We shouldn’t even think of “customer service” as being about something that is valuable to customers. The reasons are simple. We live in a service-focused age, and the people who buy from your brand know they’re customers. So “customer service” does not describe anything customers don’t expect and it certainly doesn’t envelope anything of particular value to them.
Every brand is a service business at some level these days.
In reality, customer service is the means to the real goal: sustained and profitable relationships forged between customers and a brand. Until you achieve that, you haven’t added any sense of worth for either party. You’ve just done what was expected.
Success is not about achieving world-class customer service or carrier-level or benchmarks or any of the other abstract customer service qualitatives that are freely bandied about. Success pivots on whether your brand delivers experiences that your customers continue to be enchanted by.
People don’t come back to a brand because they got good metrics. It’s sad then that some companies still think their job is done once they’ve delivered them.
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