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Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary

Discover the hidden ways to raise your organizations' customer service experiences from ordinary to extraordinary.

If you want to know how strong your company's customer service is, ask your employees to describe what their work entails. Then pay attention to whether they simply list their duties and tasks or if they speak to the true essence of their job--to create delighted customers who will be less price sensitive, have higher repurchase rates, and enthusiastically recommend the company or brand to others.

The latter should be every employee's highest priority, because when it's not, your customers are merely the recipients of a transaction, not an experience, and transactions do not make for a lasting impression or inspire loyalty. In Delight Your Customers, customer service expert Steve Curtin makes a compelling case that customer service managers need to shift from monitoring service activities to modeling, recognizing, and reinforcing the behaviors that create happy and returning customers. Things such as:

  • Expressing genuine interest
  • Offering sincere compliments
  • Sharing unique knowledge
  • Conveying authentic enthusiasm
  • Providing pleasant surprises
  • Delivering service heroics when needed

    • Simply based on their own personal experiences, everyone knows that great customer service is rare. So why wouldn't you want to provide a unique, caring, and beneficial experience for all your customers to rave about with others? With the real-world stories, examples, and strategies shared in Delight Your Customers, you can take the customer service experience you offer from ordinary to extraordinary.

    1114065729
    Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary

    Discover the hidden ways to raise your organizations' customer service experiences from ordinary to extraordinary.

    If you want to know how strong your company's customer service is, ask your employees to describe what their work entails. Then pay attention to whether they simply list their duties and tasks or if they speak to the true essence of their job--to create delighted customers who will be less price sensitive, have higher repurchase rates, and enthusiastically recommend the company or brand to others.

    The latter should be every employee's highest priority, because when it's not, your customers are merely the recipients of a transaction, not an experience, and transactions do not make for a lasting impression or inspire loyalty. In Delight Your Customers, customer service expert Steve Curtin makes a compelling case that customer service managers need to shift from monitoring service activities to modeling, recognizing, and reinforcing the behaviors that create happy and returning customers. Things such as:

  • Expressing genuine interest
  • Offering sincere compliments
  • Sharing unique knowledge
  • Conveying authentic enthusiasm
  • Providing pleasant surprises
  • Delivering service heroics when needed

    • Simply based on their own personal experiences, everyone knows that great customer service is rare. So why wouldn't you want to provide a unique, caring, and beneficial experience for all your customers to rave about with others? With the real-world stories, examples, and strategies shared in Delight Your Customers, you can take the customer service experience you offer from ordinary to extraordinary.

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    Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary

    Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary

    by Steve Curtin
    Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary
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    Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary

    Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary

    by Steve Curtin

    Overview

    Discover the hidden ways to raise your organizations' customer service experiences from ordinary to extraordinary.

    If you want to know how strong your company's customer service is, ask your employees to describe what their work entails. Then pay attention to whether they simply list their duties and tasks or if they speak to the true essence of their job--to create delighted customers who will be less price sensitive, have higher repurchase rates, and enthusiastically recommend the company or brand to others.

    The latter should be every employee's highest priority, because when it's not, your customers are merely the recipients of a transaction, not an experience, and transactions do not make for a lasting impression or inspire loyalty. In Delight Your Customers, customer service expert Steve Curtin makes a compelling case that customer service managers need to shift from monitoring service activities to modeling, recognizing, and reinforcing the behaviors that create happy and returning customers. Things such as:

  • Expressing genuine interest
  • Offering sincere compliments
  • Sharing unique knowledge
  • Conveying authentic enthusiasm
  • Providing pleasant surprises
  • Delivering service heroics when needed

    • Simply based on their own personal experiences, everyone knows that great customer service is rare. So why wouldn't you want to provide a unique, caring, and beneficial experience for all your customers to rave about with others? With the real-world stories, examples, and strategies shared in Delight Your Customers, you can take the customer service experience you offer from ordinary to extraordinary.

    Product Details

    ISBN-13: 9780814432808
    Publisher: AMACOM
    Publication date: 06/11/2013
    Pages: 208
    Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)
    Age Range: 18 Years

    About the Author

    STEVE CURTIN spent 20 years with Marriott International. He now runs his own customer service consulting firm, Steve Curtin, Customer Enthusiast!

    Read an Excerpt

    Introduction Years ago, I worked in New York City with an English woman named Karen who had a unique work history. During graduate school in England, she had worked on an assembly line in a factory that manufactured dolls. Karen's job role was to attach doll heads to each of the torsos as they passed by on a long conveyer belt. As she described it, as the torso approached, she would lift a doll head from a large bin, pop the head on the torso, and twist it firmly until it locked into place. One by one, Karen would lift, pop, and twist the dolls' heads into place—each one like the last one—until her quota was met or her shift ended. The next day, she would return and repeat the process over and over again: lift, pop, twist . . . lift, pop, twist . . . until the end of another workday. I can still hear Karen describing her job duties in her refined British accent: "Leeft, paup, tweest . . . Leeft, paup, tweest . . . Leeft, paup, tweest . . ." To this day, whenever I observe an employee who is simply going through the motions, I'm reminded of Karen's job at the factory. I refer to this demeanor as a factory mentality. Perhaps you too have observed this outward behavior by service industry employees. It's easy to spot, characterized by indifference and a transactional approach to serving customers. Expressionless, robotic behavior devoid of any personality may be permissible in a factory or warehouse environment where there are no signs of real, live, paying customers (as long as certain production quotas and delivery schedules are met). However, in a customer service job role, employee behavior must be different. This is not a book about how to "WOW!" customers by continually surpassing their expectations and exceeding their needs—which is unsustainable. Most people don't want "outrageous" or "over-the-top" customer service at every turn. In everyday service situations, most customers simply want to be acknowledged and appreciated. Delight Your Customers is about doing the little things that convey to customers that they matter and that their business is valued. It's about breaking with routine by consistently providing the "little extras" that leave lasting positive impressions on customers. After all, the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little "extra." Part I sets the stage for delighting customers by identifying the two dimensions of every employee's job role and identifying three truths of exceptional customer service. Whether you are new to the service industry or a seasoned veteran, this section will expand your definition of employees' roles and is likely to influence the way you manage service providers. Part II introduces seven concrete behaviors that will enable you to immediately improve the quality of customer service you provide or influence. These seven simple ways to raise customer service from ordinary to extraordinary are natural and intuitive. Rather than offering scripts or a prescriptive acronym that requires employees to be someone they're not, these behaviors encourage employees to be themselves at their best! Part III provides fresh thinking about incorporating your organization's highest priority into existing employee functions so that ­exceptional customer service, however it is defined by your particular organization, occurs consistently rather than being left to chance. Throughout the book, you will see references to customers, clients, guests, shoppers, passengers, patients, members, and more. The lessons in this book will apply, regardless of how you refer to your customers, even if your "customer" is an employee, owner, vendor, or other stakeholder. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that these lessons also apply to the "customers" you serve in your personal life, whether that means a spouse, children, friends, neighbors—even complete strangers. Each chapter concludes with a bulleted summary of key insights to assist you in raising customer service from ordinary to extraordinary, followed by a brief application exercise in which you immediately record top-of-mind ideas about applying lessons from the chapter in your world of work. It's no secret that the customer service quality most of us experience in our daily lives tends to be pretty mediocre. (And sometimes that assessment is being generous.) It's my aspiration to contribute to the conversation about raising customer service quality—and this book is a start. To continue the conversation, I invite you to visit my blog at http://www.stevecurtin.com/blog/ or email me: steve@stevecurtin.com

    Table of Contents

    Contents

    Introduction 3

    Part One: Function Vs. Essence

    Chapter 1—Three Truths of Exceptional Customer Service 9

    Exceptional Customer Service Reflects the Essence of Every Service Industry Employee’s Job Role 11

    Exceptional Customer Service Is Always Voluntary 17

    Exceptional Customer Service Typically Costs

    No More to Deliver than Poor Customer Service 20

    Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 24

    Applying Three Truths of Exceptional Customer Service 26

    Contents

    Part Two: Seven Simple Ways To

    Raise Customer Service

    Chapter 2—Express Genuine Interest 29

    How to Express Genuine Interest 32

    Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 49

    Applying Genuine Interest 52

    Chapter 3—Offer Sincere and Specific Compliments 53

    Be Attentive to Opportunities to Offer Compliments 54

    Factors Influencing the Offering of Compliments 57

    How to Offer Sincere and Specific Compliments 59

    Recognize Coworkers 64

    Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 69

    Applying Sincere and Specific Compliments 71

    Chapter 4—Share Unique Knowledge 73

    Unique Knowledge Brings More Value to the Customer Experience 74

    The Benefits of Unique Knowledge 75

    How to Share Unique Knowledge 82

    Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 88

    Applying Unique Knowledge 91

    Chapter 5—Convey Authentic Enthusiasm 93

    The Role of Leadership in Fostering Authentic Enthusiasm 95

    How to Convey Authentic Enthusiasm 99

    Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 108

    Applying Authentic Enthusiasm 110

    Chapter 6—Use Appropriate Humor 111

    When to Use Appropriate Humor 113

    When the Use of Humor May Be Inappropriate 123

    Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 125

    Applying Appropriate Humor 126

    Chapter 7—Provide Pleasant Surprises 127

    How to Provide Pleasant Surprises 129

    Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 142

    Applying Pleasant Surprises 144

    Chapter 8—Deliver Service Heroics 145

    Two Types of Service Heroics 146

    How to Deliver Heroic Service to Solve Customers’ Problems 152

    Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 161

    Applying Service Heroics 163

    Part Three: Incorporating Job Essence

    Into Job Function

    Chapter 9—From Ordinary to Extraordinary 167

    Why Ordinary Customer Service Is Common and Extraordinary Customer Service Is Rare 170

    How to Raise Customer Service Quality from Ordinary to Extraordinary 173

    Getting from Ordinary to Extraordinary 186

    Incorporating Job Essence into Job Function 188

    Index 189

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