Customer Service: Cost Center or Brand Builder?

Customer service can serve two vastly different functions depending on your strategy. If your customer service is adequate, you’ll achieve satisfactory results, but if it is extraordinary, you can achieve fierce brand loyalty and unexpected revenue growth.

In a recent article published on Forbes.com, the author Carol Hildebrand explores the distinction between “good” and “excellent” customer service and what to do if you want to make that shift. She compiled comments from a group of customer service innovators who shared their strategy.

How to move from good to excellent:

Growth mindset

Achieve excellence with a mindset of constant striving for improvement–never feeling you have arrived.

Personalize the experience

• Tailor quality and amount of data for different tiers of users with “knowledge management” practices.
• Dig into predictive analytics to provide each individual precise customer care.

Add metrics

Use new metrics that go beyond the basic ones that have been historically used in customer service thus far.

The point here is not to discard the traditional metrics; simply add new metrics, for example, “the customer effort score—essentially, the amount of time and effort it takes a customer to resolve any issue. The lower the score is, the happier the customer is,” Hildebrand says.

Move to excellence strategically

Assess your company’s budget and stage of development to honestly determine “what it will take to move from a traditional back-office support strategy to one that focuses on customer service as a brand advocacy and presales component.”

Bottom line

Hildebrand concludes that, “In the end, companies that recognize customer service as a key brand-building tool rather than as a cost center will create an advantage that can boost success in an increasingly customer-oriented business world.”

To view the original article, How To Transform Customer Service From Okay To Outstanding, please visit Forbes.com.