How to show your customers you really care?
That’s a great question. I believe it’s the foundation of a thriving business. Why? Because without customers, who will you sell your products and services to?
While it’s a hot topic for brands of all sizes, not many brands have succeeded in capturing the essence of customer excellence.
It is safe to say, all brands understand the value of great customer care. However, not every brand is committed to seeing it through and holding employees accountable at all levels of their organization.
But my recent experience with T-Mobile’s social customer expert team motivated me to dedicated this entire article. If you want to know the story, you can jump there now. But the back story does build up to it 🙂
You see, customer excellence is not something that you just talk about in team meetings, off-site team building, or leadership meetings. It’s more than that.
Customer excellence is a lifestyle, it’s an integrated behavior, a culture within the company — from the most junior employee to the executive leaders.
A company with unhappy employees will suffer its customers’ wrath
Contrary to popular belief, customer excellence doesn’t start with the customer.
Yes, the reasonable customer is always right. And it’s accurate to say that customers are the lifeblood of your revenue stream.
At the core of customer excellence is happy employees.Â
Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.
~ Richard Branson
Suffice to say a brand that pays attention to and foster employee growth will manifest it’s efforts in happy customers.
Your employees are the face and voice of your brand.
Besides the quality of your product or service, your brand’s reputation and growth rest on the shoulders of your employees.
When employees feel appreciated and cared for, they naturally transfer that positive energy and vibe to customers.
The result? Issues get resolved, customers have an amazing experience, and employee morale is boosted.
Everyone experiences customer service, but not customer excellence
There’s a glaring difference between customer service and customer excellence.
Everyone of us have experienced customer service — returns, exchanges, refunds — those are common customer care issues. And most are non-issues that can be easily resolved.
For me, customer excellence is an entirely different experience. To me, it’s a defining moment separating companies that are all-in on customer excellence.
I am talking about issue that face insurmountable odds — those hopeless situation that leave you, the customer hanging.
Many of your customers have been through those experience with businesses where you feel betrayed, left hanging with no recourse. That is, until a superhero customer excellence employee steps in and delivers an experience that takes your breathe away!
I experienced one of those breathtaking moments with T-Mobile’s social media team.
First, I received prompt attention. Second, I had an actual conversation and not treated as a “number.” Third, my issue was resolved at lightning speed.
I am grateful and writing this article to thank T-Mobile for their commitment to customer excellence.
Read on for the juicy details. The issue I had was monumental. It would have set me back financially.
My loyalty with Verizon has been tested on several occasions
Verizon has been our provider for the past 15 years. That’s a long time.
Just for fun, let’s see how much I am worth to Verizon over my lifetime.
My monthly phone bill was $350. That’s $4,200 per year. Multiply that by 15, and my lifetime customer value is a whopping $63,000. That’s A LOT!
While I do admit that I never had a problem with Verizon’s connectivity and phone service, it was how they treated me that left a bad taste in my mouth — on several occasions.
Exhibit A
The Samsung Ellipsis tablet. When my son was younger, I thought this would have been a great starter tablet for him. So I purchased it, added a new line, and became the owner of a worthless device.
It turns out, this tablet was a great coaster for my coffee cup than anything else. Albeit an expensive coaster.
A piece of crap! A total disaster. A waste of money — but nonetheless, quite a fancy coaster.
I was obviously not happy with my purchase.
Consequently, I called customer service. The customer rep greeted me with “Mr. Chew, thank you for being a Verizon customer. I see that you’ve been a loyal customer for 15Â years. How can I help you today?”
Well, since you asked. First, remember, as a customer, my lifetime value so far is already over $60,000. Needless to say, I am worth something to Verizon. I’m the type of loyal customer every brand dreams about. I will stick around for a very very long time.
So I went on to explain my predicament and what the rep said to me left me even more frustrated. After putting me on hold for a few minutes to supposedly ask the manager for advice…
The rep said “Hi Mr. Chew, since it’s a contract, we are unable to help you with this device. But we have a promotion running now for the new iPhone.”
I literally begged them to help me out so I can have a useful device instead of wasting money every month on the useless tablet. But my plea fell on deaf ears.
Let me put things into perspective. The tablet retails for $299 (probably less now).
So, whoever they put in charge of the customer care team was willing to lose a loyal customer worth $63,000 over a $299 device? That’s a retention tactic that no company will envy.
Yes, there are rules and contracts — but there’s something greater than words on a piece of paper.
Customer excellence! And the truth is, sometimes, customer excellence should override everything.
It appears bureaucracy overrides common business sense and Verizon wasn’t willing to preserve our relationship. What a shame.
Switching to T-Mobile
Allow me to be transparent. I’ve been under the impression that T-Mobile’s service was not great. But I had zero proof. It was hearsay.
I suspect some negative content campaign by competitors. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but negative content campaign is a widely used tactic — on the down low, of course.
But that is besides the point.
I have been following John Legere, T-Mobile’s CEO, for a while on his Twitter profile.I don’t know him personally (yet), anyone can follow him.
Even before I considered switching over from Verizon to T-Mobile, I’ve witnessed how much John and his team really care for people.
And I even mentioned John in this article about brand personality.
But what caught my attention was his high level of engagement and social activity with his employees and customers. It’s rare to see the head of a global brand embrace this form of communication around the clock.
John is proof that, even a CEO of a 76 million customer company can get on social media, engage, and be transparent with everyone — then there’s no excuse for other CEOs. Is there?
Switch over to T-Mobile already, Derek
Even John motivated me to #GetOutoftheRed himself, and with the best GIF on the web! How could I refuse?
I have to admit. It feels great, that a CEO takes the time out to banter with me — and I’m not even a customer yet at this point!
This tells me one very important thing — and something that every CEO and high-level executive should learn.
Be human!
OK, before this turns into a mini-book, I ended up switching 5 of my lines from Verizon to T-Mobile.
Ending my relationship with Verizon
That was the promotion that I signed up for. Switching over from red to pink meant that I would receive credit in the form of gift cards to settle my device balance from Verizon.
When my final bill from Verizon arrived, I took it into my local T-Mobile store to get hooked up.
To my dismay, the store manager informed me that I had passed the time limit for the promotion, and that it’s no longer valid for my account.
Add salt to the wound, the store manager said that two of my Samsung 9S are not eligible for the promotion. In his defense, he did offer to escalate this to his district manager. So he was still trying to help me resolve my conundrum.
But the possibility of not qualifying for the promotion made me nervous, and I felt cheated to switch over.
By the way, the store sales person I spoke with did not inform me of my Samsung 9S ineligibility. In fact, I was told the opposite. Imagine my surprise.
T-Mobile Help Twitter Expert Team saves the day
I’m obviously active on social media — after all, I run an internet marketing agency.
So I took my plea to Twitter and reached out to T-Mobile Help social profile.
Quite honestly, I didn’t expect much. The damage has already been done. I was quite soured by the whole initial experience with the T-mobile store staff.
But to my surprise, the Twitter support team responded and was on a mission to help resolve my problem.
In the midst of all the back and forth, there’s one element that stood out — that is core to customer excellence.
Empathy.
Twitter messaging was very helpful, but it was difficult to explain the entire situation. As you can see, the Franchesca offered to help me with a different option.
But it was obviously an entirely different offer that what was promised when I switched over.
So, instead of risking arthritis, we got on a call to discuss my concerns.
We talked for about 20 minutes, it was mostly me explaining in detail what happened at the store.
I was then put on hold for a few minutes while Franchesca was looking for a solution.
When she came back on the phone, I realized that I have found the right company to commit my phone services to. Not because of anything else, but one of the most important thing that separates great brands from others.
You guessed it. Customer Excellence.
My experience with T-Mobile’s Twitter expert team is by far one of the best experiences I’ve had with customer care. They truly take the time and effort to LISTEN and solve issues.
When everything is humming along, everyone is happy.
But when things go wrong and a problem needs to be resolved, a great customer excellence team like what T-Mobile has built will leave their competitors behind in the dust.
Kudos to Franchesca and the rest of the T-Mobile Help team for doing such an excellent job. John and his team is lucky to have you every one of you on board.
