Mastering Customer Excellence: Insights and Strategies for Success - Episode 3

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This podcast episode is all about we explore Mastering Customer Excellence: Insights and Strategies for Success.

What Customer Excellence is

Episode Transcript

In today’s episode we’re going to be talking all about what customer excellence is and how this is different to customer services, so stick around to find out exactly how they are different. You may be thinking great I know what customer service is that’s easy, but if you go back to episode 2 and have a listen then we can build on that knowledge for excellence.

Let me explain, customer excellence is all about being proactive. You must be thinking ahead, looking to the future to be the best you can be. And to remind you, customer services is all about being reactive. With customer excellence you need to think about what’s in the future, what can you do for the future in order to be successful with your customers.

You need both customer services and customer excellence to ensure you are looking into the future and preventing anything which could occur and negatively impact your customers and even your business as a whole.

Due to this, I am going to repeat this so it’s super super clear.

Customer services is all about being reactive and customer excellence is all about being proactive.

If you remember that line you have basically got it! There are many ways you can do this and you may be thinking what for so I will go into detail of how you could do this and why it’s recommended to gain a competitive advantage.

How to Implement Customer Excellence?

How you will implement customer excellence all depends on the type of business you are running. I have a few examples here that we can go through to help you think of your own.

Firstly I would start with thinking about how can you make your customers love you? And if you know they already love you, what have you done to know this or is this just something you believe?

If you have recent evidence, have a think about how your customers could love you more?

This exercise is to get you thinking about how to improve what your customer thinks of you as a business and how to increase positive word of mouth. But most importantly, it means that if anything does go drastically wrong, because you have worked on your customers feelings about your brand its alot easier to communciate an issue with a customer that loves you than a customer who is irritated by you as they are a lot more forgiving.

Proactiveness

Proactiveness can help prevent a lot of issues. For instance, it is a smart idea to check all of your buttons on your website actually work. This is a proactive task, you are looking for issues which could impact your customers. And yes I mean on your computer, on a mobile and on a tablet! If you don’t have the time to do this yourself, have a look at using a virtual assistance on places like www.fiverr.com or even Upwork (just make sure you check the persons reviews first).

The reason I suggest that you do this task yourself, is that its smart to know exactly what your customer goes through in order to purchase from you. This means that if a customer asks a question about finding something on your website you actually know exactly where it is and how to purchase the item. This will make you look super knowledgeable!

Now for questions from your customers an (FAQ) frequently asked questions page is a smart idea and to always keep it up to date. Think about how you can make your customers lives easier, if you can think of a question – you can answer the questions without them having to waste time contacting you. If you are stuck for questions, lean on any feedback you have received in the past and look at how you can basically prevent another customer from contacting you about the same question or issue.

Think about what makes things smoother and easier going forward, so each time someone contacts you with a question you need to update your FAQ page with the question and the answer you provide. This would mean over time your FAQ page will evolve and then if a customer contacts with a question you have already asnwered you can point them to the FAQ page question and let them know if they need further assistance you are available to help out!

Standardised Customer Responses

For your frustrated customers do you have any example responses which you and your team could use on a day to day basis? Do you have them saved somewhere so you can easily use them, this is great to buy you some time whilst you think of your valuable response or solution.

For instance ‘Thanks for getting in touch and providing feedback. We take feedback seriously and we are going to look through this for you as soon as possible.’

You could use that exact line if you really wanted to. What this does is, it tells the customer you have received their message and you are thinking of them right now. Don’t leave them hanging because you don’t know what to say, because from the customers perspective it feels like they are being ignored or they could be wondering if the business has even received it.

Conclusion

To wrap up all in all what can you do as preventative action to help your business and your customer. Think about what could happen right now which you would need to tackle and how could you put things in place to prevent this or ease the impact on your customers and your business.

Have a little think, for example if you know that your contact page is really glitchy take the steps to fix it.

Question Time

William Settle – thank you for sending in your message on instagram– he asks when will I know that my customers are super happy with my service?

A great question William thank you, to measure this I would look at how many complaints you are receiving from your customers to start with and I would be requesting via email after each sale for feedback. This way you can track whether you are getting better or not or staying in the same place. If and when you make changes because of feedback note down the date and see if the complaints actually improve.

You want to know if what you are doing is actually working, whether it wasn’t required or is it now impacting your customers. So hopefully that helps, not all changes have positive results.

If anyone else wants to send in a question please send it to instagram. Be sure to please leave a review so I know what you think of my postcast episode and to help my podcast grow and help others. With each episode we learn more about our customers and how to manage them. Keep building the business you enjoy and love every day, be sure to listen to the up coming episodes to learn more.

Resources Mentioned

My Example

Speaker 1 (00:00): Welcome to the Customer Care Channel. Today we are going to talk about what defines a customer. You are here with your host, Lisa. So let’s get started. Are you wondering what defines a customer, what types of customers there are? Or even looking to learn more about customer services? You are in the right place, but we do need to know our basics. So we’re going to start from the beginning and work our way up and build our knowledge. So like I said, I want to start the basics as I was always taught to never assume someone’s knowledge on any subject. Let’s face it, you are here to learn or you wouldn’t be here. There are lots of types of customers some of you may not have thought about. You have your typical customer who goes into a shop or your online store and buys a service or a product. (00:59) This customer usually has seen something they like or has seen your advertising and has been convinced they need or want your products. They come to you, they make a purchase and possibly leave never to be seen again or comes back for more. This customer is consuming your products as they use whatever it is you are selling. So we can also call this customer a consumer. This is called business to consumer sales. We then have business to business sales where your business would sell directly to another business, quite possibly with you acting as a supplier. This could be that they need the ink that you sell for the business printers in the office, or you could even be supplying materials for their products to be made. If you provide a report to someone that you work with every week, you could even call them a customer as you are providing them with something valuable and your service needs to be on point. (02:01) But let’s stick to our paying customers to make things super easy. You now have the types of customers. So imagine you have a physical shop, someone walks in and is looking around your shop. This customer is a looker as they are browsing, but not necessarily buying the customer could be a future sale. So never dismiss them as much as you may find them. Annoying, just looking around and browsing and leaving. Actually, this person could come back and spend quite a significant amount of money, so treat everyone the same. You then have customers looking for discounts. They will only buy if your products are on discount no matter what. This doesn’t mean they don’t think your product’s worth it. It may have been that they have been brought up to be super frugal. You just really never know. Treat this customer the same as any full paying customer. (02:55) They may buy full price next time if you treat them well and they understand the value given. Once they’ve had your product once, they may think this is actually worth the price at full value. There are then customers who have compared you and your products to other competitors and know exactly the difference between what is being offered and the value given. These are the researchers. They are looking for the best buy for their money. Quality is everything here, and don’t be scared of showing them your reviews from quality, happy customers who have bought in the past. We then have the impulse buyers. These people will buy into anything and everything. I believe purchasing makes them excited. Sometimes I am a bit like this. Best way to get these customers to buy into your business is to offer discounts which time out. But we aren’t here for the sale right now. (03:52) I believe in building relationships with your customers so they sing your praise and become the ultimate long-term customer. So these types of customers, I’m very wary about. I don’t really like to sell things to people who are just buying for the sake of it. It’s better to sell to someone that is actually really in need of what you are selling so that in the future they sing your praises. They build up your reputation by obviously word of mouth. Then we have the unsure ones who will ask every question they can think of. They’ll walk away, they’ll come back and maybe even walk away again. They just want to make sure they are doing the right thing. And to be honest, walking away can help to see if they really want the product or not, or it really fits their needs. You don’t want an unhappy customer that regrets buying from you. (04:45) As it could turn sour. You’ve spoke to all these sour people out there. It can really turn nasty. So lastly, you then have the customers who are already using the same product or service elsewhere and are looking for a better quality, more valuable product with better service. This customer will want to know everything and why you are better than where they are right now. No point convincing them as you want them to make the right decision. You need to just lay out what you can provide, giving them valuable facts and giving them space to think, and then if they choose to move to you, that’s a bonus. The fact is you’re taking care of the customer, you’re making them feel great, and that tends to be in the long term what people buy into. Now, I know this may be controversial, but we are here to build rapport with our customers. (05:44) We are not here to make a quick sale. This is not a sales podcast here. I believe in making sure your customer has the right product and the best service, which will serve them the long term and therefore turn into more sales. So this is so much more important for your business to survive and let’s be honest, build your reputation. Now, you may be thinking, how do I deal with all these customers? And to be honest, everyone is different as we are all individuals and we all like different approaches. Your best angle is to listen to your customers as each individual person. Be empathetic when needed, provide value and be honest if your product doesn’t fit the bill, and that can be really difficult. Reason is you want the customer to tell everyone about your business, and if they think you didn’t sell to them as it wasn’t suitable, they will sing your praises as being a great business to deal with. (06:46) Hence, more positive word of mouth, which the more people they talk to about how fantastic you are, the more people that will actually come to see you in the long term. So just remember to focus on the customer as an individual and you will see your business change rapidly for the best. Yes, it’s good to know what each customer is and what type of customers there are, but deal with everyone as an individual and they will feel that valued and will definitely come back for more. Hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s episode and the very, very first episode, proper episode of this podcast. Please do rate and subscribe and please do review because it’ll help this podcast grow and I will see you next time. Thanks for listening. Bye.

Thank You for Listening!

To start managing your customer experience, the first step is to understand your customers. Who are they? What do they want? This is where creating a *customer avatar* can be incredibly useful. A customer avatar helps you picture your ideal customer, so you can make decisions that suit their needs and preferences. To help you get started, I’ve put together a free customer avatar template. Just subscribe to my email list, and you’ll get access to it straight away from your inbox.

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Mastering Customer Excellence: Insights and Strategies for Success – Episode 3

What Customer Excellence is

Episode Transcript