A corporate trainer in one of my client organizations is gung-ho on the Zappos culture and she is convinced that what her contact center needs is agents trained to make small talk with customers and empowerment so agents can consistently deliver wow experiences – “Just like Zappos does,” she says.
Now, I love what Zappos has done. I have delivered many a keynote and webinar on the Zappos culture. Zappos is the best at the customer experience, bar none. So understand me when I say this: I respect Zappos. But the Zappos culture will not work for anybody but Zappos.
When my daughter was 4 years old McDonald’s was her favorite place to eat out. We always got her the Happy Meal with chicken McNuggets. To this day she’s still not a “burger” person.
One afternoon we stopped at McDonald’s on the way home from pre-school. I placed Lauren’s usual Happy Meal order through the drive-thru speaker.
I drove up to the first window, and the employee opened the window and waited for me to hand him my money. He took my $20 bill, gave me change and the window closed.
I drove up to the second window, it opened, and an employee handed me a small Sprite and a Happy Meal in a bag. I handed the bag and drink to my daughter in the back seat.
As we drove off, my daughter said,
“Mommy, do they talk at this McDonald’s?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The people. They didn’t talk when they took your money, and they didn’t say anything when you got the food.”
Wow. I actually hadn’t even noticed the lack of verbal communication. Me, the Customer Service Queen didn’t even notice. You know why I didn’t notice? Because rote interactions like this are so common that this felt like the norm.
But she was right. Other than the voice coming through the drive-thru speaker, there was no verbal communication.
It just so happened that 5 weeks to the day from this muted drive-thru experience, I was scheduled to deliver a keynote at Hamburger University, on the campus of the McDonald’s worldwide headquarters outside of Chicago.
I’m a storyteller. I had to tell this story to my audience of McDonald’s managers and executives. So I did. I opened my keynote with the story of “Mommy, do they talk at this McDonald’s?”
The audience was stunned. Frozen. Speechless. They may hate me for this, but they needed to hear it. I knew I’d done the right thing. Regardless of how awkward I felt on the big stage at that moment, they needed to hear this.
I took my son to the pediatrician yesterday afternoon for his annual checkup. The nurse did a quick vision test and then recommended I get my son to an optometrist. I was hoping my son would be the one person in our family who did not need corrective lenses.
In the car on the way home I called the eye doctor we’d used for my daughter a few months ago. Here’s how the call went.
An apology, empathy, and an explanation of why the problem happened are the keys to writing complaint response letters that restore customer confidence.
One of the things I do in my practice is write the templates for complaint response letters for some of world’s most renowned brands. My work usually starts with me throwing out all robotic and boring messages that are in use.
Then, I custom create response letters that reflect the brand’s voice. Once I get the brand voice down, my complaint response letters follow 5 steps.
The 5 steps ensure that the complaint response letter restores customer confidence and regains goodwill. Here are my 5 steps with great examples from great companies that know how to regain customer goodwill after the worst has happened.
1. Apologize
Making an apology to customers after things go wrong is positively related to satisfaction with the recovery. When a service employee apologizes to a customer, she conveys politeness, courtesy, concern, effort, and empathy.
Take a look at this outright apology from JetBlue Airlines after a major service mishap. (See the first sentence of JetBlue’s response)
Part of what makes me good at what I do is I genuinely hate poor customer service. As it turns out, I’m not the only one who gets irritated with bad customer service.
Research by RightNow Technologies found that after suffering a negative experience with a company or organization:
If you work in customer service, efficient complaint handling is crucial. One poorly handled problem or complaint can send a customer running for the competition. Consider the following:
A customer who goes to the effort to complain, but remains dissatisfied is usually 50% less loyal than someone who did not bother to complain.
Research by TARP has found that if a complaint handling system is inadequate, it will further alienate the customer, resulting in lower repurchase rates.
The problem is rarely the problem. The company’s response usually ends up being the real “problem.” The complaint handling process has a significant impact on customer satisfaction because customers are more emotionally involved in and observant of recovery service than in routine or first-time service and are often more dissatisfied by an organization’s failure to recover than by the service failure itself.
Flashback Friday! My kids used to post Throwback Thursday and Flashback Friday photos on Instagram. They don’t do that anymore. In fact, they spend more time on Snapchat than on Instagram.
Well, I’m doing a Flashback post of my own – even if flashback posts are out of style.
I joined YouTube in 2007 and one of the first videos I published was “The Psychology of Customer Anger.”
That cheesy video has gotten over 60,000 views. I cringe when I look at the quality of the video and my style in front of the camera. My son laughed out loud when he came into my office last night and I had the video up.
I look so different from back then, nearly 10 years ago. I’ve lost weight, like 30 pounds. I wear my hair kinky curly. I like to think I’m more controlled and poised in front of the camera.
But my strategies haven’t changed. Not much anyway. I’m taking a risk and posting this Flashback Friday video because one, some or all of these tips just may help you get an angry customer to back down.
Two years ago I was working with a company to help their customer service representatives convey empathy to customers. The intended outcome of the training was for employees to speak to customers with care, concern, and compassion.
Achieving empathy in the customer experience is a bit like walking a tightrope. Too much empathy can result in longer talk times and inappropriate sharing between customer service representatives and clients. Not enough understanding and reps can sound cold and uncaring.
You have to find the right balance in empathy. Or else you fall off the rope, and the customer experience is negatively impacted.
I asked my client how she saw appropriate empathy in her company. And here’s what she said.
My family and I vacationed out west last week. We went to Albuquerque, spent 3 days there, then went on to Phoenix.
We took a tram up to the top of Mount Sandia, we toured Sedona, went off road in a Jeep to hike the White Mesas; we visited a museum, spent a full day at the Grand Canyon, and we had some fantastic food. My husband chose all of the restaurants, insisting only on local cuisine. He even made sure to select vegetarian-friendly spots for me.
Out of all of our experiences out west, my single favorite experience was the White Mesa Jeep Tour with New Mexico Jeep Tours. It was my ideal standout experience because of the company, New Mexico Jeep Tours, gave my family and me a phenomenal customer experience.
If you’ve been to one of my keynotes or training sessions, you’ve heard me talk about the 3 Elements of the Best Possible Customer Experience. The 3 Elements create what I call “The Way of Harmony.”
Here’s a quick way to make life easier for your customers. Keep them apprised of the next steps in their customer journey. Super Shuttle, a nationwide airport shuttle service, put a smile on my face and removed the risk of stress in my life by merely keeping me apprised.
As I was gathering my things and heading out of the keynote ballroom, my iPhone buzzed. It was a text from Super Shuttle. They texted to give me my vehicle number and a link for me to track my shuttle. I had a very short window of time to get back to the airport for my flight, and it was rush hour in Austin. This text with tracking information certainly made life easier for me.
De-escalation Training for Customer Service & Soft Skills Training 