I need your service? Now we can use things like customer surveys or feedback forms or just analytics, but I'll tell you what, one of the best ways to understand your customer is to ask a number of questions when they arrive in your store or when you engage with them on the phone. Understand what their pain point is by asking great questions. And great questions are open-ended questions. So not questions that have yes or no responses, but those questions that elicit a real response. You know, what is it that you're trying to solve for today? Tell me why you arrived here today. Tell me, you know, what I can do for you today to make for a great experience. These are good questions to be asking to identify why your customer's even there. In doing so, as a company, as you start to gather more intel on all of the people coming to your store or coming to use your service, you can really kind of create these buyer personas. In other words, you can identify who your ideal customers are. Then you could start to tailor your products, tailor your services, even tailor the way you communicate to meet the specific requirements of the customer that's continually showing up at your door. So again, being inquisitive, Understanding your customer not only allows for you to provide a better experience on the front end, but also allows you to gather data and determine products and services that you're going to offer and the way you're going to communicate those things based on the type of client you have, you know, always showing up. Now, next, as it pertains to customer experience, be helpful, be prompt, and give support throughout all the various touchpoints or channels that the customer experiences in interacting with your company. So for example, if someone's calling into your company, what is that helpful prompt response they're getting? Now, what if they find you online and there's a chat? What is that response? How helpful is it? People are coming to you because they want help. They don't want to be overwhelmed. They just want to be led towards a solution. So your job from a customer service perspective, in my opinion, is to lead people to their desired result. So along with this, I think we have to train our representatives, our employees, to understand what customer service truly entails. And we have to train our people to be more knowledgeable. To be more empathetic, and to especially be solution-oriented. I want to focus on solution-oriented right now for a moment, because in my experiences over the past couple of weeks during my holiday shopping, I found solution-based companies or individuals I was, I was dealing with to be so much better to work with than those that were not solution-oriented. We've all had these experiences when we're working with individuals who, who say, you know what, let me ask you a few questions. I'm sure I could solve for this. I can make a few phone calls. And they jump on it immediately. Whether or not they have the right answers, irrelevant. The simple fact that they're solution-oriented really aids us as a customer. How about the opposite experience though? How about when they direct you elsewhere? They say, I don't know, without a follow-up. I mean, how do you feel about that company? It makes for a very poor experience. So our people have to be— our employees have to be knowledgeable, empathetic, but they especially have to be solution-oriented. One of the last things that, you know, I've got a couple of things, but one of the last things I'd like to talk around here, a personalized experience. What do I mean when I say that? I like to be addressed by name. I like to know that people are hearing what I'm saying and they get to know me. I want them to recommend a product or a service or a path or a solution based on, you know, my history with them. You know, even if I'm going to a store like a, like a Viore or a Lululemon where they have, you know, my, my purchase history, I would love if they had the time to understand my history and how they can help me a bit more. I even like when they customize marketing messages to my email based on my history. To me, That, that kind of gives me a curated experience. It's curated based on my personal relationship or what feels like a personal relationship with that company. Now they're just using data, but they're making things easier for me. And I think that ease, hitting that easy button, is critical when it comes to a great customer experience. So I think about personalization in the way that they treat me, the way I interact with them, but also as it pertains to the website and the emails they send and all the other communication. That they leverage, the channels they leverage to communicate with me, it makes me feel valued. It makes me feel understood. The last thing that comes to mind for me, and I kind of mentioned the easy button, but when it comes to customer experience, I think that ease of use is huge, right? I want it easy for me to find information. I want it easy to navigate a website. I want it easy to walk into the store and be able to find exactly what it is I'm looking for. I want it user-friendly. I want it simple. I want it smooth. The more energy it takes for me to do something, the less likely from a customer, you know, as a customer, the less likely it is for me to purchase that product or that service. Again, ease of use. And that's just the world in which we live. We have so many things at our fingertips, and I'm no different than anybody else. I get so used to the efficiency that I want ease of use. So as it pertains to customer experience, all the business owners listening today, I want you to think, gosh, how do I make this easier for my client? What is the— or my prospect? What is the easiest path? What is the path of least resistance here? How do I simplify it? Think about all the steps you have in your business. What could be eliminated that really doesn't hold value for the customer, but you've baked it in because you're married to the process? What could you eliminate to create even more efficiency? It's a great question to ask. So in wrapping this up, I think the focusing question for, for everybody today, because we're all in the customer service game, how can we amp up, you know, our customer experience or what it is we provide to our customers? Be it a service or a product-based business, it's irrelevant. How can we enter this new year and give our clients just a slight bit more of an experience so that they enjoy the process and they rave about it to others? Just making someone's life easier, just by leading them to a desired result without a headache. And by helping them, or, or being, I should say, more understanding as the company as to their needs and be attentive to those needs, it makes for such a better experience. So the focusing question for all of us: what can we do right now with our systems, with our company, to improve the customer journey just a slight bit more? I think it's something to contemplate. It's a really important thing. And as we roll into a new year, Let's start it off right. That's all I have for you today. The No Days Off Podcast. Thank you so much for listening. And remember, every single day brings a new opportunity to get better. So let's get after it.