By Laura Petrolino
Today, friends, I’m going to give you the secret to the improve customer experience in one easy step.
Better yet, it will continue to yield tremendous results year-after-year. And the results will only amplify as time goes on.
And for only six easy payments of $19.99…..ok, no…just joking. It will cost you nothing.
Not one million dollars
Not one thousand dollars
Not even one hundred dollars….
Zero dollars! You heard me right, ZERO DOLLARS
(Just practicing my infomercial script writing skills for the next time Gini Dietrich fires me…not that I’ll listen and actually leave, but just in case she decides to cut off my pay and I need to moonlight as an infomercial writer).
But really, it will cost you nothing.
Why Caring Matters
So what is this magic bullet to improve customer experience?
That’s it.
Actually…I lied (LIAR).
Care about your customers AND the integrity of the product or service you provide.
When we hire team members, we look for people who are truly passionate about what they do.
They love the craft of communication and the area they specialize in—whether that be social, earned media, content, or something else.
And that passion spills over into every project we work on.
Likewise, they care about the clients we serve. Not just to keep them happy enough to stay, but both on personal and professional levels.
We are invested in their success because we see it as symbiotic with our own.
That perspective permeates everything we do and the relationships we build with each client.
It is how we improve customer experience and something we see as a really key factor it what makes us great.
How to Improve Customer Experience: A Parable
The day after my competition I was at the gym (surprise, surprise) just trying to get blood into my muscles and move around a bit.
I finished a set and out of the blue something tweaked in my neck…and tweaked badly.
It caused an instant migraine and made me feel dizzy and nauseated.
I had pinched a nerve.
Yay!
So here I am, far from home, basically unable to move my neck and knowing I faced a long flight the next day.
Swell!
A long-time patient and believer in chiropractic care, I spotted a chiropractic office across from the gym.
I knew it was a long shot and I was taking a chance, but we drove by so I could get the number (did I mention this was a Sunday….a day that NOTHING is open).
When we got back to the hotel I called and got the office message.
The doctor gave his cell phone number in case of an emergency.
I debated.
I wasn’t a current client.
I didn’t live in-state even, so it’s not like I’d become a client.
I was just some random chick, calling and interrupting him on a lovely summer Sunday.
But pain speaks louder than politeness. And I have a VERY high pain tolerance (after years being beat up in various sports), so when I’m actually in enough pain to admit it, you know it’s bad.
So I called.
He asked if I could be at his office in the next 20 minutes (um…are you kidding? I would find a way to travel to Mars and back at that point, if it meant some relief).
We got there and he treated me, essentially allowing me to function again, and, more importantly, make it home the next day.
I was willing to pay him out-of-pocket versus dealing with anything insurance-wise, but as I tried to figure out what I owed him, he dismissed it, gave me his card, and just asked I write a review (which I’ve blanketed the interwebz with and will continue to everywhere I can).
This is the essence of caring.
- He cared for me as a patient. For my well-being, not for the business/revenue I could provide him.
- He cared about the service he provided and the responsibility he felt as a chiropractor to help those who needed him.
He cared. And I’m sure this same care improves the customer experience he provides for patients—both new and old, daily.
I’m sure it also permeates through his entire team, not only in hiring decisions, but in action through example (the leader always sets the tone).
When you care you not only provide a better “customer experience,” but you simply do a better job.
Intention affects execution.
Every. Single. Time.
What to Do if You Don’t Care
But sometimes….caring is hard.
You are exhausted. You are stressed. You are busy. You’re simply burned-out.
And it’s not that you don’t care, but you get caught up in the triage of leading or running a business and you allow it to distance you from the original passion which fueled your initial career or business choices.
So what do you do?
- Take a freaking break already. Duh? We’ve discussed this before, but the idea of taking a break isn’t just some voodoo, self-help mush mash (trust me, I’m type capital A, I know you can convince yourself it is, and not something you need to do because you are tougher and better than everyone else)...it’s scientifically proven. This includes both longer breaks, where you completely step away from everything work related (COMPLETELY step away) and shorter ones throughout the day.
- Get back in the trenches. Often as you progress through your career, you also move away from doing the actual work and the front-line contact with customers—that work which fueled your initial passion. You become removed from the customer and what you do on a daily basis to improve customer experience. Everything becomes somewhat “theoretical.” The problem with theory is you lose a lot of important nuance and it’s easy to detach and lose that relationship-driven empathy that creates a great customer experience. So get back in there on a frequent and consistent basis. And make sure everyone else on the leadership team does, as well. Not only will this reignite your sense of caring, it will help you see first hand obstacles that might be in the way of your customer touch points providing the best experience possible.
- Review and live your mission. Mission and value statements are often written with great excitement and then sit like a dusty textbook, never to be seen again. But these are the core of why you care, why you do what you do, and how you should strive to improve customer experience. Pull them out, dust them off, and review the ways your current customer experience does or does not fulfill them.
- Focus on one customer at a time. Do you know why non-profits often pull out one story and present it as a case study for what they do, or a plea for donations? Because, as humans we connect with stories. It’s easier for us to feel a deep empathy to the plight and triumph of one story versus the general plea of a community that needs help. Our natural tendency is to want to help that one person, make a difference in that one life, not to mention it’s much more manageable. Ask someone to help save a whole city and they feel overwhelmed and look to someone else to do it. Ask someone to save one person, or make their life better in some way and they feel empowered and driven. Put this same psychology into play for yourself and your team and pull out one or two really motivating customer case studies every few weeks to connect to and learn from.
Caring does come naturally to us as humans and it will improve customer experience.
Often we just need to break down the walls we’ve put between ourselves and our empathy to remember why each customer matters, and adjust our operations accordingly.
image credit: pixabay
That’s an amazing chiropractor, Laura!
There’s a local flower shop that gets all my business whenever I need flowers. During a challenging transition a couple of years ago, the florist practiced a random act of kindness and delivered us flowers. We hadn’t ordered any but she knew what we were going through and thought we could use some beauty. She showed how much she cared and I’ve never forgotten that. Any chance I get, I recommend her shop to friends and clients.
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that!! It’s those simple acts of humanity that go such a long way. We talk so much about “being human,” but all too often people forget what that actually means.
Also, what’s her url? I’m all about promoting the good guys.
I love this story. Sharing it like crazy because nice people deserve to be applauded. (via the internet of course)
Thank you so much Phyllis! And I’m totally with you on that one. We all too often give all the attention to the idiots, while the great caring businesses go unnoticed. I always say, I’ll be your worst enemy if you treat me badly, but equally, I’ll be your biggest ambassador if you treat me well. And I stick to that. I’ve written just as many complaint letters as I have accolades.
Shouldn’t all businesses care about their customers? The answer is ‘yes’ but sadly that’s not always the case. Good customer service seems to be the exception rather than the rule nowadays. When I find a business that goes above and beyond (or is simpply friendly) I’ll usually be a customer or advocate for life.
There’s a restaurant nearby that recently went out of business. I boycotted them four years ago after a horrible experience that both management and corporate ignored. It wouldn’t have taken much effort on their part to make the situation right, but they were lazy and clearly didn’t care if they lost of fairly regular customer.
I’m glad you were able to find a chiropractor who was willing to help you. That’s a fantastic story!
Yep, I”m totally the same. I once wrote about second chance customer service here, essentially that hey…we all screw-up, but customers will give you a second chance. But if you blow that one…well then….
Such a great point, Kara — a biz doesn’t have to be PERFECT. All businesses make errors, but so much customer love can be saved by caring about getting it right.
spinsucks.com/communication/second-chance-customer-service/
Love this! What an amazing person and chiropractor.
It’s so nice to find people who just really want to help others, right?
You make really good points here Laura. I certainly hope that chiropractor somehow sees this post, but even if he doesn’t, he has spread good karma and you, in turn, have done the same. I know that I ALWAYS recommend and return to those businesses that treat me like gold. Great post!
The good guys deserve to get some attention, but all too often get overlooked by the dopes. And you know the best part was really while to me, what he did was HUGE, I’m pretty sure, to him…it was just doing his job. That’s where you see the importance of having a mission and organizational values that really reflect who you are and what you want to do.
Besides the very quotable “pain speaks louder than politeness,” so much yes to this. I get irritated with businesses that tell me to give them five stars before I can basically be free to walk out the door, or to “let them know how we can fix things before giving us less than five (which is sometimes appropriate but still…)” when if you simply CARE (as this whole post points to) and do your job to the best of your ability (mission/vision in mind!), then I will probably voluntarily give you five stars AND sing your praises to everyone I possibly can! // Completely unsolicite, my tweet on the day before I recent hurricane about Publix was exactly that — they were frenzied as Publix in Florida always is as tropical storm activity approaches but they were CARING, enthusiastic, and professional. One kid TWICE in the parking lot, in the rain, told me to “be safe” over the upcoming days. Such a small touch but honestly he MEANT IT. It starts at the top, for sure and it’s a beautiful thing when it trickles down.
Publix <3 <3 <3
OMG Laura, what an amazing story (not the fact that you got injured). That chiropractor doctor loves his job and business.
I got excited only by reading about it and I wanted to go to his practice (and I am a little faraway).
But your excitement for what you do, for the company and business itself is contagious. Your team feels it, your customers feel it.
That’s why there is a huge difference between managing a team and leading said team.
As for your tips, I remember seeing a video where Gary Vaynerchuck asked his leadership team to call one customer each from their database and do it right then. Loved that. Back in the trenches.
Yes on all counts. And really I feel like, if you are in the service business and you don’t LOVE what you do…then go do something else. Because you’ll never able to really be great at it. Ever.
Intention affects execution. I like this. And I believe that clients immediately detect intention.
I agree …
+1 🙂 Intention always shine through, you can only truly be great at client service if you have it—consistently and enduringly (even when you want to shake them and yell at them in your best Jerry MacGuire voice….)