Is great service a part of your brand?

Every contact counts.

Ever found yourself standing in line at a bank or store watching the people behind the counter chatting to each other about their social lives, previous customers, or completing a task…while you stand there waiting to be acknowledged? Ever have a problem with an account, and have the person on the phone tell you you must have done something wrong? Ever spend what seems like endless minutes working through a voice-response-unit trying to find the option to speak to a human?

Could your brand have any of these moments for your customers? Better find out. Undercover boss has the right idea- go in, and experience what’s really happening. Do it often. You’ll learn not only what is going wrong for your customers, but what obstacles may exist for the staff. Talk to your sales staff and customer service people. Listen in on the phones and observe experiences. Beyond that, you should actually be asking your customers- do the Net Promoter Survey and see if you’re where you want to be. Do some quick user testing and see what customers say about your site experience- you can do it in just a few minutes on Usertesting.com, and have results within hours.

It’s about making every moment count- top to bottom. If your brand and executives believe in great service, but your front-line customer service or sales people do not enthusiastically support and believe in it, it will not happen consistently and brilliantly. Customers need to feel acknowledged, heard, and understood. Your staff also wants to feel acknowledged, heard and understood. It takes empathy, engagement, and sensitivity, to deliver this in both directions. In his book, Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business, Danny Meyer sums it up nicely:  “Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel. It’s that simple, and it’s that hard”.