Does This Company Care For Me?
Executive Vice President
The two primary questions that every customer would be concerned about when they face challenges in using your product or service are:
- Does this company care for my presenting need?
- Does this company care for me?
Caring for the customers is the basis for any business. Often, organizations spend thousands of hours figuring out what their customers need, want, and desire from them and provide it to acquire, retain, and grow them.
You must give reasons for your customers to stay with you by caring for them:
- Remove any friction that you find across touchpoints through which your customers interact with you
- Offer customers the channels of their choice to interact with you
- Do listen to your customers, proactively seek feedback from them, and act on them
- Do treat employees as the valuable asset they are
- Don’t undermine service quality by blindly cutting costs
This way, you would be able to build a strong relationship with your customers. Investing in people, processes, and technology to further your customer experience will serve you well as a business.
Let us look at what some great brands do to stay on top of the customer experience pedestal.
Red Bull Gives You Wings
Red bull doesn’t create Television commercials or blog posts about the benefits of the energy drink.
They spend significant time and energy on creating experiences consumers can engage with at a deeper level. Bike races to airplane acrobatics – Red bull makes enormous engagements that monetize their marketing efforts.
1000 Songs in Your Pocket – iPods
When Steve Jobs introduced the iPods, he didn’t say, “The world’s first portable digital music player.” Instead, he said, “1000 songs in your pocket.”
It blew the minds of everyone in the audience. The product captured the imagination of every consumer and music lover, but the seeds were sown with that phrase.
CD Baby – Call Me Now
They pick up calls within two rings. They don’t have any other channels for customers to interact. Most customers love that they get to speak to a live agent about everything they need.
Zappos – Everything You Would Ever Want
Zappos is a legend of customer experience. Look at what it offers:
- Free shipping both ways
- No order minimum to be eligible for free shipping
- Free returns for a full refund within 365 days of purchase
- 24/7 support with a provision to call, email, and live chat with an agent
- 80% of calls answered within 20 seconds
They view each conversation as an opportunity to progress and build the brand into being about the best customer service.
Netflix
Netflix is customer obsessed. It is all about intelligence and hyper-personalization. They whittle down the choices for a great movie-watching experience.
Amazon
Amazon folks talk about a formula within the organization – E = MC3 (this translates to Earth’s most customer-centric company).
They are known for personalization, ease of use, and one-click checkout. Their product returns are seamless, and you must experience it to believe it. Never have I seen any company give concessions to their customers without even thinking twice, just so the customer is happy.
This is an incredible collection of customer-centric organizations.
What Do We Do as an Organization Towards Being Customer-Centric?
We do several things that none of our peers in the industry do. Some of them are:
- No contracts
- No minimum commitments
- Truly pay-as-you-go
- No customization charges
- 95% of support issues are addressed immediately
- >99% uptime of the platform
- Implementation within 24 hours
- Immediate reporting and intelligence
We are in the process of improving our customer experience with every passing day that moves us toward caring for our customers’ needs. We haven’t had a customer churn in the past five years, and most customers say they signed up with us for our ease of use and support.
I am sure that every organization should move towards this objective, as customers are the most critical assets on our balance sheets.