Read an Excerpt
Preface
What You Do Is Critically Important
“It’s not enough to merely satisfy the customer;
customers must be ‘delighted’— surprised by having their needs not just met, but exceeded.”
—A. Blanton Godfrey
Serving customers. The two words cover so much. Answering questions. Solving problems. Untangling corporate logjams. Fixing what’s broken and finding what’s lost. Soothing the irate and reassuring the timid. And time after time, performing the business equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
Not too long ago, working in customer service was just about as thankless a job as a person could find. Sales? That was a job with a future. Marketing? Now there was a title with some prestige. Digital marketing? Wow, the wave of the future.
Advertising? What mystique! Web page design—really cool!
But customer service? Backwater. A burden. A career path to nowhere. Fellow employees looked down their noses at
“those people who deal with whining customers.” And customers—
well, they mostly seemed to see customer service as a title for not very bright people who woke up most mornings a looked in the mirror, grinned wide, and said to their reflections,
“This is going to be a fun day. I’m going to go down there and annoy the first 217 people I talk to.” And then did just that. Not exactly positive images.
In the late 1990s, about the time of the dot.com debacle a professional business watchers began to re-learn something important.
They discovered that organizations that had dedicated themselves to working hard at giving their customers superior service were producing better financial results. These organizations grew faster and were more profitable than the organizations that were still working as hard as they could to give their customers as little as possible, whether online, over the phone a or face-to-face. Now, in the second decade of the new millennium a it’s not just about focusing on customers, it’s about creating loyal ones. That’s where the real money is.
In short, companies that emphasize total customer service make more money and keep customers longer than companies that don’t.
Researchers also started to notice that highly successful service organizations had lower marketing costs, fewer upset and complaining customers, and more repeat business—
customers were “voting with their feet” and beating a path back to the doors of the companies that served them well.
What’s more, good service had internal rewards: Employee turnover and absenteeism were lower and morale and job satisfaction higher in these same organizations. Companies that asked employees to make customers happy had happier employees.
Almost overnight, being customer-focused, understanding and meeting customer needs, and coddling customers with
Tender Loving Care became a critical organizational goal. And received spotlight attention. Books were written. Banners hung.
And speeches made—all trumpeting the importance of customer service. A revolution in the way customer service was viewed and valued began—and continues to this day.
In the two decades since the start of the latest service revolution, we’ve all learned a lot about what it takes to create and sustain a service advantage. As the world grows ever smaller, we’ve learned that good service requires a new sensitivity to the cultural differences and varied service expectations of customers we serve around the globe. As Baby
Boomers, Generation Xers, and Millennials continue to collide in the workplace, we’ve learned that each generation has distinct service preferences that we need to account for in how we plan or deliver service. And for all we’ve learned, for all that has been written and said, the most important part of creating a “service advantage” is still... you.
What you do is important. What you do is work—hard work. Answering questions. Solving problems. Untangling corporate logjams. Fixing what’s broken and finding what’s lost. Soothing the irate and reassuring the timid. Matching people you do business with with just the right products and services, and helping them enjoy and get the most out of those purchases.
Twenty years ago, Ron and Kristin penned the original
Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service to share with you what we had learned about quality customer care during fifteen years of watching and working with thousands of customer-oriented customer service professionals. People just like you who provide great service over and over and over again;
true Knock Your Socks Off Service pros who make their customers’
lives and jobs simpler instead of more difficult, more interesting and less boring—and who have a heck of a good time doing it, too.
In the ensuing two decades we have had the opportunity to work with thousands of customer service professionals worldwide. And we have learned even more about the fine art of delivering world class customer care. We have taken those lessons in hand and to heart, and we present here for your consideration the Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service: 20th
Anniversary Edition. You’ll notice something new in the back matter of this edition: We have included a cross reference feature that ties back to our book, 101 Activities for Knock Your
Socks Off Service. The recommended activities are tied to specific chapters of this book as an additional resource.
Whether you are new to customer service or an old pro, we think there is something here for you. What you do is more important to your organization than ever before. If this book helps you to do it even a little bit better, your thanks should go not to us, but to the thousands of pros who served as our teachers and mentors. And if you find the journey through these pages not only helpful but enjoyable, then we’ll have met our customer service goal.
Performance Research Associates
Minneapolis, MN
February 2011
