Of course, you’re customer-focused and know how to meet customer expectations, but do you also know how to exceed them? How wonderful would it be if a customer is more than just loyal, but also promotes your company everywhere? Surely, everyone wants their customers to be ambassadors of the company? That is achievable with the ultimate form of customer satisfaction: customer delight.
It’s important to be aware of the tone and colour of your voice. It can influence your phone conversations positively or negatively. Even better is knowing that you can have a significant impact yourself by applying a few clever (and simple) tricks!
In this blog, we give you 5 simple tips and/or theories about voice tone as a gift!
NPS-score
A well-known method for measuring customer satisfaction is the ‘Net Promoter Score’ (NPS). This method categorises your customers into three groups: detractors (critics), passives (passively satisfied), and promoters (ambassadors). In most companies, the majority of customers are in the middle category; passives. These customers are satisfied, they score between 6 and 8, but they are not ambassadors of the company. Promoters score a 9 or a 10. These are the customers who are fans of your company. They are loyal customers, generating free publicity and customer engagement. How do you achieve that? Here are 4 tips:
Tip 1: Give ‘em the pickle
Adults are just like children, secretly wanting a free slice of sausage at the butcher’s. A free treat makes people happy. Take for instance the free samples or the voucher for a future purchase with an order from the ICI Paris XL webshop. American Bob Farrel can explain this phenomenon extremely well with an example about a pickle. How simple can it be?
Tip 2: Solve the problem beyond expectations (reactive customer service)
In the programme TROS Radar, a warm or cold shower is presented to a company each week. Some years ago, TNO Management Consultants conducted research on 261 public applications for warm showers on the TROS Radar website. What brings consumers to the point of wanting to share their satisfaction with a company with the rest of the Netherlands? The key word is: aftersales. The majority of the warm showers, following an aftersales situation (89%), relate to a problem caused by the customers themselves, by a third party, or where the customer formally has no right to a solution. Yet the company resolved the issue for the consumer!
Tip 3: Warmth and ego-stroking/personal attention
Make your customer feel special. This can be done in many different ways: congratulate your customer on their one-year anniversary of being a customer, for example. Or reach out to ask how they like their purchase. A birthday is an ideal moment to give the customer a present. A company that practices this well is De Efteling. The customer receives an email on their birthday inviting them to celebrate their birthday at De Efteling. In this case, the customer gets a free ticket when they come to De Efteling with three others.
Tip 4: Optimise your customer journey
No matter how hard you try, there will always be moments when a customer is not so happy. When a customer has to wait or check out, they won’t be doing a happy dance and shouting from the rooftops about how fantastic your company is. To ensure the customer leaves with a positive feeling (or leaves your webshop), you will need to think carefully about the customer journey and take into account the ‘peak-end rule’.
Ikea is a good example in this. Towards the end of their ‘customer journey’, the customer ends up in the characterless self-service warehouse. They then check out in a busy queue. Bad for the customer experience. Ikea therefore creates a peak in the customer experience by offering soft ice cream and hotdogs at a bargain price just after the checkouts. Result: children happy, parents happy, and everyone goes home with a smile. The customer will primarily remember those final peak moments.
Not looking at the customer, but looking as a customer
You achieve customer delight not just by being customer-focused. You achieve customer delight by looking through the eyes of the customer. Not looking at the customer, but looking as a customer. Go through the customer journey and become aware of the low and high points in the customer experience. From advertising to aftersales. Customer satisfaction is not enough, customer delight is the goal!
Professional customer service
ContactCare is a specialist in customer contact and relationship management. We offer a one-stop-shop with a wide range of customer service services via a shared online platform, including Telephone service, Customer service, Outbound, Telephone numbers, Contact center software.
Curious about how you can exceed customer satisfaction?
We are happy to brainstorm with you to improve your customer service. Feel free to get in touch.
