Customer Experience: Exceeding customer expectations

Today I will start to comment on a subject that I’ve been studying for a short time now, and this subject is called: CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.

Nowadays, many companies are beginning to hire specialists in Customer Experience or Customer Success. But what are these specialties really about?

We live in an era in which the customer’s happiness has become the most critical topic. People are not looking for the cheapest or most expensive product/service. They are looking for buying an experience, but not a simple one, a mind-blowing one, and customer service is the crucible of the customer experience.

Imagine yourself waking up feeling great, then having an excellent breakfast with your family, going to work, going back home, sitting on your couch, and suddenly your tv stops working. At this moment, your reaction doesn’t change; you catch your phone and call the operating tv company, and then what can happen? Depending on the way the support person talks to you, you can end that call mad about how you were treated and talking trash about the tv company, or end it like nothing happened or amazed about how you loved the way you were treated by that support person e how that person walked the extra mile for you (really understanding the problem and trying to fix it in the best way possible). This third option brings exceptional benefits to the company, like customer loyalty, which is an ongoing relationship, and the key is excellent customer support.

Exceeding your customer’s expectations is hard as hell. However, it’s gratifying for both the customer and the company.

ZAPPOS

A practical example of high-quality customer service and experience is the Zappos brand.

Zappos.com is an online retail shop that started twenty years ago selling only shoes, and now they sell a lot of other things such as clothes, handbags, accessories, and more. But that is not what they are known for. Zappos became a study case because of the way they provide a customer experience. Their main goal is to create a personal and emotional contact with the clients by exceeding their expectations and “WOWing” them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PloPddCWAjE In this short video, it’s possible to see what fantastic service they provide. Watching it, Steven Weinstein, who works at the Customer Loyalty Team at Zappos (the call center department), had a 10-hour and 43 minutes call with a customer. At first, the buzz started with a technical question on how to place an order. Still, after this was done, they began to talk about everything you can imagine, “from vacations to restaurants,” as Steven says. By doing that, the customer/company connection grew even more.

That was one of the thousands of examples that Zappos.

This video shows The Power of the Zappos Community. It’s the perfect example of the way the Zappos culture works. They go all the way for their customers, helping them with their pain (even though they are not selling anything from the website) and, as a consequence, winning their loyalty.

Tony Hsieh, the Zappos CEO, said in a lecture on YouTube that, to everyone’s surprise, Customer Service is not the number one priority of Zappos. Their number one priority is Company Culture because, like Tony said, “Our belief is: If you get the culture right, the most of the other stuff like delivering great customer service, building a long term brander business, will just be a natural byproduct of that.”

By showing these examples, my goal here is to share and emphasize the importance of delivering a mind-blowing customer experience to your clients. Today, just doing the necessary it’s not enough; you need to go all the way for the people who are looking to purchase your service or product, and sometimes the most simple things that are in your reach, like, spending 5 minutes more in a call to secure that yours client doubts are all answered or maybe pay attention to the others person qualities, and surprise that person with something that will have a sentimental impact on her.

These are a few simple examples that you can use in your work and even at home, with your family, because customer service is not just about the way you treat your customer, but the way you care about the people around you!

Like Zappos CEO said, talking about the organizational environment, the first step to having sensational customer service is prioritizing the way your company culture is built.

In the company I work for, called DB1 Global Software, we can quickly notice how all workers cherish our culture, which is the key to the whole thing!

And if you are interested to know more about the company Zappos, you can read about its story in the book called “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Hsien.

Well, I hope that you guys enjoyed my article. For any doubts, I would love to discuss them with you.