High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service

Micah Solomon

• Publisher: AMACOM
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780814417911
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Customer Relations
• Index: Business

Twitter, smartphones, and self-service kiosks are taking over, and tech-savvy business dealings are no longer an advantage--they're a requirement. With entertaining humor and inarguable logic, author Micah Solomon offers surefire strategies for success by exploring the timelessness of customer service (i.e., what hasn't changed), the high-tech tools that could give you a customer service advantage, and the systemic social shifts that are changing your customer's expectations of the way you do business. You'll learn inside secrets of wildly successful customer service initiatives, from internet startups to venerable brands, and how to turn casual customers into fervent supporters who will spread the word far and wide--online and off. High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service does this by teaching readers the six major customer trends and what they mean for business; the eight unbreakable rules for social media customer service; how to effectively address online complainers and saboteurs on Yelp, Twitter, TripAdvisor, and other forums; how to understand and leverage the rising power of self-service; and how to build a company culture that breeds stellar customer service.With special features including lessons from the latest newsworthy customer service blunders, you'll be equipped to retool old-fashioned customer service and turn time-strapped, screen-addicted, value-savvy, and socially engaged critics into fervent loyal customers who help your business thrive.

part one

timeliness and
timelessness

chapter 1

today’s changed customer
making lovemaking difficult

customer service is like making love. I know that sounds farfetched, but bear with me here: It takes only a minute—or two—to get the general concept, but you can gainfully invest a lifetime in mastering the details. (And you’ll never get the full picture if you only practice when you’re by yourself.)

Mastering the fine points of customer service is a never-ending challenge in part because customer expectations and desires change all the time. In fact, they’re different now from the last time you spoke with your customer—in this case, a frequent customer of yours I’ll call Lorena Willis.

A bit after 10:30 on a wintry morning, one of your contact center operators answers an incoming from Lorena. Thanks to your processes, techniques, and support software, your operator, Pam Chang, has good historical data on Lorena, including what she bought from you last year (a built-in microwave and a set of professional ceramic knives) and general preferences, such as her preferred mode of shipping.

But there’s a hitch: You actually don’t know Lorena Willis anymore.

Like all of us, she’s changed. She’s changed since the recession. Since the internet became what seems like a 25/8 proposition. Since the explosion in popularity of mobile devices.

In what ways has Lorena likely changed? Let’s take a tour through the dominant themes emerging in the marketplace—keeping our eyes trained on those that illuminate the ways your customer service may need updating.

the most crucial customer “trends” today are individual changes

Before I become a master of all generalizations, I’m going to concede something rarely admitted in a trendspotting chapter like this one: The most important factors that have changed about Lorena, or any customer, are individual changes. Is she richer? Poorer? Recently single or newly married? Does she have a new pet or is she grieving for one that has died? No matter how big you grow, or want to grow, as a company, individual customers buy from you, not assemblages of customers, not slices of a market. Learning to treat individual customers as individuals, honoring individual preferences unique to that customer, is a key to business success. But being aware of underlying trends in the marketplace is also essential for the success of any business that relies on significant numbers of transactions and on forward-looking planning.

customer trend #1: customers expect anticipatory technological behavior and aggregated information—instantly

My battery died recently on my aging Volvo, and with it I lost the stations that had been preset into my car radio. Afterwards, driving around manually selecting the stations I generally listen to (more or less just one station), I found myself irritated to have to dig up the long-forgotten instructions on how to set a radio station into memory. After a few days, I found myself thinking, “Doesn’t my car know I want this station as a preset? I mean, I listen to it every day—the Volvo should be inviting me to add it to a ‘favorites list’ or some such.”

But my car was manufactured in 2004, and, of course, cars didn’t “think” that way in 2004. And neither did consumers. Believe me, customers think that way now: They expect devices—and companies—to, in effect, say, “Mr. Solomon, I note that you’ve been listening quite a bit to your local NPR station. Care to have me memorize it for you so you’ll not have to fumble for it while you’re negotiating a difficult turn?”

Customers now expect personalized, anticipatory technological behavior and aggregated information—instantly. To get a sense of how profoundly customer expectations have changed, look around. With the advent of mobile computing, a traveler can get the answers on her iDroidPhoneBerry® that the concierge or bellman or neighborhood know-it-all used to parcel out at his own rate and with varying amounts of reliability: What’s a good Italian restaurant within walking distance? What subway line do I take to Dupont Circle, and which exit is best from the station? My plane just landed—in this country, do I shake hands when I meet someone of the opposite gender?

While this bears some resemblance to the model in place only a few years ago—settling into a hotel room, pulling out a laptop, fumbling around for an Ethernet cable, trying to figure out how to log on to the hotel’s network—there are real differences. Specifically, the better consolidation of information. Surfing the net—going out on a net-spedition to look for stuff seems like too much work and too big a time investment for today’s customers. Today, customers expect technology to bring an experience that is easier, more instantaneous, and more intuitive. Customers want to type or thumb a few keystrokes and have the information they need served up for them concierge-style based on their IP address or satellite location and other useful clues. Consider Hipmunk—which lists travel options along with warnings about long layovers and other agonies, and shows hotels with precise proximity to your actual destination. And GogoBot, where your own Facebook/Twitter pals have already rated potential trips for you. And of course TripAdvisor, with its user-generated ratings of nearly everything in the world of travel.

A study by Accenture showed a manifestation of this trend: Customers in a retail situation often prefer to look to a smartphone for answers to simple product questions rather than working with a human clerk.¹ The smartphone answers just seem to be faster and more accurate and sometimes, sad to say, come with a little less attitude. (We’ll work on this attitude part when we get to building your culture and to hiring.)

Of course, the timeline of customer expectations in general has sped up radically. In addition to mobile computing and improved connectivity, Amazon.com is one of the key factors in this—making the level of what’s in stock and available overnight absolutely unprecedented. Within minutes of placing your order, it’s likely being slapped with a shipping label at one of the Amazon.com-owned or UPS-Amazon.com-partnered warehouses in one of many strategically located places in the country.² (And overnight fulfillment, of course, is only the beginning. YouSendIt, for example, a rapidly growing service that allows you to send enormous files nearly instantly, sticks it to the FedExes of the world with its slogan: “Overnight? Are you kidding?”)

customer trend #2: shame shift and values-based buying

“Shame shift” is a term I learned from Jay Coldren, Marriott International’s vice president of lifestyle brands. It’s a trend that’s become a significant part of today’s consumer psyche.

Before the economic downturn, the pride of being able to consume in a conspicuous manner—sitting in front of a many-inch flat screen, taking the family on a summer vacation to a center of tropical opulence—was considered appropriate and enjoyable by economically comfortable customers.

Now this same behavior may be seen as crass, even rude. The attitude has shifted from pride in showing off how much we can afford to shyness about consuming too conspicuously. But—and as Pee Wee Herman would’ve said, it’s a “big but”—there’s a huge exception.

“What we’re seeing now is consumption being excused by ‘attached meaning,’” as Jay puts it.

What is “attached meaning”? Think of the people you know who willingly pay five bucks for a cup of coffee, provided the coffeeshop gives part of that fiver to help the rainforest. This phenomenon is significant. A study of consumer habits confirms that shoppers are becoming “more deliberate and purposeful” in their purchasing decisions.³ “Conspicuous consumption has given way to more conscious or practical consumerism” and “rampant deal-seeking is being replaced by more purchase selectivity.”

Another study shows that 87 percent of consumers in the United States believe that companies should value the interests of society at least as much as strict business interests.⁴ Customers are demanding more alignment of company values with their own, and this customer sentiment is being expressed in buying choices. John Gerzema, chief insights officer at Young & Rubicam, told Inc. magazine editor at large Leigh Buchanan that, according to his vast database of consumer attitudes, 71 percent of people agree with the statement, “I make it a point to buy brands from companies whose values are similar to my own.”⁵

customer trend #3: timelessness over trendiness

One of the notable characteristics people seek in their purchases today is “timelessness”—a desire that has emerged from the recession at full tilt.

“When you consider layoffs, downsizing, delayed raises, and reduced hours, more than half of all American workers have suffered losses,” Young & Rubicam’s Gerzema notes.⁶ “This very real pain has driven us to reconsider our definition of the good life. People are finding happiness in old-fashioned virtues.”

Examples are everywhere: Urban and suburban women flouting zoning regulations to raise their own hens in their side yards; the practice of “cow-pooling” (where several families join forces to share in the purchase of a cow); or the surge in popularity of Hunter boots, the boots that the Queen of England wears when she walks her corgis: This footwear classic combines authentic story and excellent product and, as a result, has caught fire. Customers are looking for old standbys that can become hip again. A backstory—history—has become important to the consumer. “People are looking for things that are authentic,” says interior designer and web phenomenon Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan (apartmenttherapy.com). The drive for authenticity, according to Gillingham-Ryan, “will resonate with people as long as we live in these times.”⁷

But we are living in these times, so don’t be fooled into thinking your customers will accept timelessness without timeliness. They want the twenty-first-century version of timelessness—on a timetable that matches the impatient standards of the digital generation. Inconvenienced in any way, they’ll usually lose interest. For example, Restoration Hardware is perfectly positioned for the timelessness trend—but it still needs to have an iPad app and be able to deliver overnight to the farthest reaches of its customer base. A Twinings Tea slogan nails the ideal, uh, blend we’re looking for here: “Your 15-minute break, 300 years in the making.”

customer trend #4: customer empowerment

Customers feel newly empowered in their relationships with companies. They’re expecting businesses to respect that sense of empowerment—and they lash out at those that don’t. They expect that your company will make itself easy to contact and will respond to customer comments at a high and thoughtful level. Which I suggest you do. Because feedback will be offered, whether you welcome it or not. It used to be that a peeved customer might drop by your shop and give the manager an earful. Or go through an extended search to figure out the correct address for an executive high enough to make a difference, and then sit down and write an angry letter. Later, the internet brought an increased sense of empowerment, with online comment forms and the ability to send instantaneous complaint emails.

Today, those methods are looking slow and outdated. Technology has created faster, more viral ways for consumers to make their annoyance felt. Exhibit “A” here, of course, is Twitter: Anyone who has enough people reading his tweets can get a company’s attention in a hurry with a cleverly or powerfully worded complaint, either within Twitter’s 140 characters or via a shared link directing followers to a longer post elsewhere on the web. Not only that, but the people who see it may resend it to their own Twitter followers (retweet it). Before long, one person’s complaint will reach enough people and elicit enough similar responses to make the company wake up and pay attention to the message of the original complainer.

Customers understand that this is empowerment at the speed of light. And they expect you to understand it too, to incorporate the empow...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copytight Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One: Timeliness and Timelessness
• Part Two: High-Tech, High-Touch Anticipatory Customer Service
• Part Three: The Rise of Self-Service and Social Media—And Other Seismic Shifts
• Notes
• Index