How to Improve your Customer Service through Creating a Great Customer Experience

Why Customer Service?

In a competitive environment where the time from innovation to imitation is reduced and all products and services are under the pressure of commoditisation, customer experience management (CEM) has come to the fore as a means of competitive differentiation.

At the heart of the experience is the quality of the customer service. Without customer service research and examples of good customer service, people's ability to deliver an effective customer experience through stimulating the customer's emotional response is severely limited. It is this evoked emotional response that so often drives repeat purchase, positive word of mouth, customer satisfaction and loyalty.

The Growing Focus on Customer Service

Indeed, increasingly in today's marketplace we are seeing a growing focus on customer service elements within TV advertising. For instance, the reorientation of the sales message towards a personal 'caring service' by UK car repairs firm Kwikfit. Or the focus on 'Another way' and the availability of local branch banking by the National Westminster Bank, both examples of good customer service philosophy.

There seem, as a means of delivering a great customer experience, to be several forces at work that are leading this emphasis on customer service;

Recognition of service as a competitive differentiator.
The increasing importance of touching on the emotional response of consumers.
Backlash against the cost-cutting centralisation trends that have the potential to strip out the human element in favour of centralised call centres and consequent perceptions of impersonality.

The Dangers of Avoiding Customer Service

For a large section of the market customer service is too often perceived as a cost. The retailer that fails to hire sufficient staff to deliver a responsive customer service may feel the cost savings, but will also have to contend with the wider implications of not delivering a great customer experience that are not obviously measured;

The lost sales opportunities
A decline in customer loyalty
Negative word-of-mouth
Operational difficulties as the remaining staff try to make up the deficit.

Customer Service Research

Beyond Philosophy's customer service research of 400 consumers within Chicago, USA on their emotional experience reveals the value of good customer service and how to improve customer service.

Making your consumers feel like they belong acts both as an encouragement to repeat purchase as well as an active discouragement to others for instance;

We found that lower-class and ethnic minorities often felt unappreciated and unwelcome in certain retail areas of Chicago, often feeling distrusted and possibly even disliked.
Discrimination was at the forefront of their minds and as such, they were willing to pay a premium price to shop at locations where they felt welcomed and trusted.
Teenagers within certain outfitter stores were actively encouraged to the detriment of older age groups that would like to buy, and certainly their parents who hold the purse strings!

Want to learn more? Then call us now on 0207 917 1717 or alternatively, email your enquiry to contact@beyondphilosophy.com

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