Don’t be blinded by delight when it comes to your customer service

Problems are always going to occur in any business, it doesn’t matter how hard you try and avoid them.

The real key to your business success is what you and your team DO when they occur.

What do you do?

We all like the ‘wow’ stories about good customer service, for example:

• A Lexus dealer changing the ashtray in a BMW and replacing it with the non-smoker pack without being asked, because BMW had failed to sort it out
• Fed-Ex hiring a private jet to deliver a wedding dress on time, at no additional cost to the customer
• How the Ritz-Carlton before returning a lost toy to his owner, created a photo album of ‘Joshie the Giraffe’ on his extended holiday, by the pool, playing golf and on the beach

These are great stories, but research shows that ‘delight’ is not enough to build loyalty after a customer has been disappointed by your product or service already.

Instead of trying to drive positive loyalty by delighting customers, you need to try and mitigate disloyalty by reducing the effort the customer has to make to get their problem resolved.

When a customer of yours has an issue, how do you respond?

Do you try to delight, or do you make the path to solving the issue as effortless as possible for your customer?

Your business will be more successful if you are not side-tracked by ‘delight’.

Crucially you need to make your customers experience of resolving their problem easy, like riding a bike downhill, no effort needed, no energy expended.