Customer Service: From Forgotten Backwater to the Next Big Thing

The Internet has changed Business forever. The entire game is now about the Customer Experience.  Consequently, Customer Service Excellence has never been more important.

The days when Brands could be built by solid positioning and pricing, clever management of advertising and routes to market are long gone.  The rise of price comparison websites and peer-review websites have transformed the business environment forever.

The parallel explosion of Social Media has changed the game with a brand-new set of rules, ironically, some of these are in fact very old (forgotten by many) rules.  It is now all about the Customer Experience.

Under the old rules, if you gave a customer a good experience, they would likely tell, on average, 7 people (usually close associates).  This was a healthy, if haphazard, way to build a ‘word of mouth’ reputation.  Conversely, if you provided a bad service, disenfranchised customers would tell an average of 22 customers (and would be a little less discerning about who they told).  A net negative balance and hardly ‘viral’.

Now of course, Social Media has changed all this.  Getting ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’ is now a critical part of Brand-Building and the effects of a bad review can reach a Global Audience and be shared seemingly infinitely in the blink of an eye.  The quote, variously attributed to Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift, Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill and many others, is “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on”.  This was NEVER truer than it is today.

Online reputation management is a massive issue in business today and it all comes back to The Customer Experience.  Giving customers a truly World-Class experience is the last great Strategic Differentiator.  When all other points of differentiation have been eroded by Comparison sites, looking after the Customer, a strangely old-fashioned idea, is the new, game in town.

In order to succeed in this newest of old games, we need to re-visit an oft-forgotten (or relegated to the point of near-insignificance) topic, Customer Service.  Those companies that are best able to ‘climb inside the customer’s head’ are those who can truly deliver a world-class experience (and the world-encompassing rave reviews that go with them).

Until recently, Customer Service skills were seen as important for those dealing directly with customers (Customer Service staff, Complaints Departments, occasionally Account Managers).  Everyone else got preoccupied with more glamourous and exciting concepts, many of which have been and gone and many others of which have been rendered futile by the internet.

It turns out that Customer Service is everyone’s business and that the very future of an organisation may well depend on its ability to understand and then deliver enduring, compelling value to customers.  Those that can will find the transforming technologies of the internet to be ‘Fair Winds’, those that do not will go the way of all things that fail to adapt to transformative changes.

It seems that a very old-fashioned idea just became the Big New Game.  Learn how to play it better than others.

ABOUT the Course:

This EuroMaTech Customer Service Excellence training course delves into the precise meaning of value, what it is that customers actually value and what an organisation can do to ensure it, perhaps uniquely, can deliver it.  Application of the tools and techniques demonstrated on this training course will enable attendees to provide dramatic increases in Customer service, leading to customer retention and increased revenues.  It will also show how organizations can fully harness the power of Social Media to augment their brands and create meaningful dialogues with Customers.

Participants will develop the following competencies:

• Understand and be able to exploit, the relationship between Price, Quality and Value
• Understand which activities add value and which destroy it
• Gain invaluable insights into the workings of the customers mind; how influence works and understand the science of persuasion
• Develop tools and techniques that will consistently build value and enhance both the customer’s experience and also the organisation’s profits.
• Learn from best practice examples how to use Social Media to create meaningful, compelling and enduring relationships with Customers.

Please click here to review the published outline for the “Customer Service Excellence” training course and seminar. Need further information or would you like to register on this training seminar?

Please contact us @ Tel.: +971-4-4571800, or E-mail to: [email protected]