It takes a village to make a happy customer. Customer delight grows out of the entire collection of interactions the customer has with every member of your team. It is rare that just one interaction sends a customer over the edge, but one bad interaction can certainly deflate the relationship and move the customer from delight to satisfaction and then it doesn't take much to move to disappointment.
One of the most common complaints is that a vendor shows a lack of urgency. Things just take too long. When customers and prospects are looking for an answer to a question or a quote or an estimate, or they have a product issue that is in their way, they are typically seeking an immediate response. Vendors have to deal with all sorts of requests, and it may seem nearly impossible to respond immediately to every issue. However, the vendor’s challenges don’t really matter to a customer or prospect that is seeking an immediate response. They want the vendor to match or exceed their level of urgency.
The golden rule for vendors is “do unto customers as you would want a vendor to do unto you.” At a minimum, a vendor needs to be aware of when their team is taking too long to respond, and create mechanisms to escalate and accelerate their processes when they fall behind. The entire team has to act with urgency, and that means we don’t let issues languish, and we are vigilant following up every step of the way. It has to be baked into the culture of the company, and every team member needs to be onboard.
In sales, there are many studies that suggest when buyers reach out to multiple vendors, the first to meaningfully respond has the highest chance of winning the deal. There are tons of factors that influence the purchase, but quick response is near the top of the list because it sets a tone for the relationship, and a favorable bias. You snooze you lose.
In support, rapid initial response has to be wed to reliable and rapid follow up and resolution. When issues pass from one member of a team to another, we cannot let the customer fall through the cracks, and each team member in the chain needs to be aware of the total lapse time as perceived by the customer. It is not good enough for the first person to practice ‘fire and forget’ behavior. They have to own the relationship and practice ‘fire and follow-up’ instead. Like a relay race, vendors should track metrics on every passing of the baton. Measure the total journey, and all of the splits with the objective to achieve continuous improvement and accelerate each step. On the other side of the equation, the customer is expecting an immediate response, and the team’s objective is to delight them, not annoy them.
The easy, and often the default business communication method today is a digital response - email, chat, text, Slack, etc. The problem is that teams often lose sight of the number of back-and-forth messages, and asynchronous responses can feel slow and annoying to customers. We have all attempted to interact with a vendor via a chat session. It usually takes a couple of back and forths to say hello, and ask your question (often more than once). Then the agent invariably disappears for what feels like ‘too long’ before coming back with an innocuous question that is clearly a stall tactic while they chat with another customer. Eventually, they get to the original question, and it takes a bunch of frustratingly slow back and forth messages to get a meaningful answer. I call this inside-out efficiency. It is efficient for the vendor (inside) because it enables agents to multi-task and touch several clients at once, but it is not efficient or desirable for the customer (outside). Inside out efficiency is never a good strategy to generate customer delight.
No matter what type of electronic communication, I am an advocate of a ‘three touch rule.’ Person A initiates a discussion (touch 1), person B responds with a question or comment about the request (touch 2), person A responds (touch 3). If the question or issue is not resolved at this point, if left to the normal course, the back and forth can go on forever. We have all seen this in email, or text chains, both internal and external. Just think how frustrating it is for you and your teammates. Can you imagine how frustrating it is for a customer? My three touch rule requires a direct live contact after the third electronic response. Pick up the phone, or open a video call or start a huddle, and actually talk to each other. Short circuit the doom-loop of back and forth messaging. Think how much faster we can get to resolution if we let urgency dictate our interactions. Think how much our clients will appreciate when we demonstrate a sense of urgency that matches or exceeds their own. Follow the Golden Rule for Vendors.