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Using your Customer Service to generate positive word of mouth
The main question for optimal customer service is not what to do, but how to do it. Customer service is the moment of truth, the moment when the customer is going to experience first hand if all the promises made by a brand are true. This is the moment where the customer will feel, whether he/she is just a nameless stakeholder or a true person.
There is much written about Customer Relationship Management, that sometimes I feel embarrassed to even use the word in my writings. There a many ‘cold’ and ‘analytical’ tools out there to allegedly improve the customer relationship. In my paper (click to download) you can read how I look at CRM today. The conventional CRM is everything but ‘customer relationship’.
Customer Service is a very powerful instrument. It has the power to develop instant ‘word of mouth generators’. The questions is how you do this? Are there some promotions, tricks, techniques, etc… that make customer tick?
In effect there is – it is a simple principle. Customers have a peer to peer communication based on strong experiences. Experiences that are so intense that customers cannot keep it for themselves.
Well, how do you generate strong experiences? Again, there is a simple principle. Surprise your customer. Make sure that in the relationship with your customer and especially with customer service, there is a positive unexpected element. It is that unexpected element that has the intensity to build up energy, strong enough to be shared with fellow customers.
Customers don’t talk about what they expect. What they expect is their right. If you deliver 99% instead of 100% then this is a negative brand experience. They expect 100%, instead they receive 99%. It is this surprise element that will be shared with more other customer than you would like to.
However, the principle of generating positive brand experience is exactly the same: do the unexpected. Especially during moments of customer service, don’t communicate everything. Surprise the customer in doing something that you intended anyway, however deliver it as something extra.
My formula for customer service is: 80% + 20%= 125%. This is no magic, this formula actually works. This principle is based on the Pareto principle. Let me explain. You intend to deliver a number of services and benefits to your customer. This package represents 100% of your intention to deliver.
Instead, communicate on 80% of what you want to deliver. Make sure that the 80% is appealing and strong enough to please the customer. When you have serviced the customer, add the other 20% of deliverable service as a surprise. The customer was not expecting it. For the customer the 80% of announced deliverable was already the 100%, now he/she will perceive the 20% as an extra on top of the 100%. 20% is a fourth of 80%, so the customer will perceive an extra fourth of service, hence the 125%. Before accusing me of joggling with numbers, this is off course no exact science, though the principle is valid and works.
It is the 20% unexpected experience that will generate word of mouth, not the 80%. This principle always works, though requires well-thought out expectancy management. Most of the marketing budgets are spend to generate leads and by the time we you a customer, there is no budget left to turn the customer into a powerful ‘word of mouth generator’. Think about how your brand can benefit from this principle. Try it, you will see that it really works.