Customer Service Success
Defining Outstanding Customer Service
“Customer Service is the experience we deliver to our customer. It’s the promise we keep to the customer. It’s how we follow through for the customer. It’s how we make them feel when they do business with us.”
If you ask a group of people how they define outstanding customer service, you will probably receive very different answers. At PI, we define outstanding customer service simply as service that exceeds your customer’s expectations. To understand this a bit more, it’s helpful to look at the difference between good, poor, and outstanding service.
Good service occurs when a customer’s expectations are met. For example, if your customer expects you to be friendly, and your friendly, then you have provided good service. The challenge with good service is it’s not very memorable.
Poor service occurs when the experience is worse than the customer expected, such as being rude when a customer expects you to be friendly. Unlike good service, poor service is memorable because it was something unexpected.
Outstanding customer service is service that exceeds the customer’s expectations. Therefore, if a customer expects you to be friendly, you might find a way to go beyond that by making your service more personal. You can try using their name, engage in light conversation, or offering a genuine and sincere compliment. The challenge here is customers often have different expectations. Customers could have the same experience and still rate it differently. Therefore, it is important to treat each customer as an individual and try to understand their own unique needs.
Think about the last three customers you served. How do you think they felt about your service? Did you meet their expectations? Were they disappointed in some way? Or did you manage to go beyond what they expected? Thinking about service from your customer’s perspective can help you identify more ways to deliver outstanding customer service.
Activity
Outstanding service can be a lot of work! What is in it for you? Answer the questions below to identify the value of providing outstanding service.
- What do you get from providing outstanding service?
- How does your outstanding service positively impact your co-workers?
- How does your outstanding service positively impact your organization?
Somethings you may have considered is that your outstanding service prevents your coworkers from having to fix problems, perhaps it brings positive energy to the team, or you are regarded as a positive role model to your colleagues. Customers often look at the people who serve them as representative of the entire organization. Therefore, your outstanding service can have impact on increased profits, retained customers, and positive word of mouth.
Customer Service is not always easy. The important thing to remember is that your service is instrumental in how the business does and that the work that you do matters. So choose to give that extra effort to be outstanding.