4 Pillars of delivering Customer Success

What does it take to deliver a successful customer service experience? Or, to put it differently, what does it take to deliver the kind of service that results in customer success? Fundamentally, when we talk of customer service we are talking about the realisation of 4 important pillars of a brand-empathy, empowerment, leverage and execution.

Empathy: Is the ability to put oneself in another’s shoe, finding a clear access to the context in which service is to be delivered and then finding the path of least resistance to deliver it to the customer. Unless the customer’s context is understood clearly by the customer facing brand custodian, any solution offered will appear insincere and shallow.

Empowerment: Empathy without empowerment is misdirected and empowerment without empathy is like having a solution in search of a problem. Empowerment is a powerful complement to empathy as it lends credibility to the action taken to resolve customer complaints. Through the eyes of the customer it makes the brand seem sincere, purposeful and possessing integrity.

Leverage: It is the ability of a brand owner to marshal his forces around a problem, form a crack team and providing the leadership to enrol team members around a common purpose, that of customer success. The most memorable example is that of mission control staff at Houston that worked to bring the Apollo 13 astronauts home from the brink of certain disaster.

Execution: None of the above aspects of service recovery to achieve customer success can work well without effective execution. It is the act of doing whatever it takes to ensure customer success with design, discipline and direction.

Customer Service Recovery-What's Your Story?

Everyone has a story to tell. A story that comes pouring out when the conversation is centred around customer service. Service experiences can turn a quiet person into a great raconteur. The more disconcerting the experience, more passionate and intense the story. Strangely, stories on positive service experiences are short and crisp and are not accompanied by the emotional intensity of the former. All it takes to bring out this outpouring of discontent is the simple question-What has been your most recent experience with your favourite brand? The story of a credit card that was issued after 1 year of application, a botched credit of a high value cheque, the airline refund that never came, the distasteful experience at your favourite fine dining restaurant, and the list goes on. If there is one experience that I have had consistently on asking this question, it is this-that everyone has a story to tell. A story with a definite villain-the big brand that broke your trust. I bet every one of us, at some point of time, have had a bad service experience which left us with a bad taste-a feeling of helplessness, a strong urge to go forth and switch to another brand. What is your first instinct when you are going through these bouts of emotions as a result of indifferent and bad service? Post the experience on Facebook, write a review on one of the top review websites, right? Wrong. The first thing on your mind is resolution to your problem and the last thing on your mind is seeking popularity through social media. Social media is your last resort when all else fails. You want your grievance to be resolved in the fastest possible manner by someone who is empowered to take a decision. Service is almost like an invisible element in your experience till something goes wrong. It is precisely at this moment of time, moment of truth if you will, that you need to bring it to the attention of the brand custodian for a quick resolution. As you can see, everyone has a story to tell. So what’s yours?

Anna Karenina Principle in Customer Service Recovery

All happy customers are happy in their own way. But all unhappy customers are unhappy for a defined set of reasons. So why do they take to social media to vent their anger and rage and rant against the brand? It turns out that the very act of a breakdown in service does not in itself cause pain to the customer. What causes pain and then leads to anger, frustration, disturbance and dissonance is the neglect the customer is subjected to by the brand custodians. Neglect-an act of wanton disregard of complaints raised by the customer. Neglect that exacerbates the pain caused due to breakdowns in service levels promised by the brand. Asking customers to report their complaints to different departments and further to different people within a department is an extreme application of the rule: Trust but verify. The question is, what do brands gain by checking the veracity of the customer’s version of the complaint? What would brands lose if they were to completely trust the customer’s version of the complaint? Brand managers worry that customer complaints might be frivolous and baseless and create elaborate verification mechanisms to weed out false complaints. This is where the Anna Karenina principle is relevant to service recovery. Using this principle, brands have the possibility to collect feedback from customers in a certain pre-defined manner so that complaints are specific and based on actual pain points experienced by the customer while engaging with the brand. Specific complaints get notified to the right person thus ensuring early resolution. Localising the problem-isolating the pain point that caused customer dissatisfaction helps to address and resolve the issue powerfully and effectively. In the context of customer experience, a deeper understanding of the Anna Karenina principle offers a very powerful tool to transform service breakdowns to service breakthroughs.