Surprise your Customers
Managing customer expectations is one of the most complex to administer in a CRM initiative. Even so your organization is not involved in a CRM project, it is important to be clear about what the expectations of customers are and how your company is doing. This is where fact becomes important to provide customers with what they do not expect. That is, surprise her with something that the client has not considered in his expectations, but you can create a memorable and most importantly, can generate a very positive word of mouth about the service provided by your organization. Here in this article some considerations about it.
Unfortunately, there is a large gap between what companies feel “satisfied customers” and what customers feel about it. In a survey conducted by Accenture Customer Satisfaction, 75% of companies surveyed said that the customer service offered by them was described as “extremely good”. It turns out that 57% of surveyed customers who are served by these companies, said they were “extremely dissatisfied” with the service provided by these companies. Many companies design complex strategies to close this gap between what the company provides as a service and the expectations that the customer has on it and qualify as a receipt. Studies have shown that implementing simple mechanisms that deliver customer experiences that cannot wait, can have a high positive impact on loyalty and customer referencing this can generate.
It is no mystery to everyone as consumers or customers are unforgiving when rating the quality of service. The slightest deviation or discomfort immediately puts us on the offensive and began to denigrate the company that provides the service. Lately we are very sensitive to any element, however minimal, to generate a deviation from our expectations. However, it has been shown that such people can be re-strung in the path of loyalty and satisfaction, if you are caught with something that does not expect, obviously bearing in mind that most deviations occur in contracted services.
CRM magazine in January of 2009 appears an article about the subject, The Tipping Point section. I’ll use an example mentioned in this article to illustrate the point. The author mentions a recent flight on Southwest Airlines which was suffered delay due to weather conditions for about three hours. The flight attendants took the necessary steps very carefully and provided free food, drinks, readings and permanent information on the weather and possible departure. As the author says action on track, but nothing that surprised traveler’s memorable or shocking way. However, it was the next move of the airline which generated a very positive reminder to all users of that flight. Two days after the flight, our hero received a letter signed by the Vice President of Southwest, apologizing for the delays on the flight and offering a free one-way ticket to any destination where the airline flies. For this action the airline takes on a very marginal cost, but generates a high level of recall and customer satisfaction, and you are getting something that is not expected. In addition to the fact of creating a very positive reaction and the possibility of an important voice to voice, generate an income opportunity, because the ticket is only one way, the customer would have to buy the way back.