Customer Service – It’s the Little Things

Those that are in Customer Service departments have a big task – how can you provide a better customer experience without breaking the bank? There is no one answer to this question but there are tactics you can follow that work. Don’t focus on what you can’t control – start with the low hanging fruit.

As someone that leads a Customer Success Management team (although we call it something else), I’m always looking at ways that we can pinpoint those customers that need a bit more assistance and do what we can to direct them down the right path. One new tool we’ve employed to help us on this quest is Gainsight (formerly Jbara back in the day). Gainsight sits within our CRM and can provide alerts based on certain usage, engagement, NPS (customer feedback), and case data to name a few.

We’ve started to see some immediate results by using it to drill down to key contacts that are completing our feedback surveys. We aim to respond to all survey respondents but Gainsight can help us prioritize our response. I was testing out the tool and decided to reach out to a customer that had provided some negative product feedback a few months back. Although the feedback was a bit stale, I wanted to see how this individual felt about our company and if they had their problems addressed.

The client quickly responded and let me know that the product issues had been cleared up and outlined some documentation recommendations. He also mentioned a negative customer experience from our recent customer conference. His manager had signed up for a training session but was unable to attend as they were sick. When he requested the materials for the class that was missed we had denied their request. When I received his response, I immediately followed up with the right people on my side and had the training materials mailed to him.

The customer soon after received the training materials and sent me a short note that said “Thanks for sending this. It really means a lot to us”. His note and our ability to help a key individual of one our clients was really special for me as well.

Here are my takeaways:

• The little things matter when it comes to customer service. Look for easy opportunities to right wrongs and go that extra mile for your customer where it makes sense.
• You can’t tackle everything so prioritize who you follow up with. Use technology to help you concentrate where you spend your time.
• Learn from your mistakes. Let’s face it, some problems may not be easy to solve, but others are. In this case, our front line people may need some additional training so we avoid these issues in the first place.

Let me know if you have similar experiences. It would be great to hear your stories and how you handled the situation.

Oh and this customer recently renewed their software subscription with us.