Get your customers to form a habit

The New Year is typically the time when we resolve to give something up (looking at the date of the last post I wondered if I had temporarily given up blogging!) but for some businesses it’s time to think about making customers form a habit – with you.

I was struck by this thought recently

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Getting the basics right: welcome!

Superior customer service is largely about knowing what the basic elements of good service are – and delivering them consistently and well. A couple of examples from last week’s family holiday in Yorkshire illustrate how making people feel welcome sets the right tone for a good customer experience.

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Wow! 1) Getting the basics right

This week’s mini-series deals with the idea of the Wow! experience – literally an experience that makes you go ‘Wow! That was great!’ Later in the week we’ll look at the Wow! Awards which contain the most comprehensive examples, in the UK at least. First,  I wanted to share my own recent Wow! that shows that sometimes it’s the little things – the basics, you might say – that make a customer experience superior.

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Be a great customer: give the gift of feedback

I can’t hear the expression ‘the gift of feedback’ without hearing a slightly sarcastic tone of voice probably because I have heard it used in that fashion to refer to feedback that’s un-diplomatic, too blunt or just plain rude. However, for any organisation committed to superior customer service, encouraging and dealing effectively with feedback is one of the most powerful things to drive improvement. I’m continuing to provide feedback to organisations that I deal with and will share the best examples on this blog. Here’s one that illustrates some good practice.

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The customer’s role in superior service

The discussions on superior service examples yielded a detailed response from management consultant Jane Northcote (www.janenorthcote.com) whose take on superior service recognises that it’s a two-way transaction. Jane writes:

Customer service is traditionally regarded as an attribute of a company: Waitrose provides ‘good’ customer service, an electronics discount  store provides ‘bad’ customer service. Equally, however, it is true that customer service is an attribute of the customer.  Some people experience good customer service, and others bad, even from the same organisation. Why is this?

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