Customer Service Week is upon us again in 2024. This is a week, celebrated during the first full week of October, annually, that’s dedicated to businesses celebrating their customers and the employees who serve these customers. Typically, the week is filled with the usual vestiges of celebration…the giveaways, appreciation days and special celebratory activities. The big question that I like to pose to businesses in consideration of the motive for this week is, “What do you have to celebrate?”
It’s not intended to be a question that’s dripping with disdain, but a challenge posed to businesses, to reflect on how convicted they have been to believe in and act on, the intention to deliver for each customer, a great customer experience. A business does not have to plumb the depths of customer surveys to discover the correct answers to this question. The answers will suggest themselves in the form of happiness milestones, innumerable customer pleasing actions, positive customer reviews and the unsolicited customer tributes that stellar experiences attract.
There are three types of businesses that come to my mind regarding the delivery of customer experience. Those that deliver a “hit and miss” experience, those that deliver a “good enough” experience and the ones that deliver an “unparalleled” experience. These three levels of experience are borne out of three distinct cultural and value systems that define the businesses in which these experiences are housed.
If a business is struggling to meet its customers’ expectations, it has no business asserting that it wants to “go beyond” customers’ expectations.
A quick study of the “hit and miss” customer experience, will reveal its housing in a business that likely will have little regard for urgency, responsiveness, solution-customization or empathetic customer engagement. It’s the business where internally, email messages may go unanswered for days, or where messages may or may not reach their intended destinations within the required timeframes. It’s also the business with wide variations in cultural practices, from department to department. It’s actually a business that has embraced mediocrity. Small wonder that the external customer experience is what it is.
A study of the “good enough” customer experience, will reveal its housing in a business that just barely meets and never exceeds its customers’ expectations. This is the business that goes only “one” extra mile, instead of the full distance, for the customer and typically gets “satisfactory” customer reviews. This is the business that does right by customers only about fifty percent of the time.
Pretty much like the hit and miss experience category, where customers expect to get a low-quality experience, every time they interact with the business that delivers “good enough” service, customers do not know whether to expect a good experience, or a poor experience, so what do they do? They keep their fingers crossed and hope for the best, because the outcome can go either up or down. This is what “good enough” looks like to customers.
“You have to meet the bar, before you beat the bar.”
Only one out of these three types of businesses will have just cause for celebration during customer service week. These would be the businesses that deliver intentionally, an “unparalleled” customer experience, consistently, with all customers. These businesses will have earned the right to celebrate.
The theme for this year’s customer service week is…….ready for it? “Above and Beyond.” As I have said countless times in this column, if a business is struggling to meet its customers’ expectations, it has no business asserting that it wants to “go beyond” customers’ expectations. “You have to meet the bar, before you beat the bar.”
When a business delivers an “unparalleled” customer experience consistently, it sends the signal that it is able to see the way and is prepared to lead the way to service delivery greatness.
When a business delivers an “unparalleled” customer experience consistently, it sends the signal that it is able to see the way and is prepared to lead the way to service delivery greatness.
Its motivation is to stand out in the minds of its customers for excellence and not simply for the transactional exchange of money and merchandise. Often, at the heart of this type of business, is a value system that espouses “care-centricity” and demonstrates that the business does not exist simply to be a soulless, money-generating machine.
Businesses such as these, do not need customer service week to celebrate customers, they can celebrate the lived experience of selling value alongside products that solve their customers’ problems, every day.
Businesses that go above and beyond for their customers, operate at a bar that’s higher than the average customer experience baseline. Their motivation is simply, to serve and to deliver enduring value that earns customer love and loyalty.
Businesses such as these, do not need customer service week to celebrate customers, they can celebrate the lived experience of selling value alongside products that solve their customers’ problems, every day.
As we dive deeper into the world of artificial intelligence, customers do not need to be subjected to an artificial experience, but deserve one that does not need a measuring stick to validate that smiles and solutions are simply a part of the unparalleled value being offered by businesses, every day.