The headline in a September 28th article in the Economist reads:

Customer service is getting worse—and so are customers

The opening paragraph of this article written by Schumpeter (here is an explanation about how this column got its name) addresses both the provision of service, and those receiving it.

Rare is the company today that does not claim to be “customer-centric”. Anyone unfortunate enough to have sought assistance or redress from big business may quibble.

As the heading suggests service is on the decline and customers are behaving worse than ever.

“In this year’s National Customer Rage Survey, another gauge of sentiment, 17% of customers admitted to being “uncivil” in their interactions with businesses. Scott Broetzmann, who led the survey, thinks the problem is getting worse, and that standards of acceptable behaviour are slipping. Mr Bates laments the lack of empathy customers often show towards contact-centre agents. Many such workers endure foul language and verbal abuse, one reason why attrition rates are high and rising.”

We have no such gauge for Trinidad and Tobago (that I know of) but we don’t need one for the purpose of this article.

Schumpeter is asking a very broad question as to what could fix customer service and perhaps the customer’s response to said service.

I want to suggest that we stop:

• talking about “our customers” in broad faceless terms
• viewing customer service as a department or relegating it exclusively to a call centre
• treating customers as if they are one-dimensional

We have been trying for far too long to control customers and we cannot. We think that we can be efficient by having a call centre to answer questions and be there for our customers 24/7. The employees of these call centres don’t have to live in Trinidad and Tobago. They can be from other parts of the English or Spanish speaking Caribbean. From a business standpoint, this is efficient, but is it effective?

We treat selling like a two-step process.

Let ‘the customer’ know what’s available and then get them to buy it. All selling is based on coercion which could never feel good to the person doing the coercing. But we have numbers to reach, targets to hit, customers to add to our database. General, faceless, customers.

What if we thought about our customers as taking a journey?

The first step in that journey, is when they hear about us, from a friend, social media or a sponsored advertisement that catches their eye.

Most businesses get it wrong by trying to sell immediately. They are not prepared or perhaps are impatient to play the longer game – which is developing a relationship with that customer. Get them to know, like and trust (the last one is HUGE) us BEFORE we even attempt to sell anything.

We all go through seven behaviours whenever we are buying anything: KNOW, LIKE, TRUST, TRY, BUY, REPEAT and REFER.

If we did a spectacular job in the know, like and trust department, we may eliminate the need for, or perhaps minimize the need for all those questions and complaints, after the customer has tried and bought.

Customers are not one-dimensional.

We need to stop with the faceless masses, and begin truly seeing our customers as individuals that we are serving.

I recently bought term insurance from a long time friend of my eldest brother Derek. Now I had always known and liked this guy so when we met at a birthday party recently, I enquired whether he was still selling insurance and he immediately took my details and promised to call me the following Monday.

He gained my trust when he followed through on his promise and called, set up everything painlessly in ten minutes, and by the end of that week, I had completed all medicals, and requisite paperwork. To top it off, he bought me lunch and honestly made the entire process, pain free and actually enjoyable.

Here’s the reality:

You cannot SELL anyone anything. HOWEVER you can show them reasons why they should choose you based on your methods over time, where you identify what they need, at every step of the journey to make an informed decision and provide that information in those places where they are more likely to hang out.

Here are some things to think about:

1. What does success look like to your ideal customers? [If you don’t know ask 10-25 of them to begin to get an idea. We think we know. Often we don’t]
2. How can you be more relevant in your customer’s life?
3. Which customers are most ideal for you? What problems are you solving for them?
4. What content do you need to produce to support each step on your customer’s journey?

This is how you fix customer service.

Stop thinking that all you need to do is train customer service staff and you will be fine. This is not enough.

This approach is not sexy, and the results aren’t immediate BUT, you will move from nameless, faceless to really understanding who your customers are and the real reason they come to you for their solution.

When you do this, selling does occur, but you aren’t the one selling anything. Your customers will have the information they need to sell themselves on you!

I have created a working session where I explain buying behaviours and teach you how you can create content for each step of the journey to support your customer in selling themselves on you. If you are interested, WhatsApp or call me 750-7859