Here's a collection of interesting Customer Service News from around the web (23-29 Nov 2014).
Customer Service Needs to Be Either More or Less Robotic
From Harvard Business Review, By Rafe Sagarin
Over the past few years, robotics has slowly crept into our daily lives and mundane tasks such as laundry, grocery shopping, and even take-out. “I had been walking through the uncanny valley of customer service. It’s called a valley because it refers to the low point in a V-shaped response curve that tracks humans’ level of comfort in dealing with artificial beings”. Great article by Rafe, and it seems to be a growing trend. Is it a delightful one?
The Art of Anticipation: Why Apple Stores’ Retail Customer Service Is Better Than Yours
From Forbes, By Micah Solomon
Micah discusses the art of anticipation, and how Apple uses it.
4 Steps to Ensuring Customer Experience Comes First
From Entrepreneur, By Jesse Torres
If customer experience doesn’t come first, then what does? These four steps will help you exceed your customer’s expectations.
The Ideal Customer Experience is No Experience
From LinkedIn, By Don Peppers
Don breaks it down simply to giving the consumers “No” experience, or in other words, smooth experience. No repetitive questions, no discomfort, and all effortless service.
“Studies have consistently shown that customer loyalty is not very highly correlated with customer satisfaction scores, although customer disloyalty does have a high correlation with customer dissatisfaction.” Thank you so much Don for this great tip!
4 Tips for Handling Customer Complaints Without Compromising Your Values
From Inc. By Yuriy Boykiv
Customer backlash is unavoidable as a B2C brand, but it's crucial to be proactive in monitoring conversations and aggressively engaging unhappy customers to acknowledge their problems.
A $1,171 Wi-Fi Bill
From The Economist
A passenger on a recent Singapore Airlines flight unknowingly incurred a hefty $1,171 in-flight Wi-Fi bill. There’s a major lesson here for companies to review their end-to-end customer experience to ensure it’s optimized for transparency and clarity. Businesses owe their customers transparent pricing at every step of a transaction—not just at the beginning.
Awesome customer service across the United States [infographic]
From desk.com, By Lauren Habig
Infographic showing companies across the U.S. doing customer service really well. Lauren also lists five easy tips for companies to deliver great customer service this holiday season including: (1) Be fast, (2) Hire people who care, (3) Ask for feedback, (4) Don’t forget to be social, and (5) Be transparent