Just because the bar is set extremely low in your industry doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive for optimal customer satisfaction. I’m currently with Sprint right now, I left Verizon back in 2010 because I was sick and tired of the poor customer service that they were providing me with. With Verizon it was more about hidden extra fees than anything else, in fact, this is something that I have continued to experience up through 2015 on my tablet’s data plan. With Sprint I don’t expect better customer service but at least I’m not paying as much to where I would expect it.
Still, if you follow my twitter feed you’ll see that, there’s no end to my frustrations with trying to accomplish the simplest things. They recently resolved my last issue but it took a full week to figure out exactly what went wrong and talk to the right people. A truly satisfied customer is an evangelist, a soldier, a brand representative. This is someone who will represent you and even convince others to give you a second chance. I’m really not talking about doing anything different here other than following through on set expectations. That’s why it’s so hard… You’ve got to actually follow through on what you tell others you can accomplish.
Still sometimes it’s hard to get that part perfect every time. That’s why you should remember to do a few key things. The first is follow up. Call your customers and ask about their experience. Ask key questions like “How can we improve our process for you?” and “Is there anything you didn’t like?” Documentation is key. Document the reasons people chose not to go with your service and try to find out what would change their mind in the future. This last thing is simple but more and more difficult these days: be available. You are going to have customers contact you who aren’t happy. Don’t make it difficult to solve their problems. Have a person or system that allows someone to be available for their phone calls with the power to help. 80% of my customer service frustrations with these phone companies could usually be resolved by 1 person in 3 minutes accessing something that I can’t. Which would you rather have? The 3 minute conversation or the 2 hour long one after I’ve been hung up on and transferred around for 4 days straight?
The Magnus Effect 