The Curse of “Good” Customer Service

I believe people love to have positive attention lavished on them.

In this episode, I’m going to show you how to take your already really good customer experience over the moon.

If you’re frustrated by a lack of consistently over-the-top customer service, most of your encounters are fairly good but not all of them, and you’re not hearing “wows” pouring in daily, you’re going to love discovering how that can all transform quickly and sustainably.

If you are thrilled by your service culture already, you’ll love this episode because we’ll explore the next level—there’s always a next level, right?

And if you’re exasperated when your people miss deadlines, don’t “wow” the rate shopper into a buyer on the phone, or fail to notice the little things that customers tend to see but the team doesn’t address, you’ll love finding a path to consistent “wow” service.

There are a few trials to getting a “knock them alive” service culture in place.

First, fewer and fewer of the youngest generation are aware of some of the “how to be” social graces—from opening doors for clients, to proper greetings, and even walking with a customer to introduce them to someone else in the bank instead of pointing them in the general direction.

Next, nobody thinks it is their responsibility. The executive team is too busy with “big-picture things” to execute. The head of retail says it’s “not my circus.” The head of commercial—well, we don’t even need to go there… that isn’t happening. The head of marketing doesn’t quite see it as their role—even though it’s probably more closely aligned with that position than any other. Whatever the reasons, nobody’s stepping up.

And, of course, nobody really knows how. The only trick the pony knows is to bring in a speaker from the “mouse with big ears” institute. And now, everybody is more aware of what they should do—but it’s still not happening and it’s surely not sticking.

Every bank has these problems, and as a result, their people have “parts disease”—customers are coming in looking at hair parts.

I’m now going to give you three steps that will make your results dramatically different in a few weeks.

Step 1: In contrast to the many “customer service transformation attempts” that involve training and maybe a little mystery shopping to follow, you need to do things right the first time. You need a plethora of ongoing approaches to measurement, celebration and accountability systems, combined with ongoing “blended learning”—several types of learning approaches to make sure it sinks in and stays.

Step 2: Move beyond the “hope this works” attempts made in hundreds of banks every month. When you move the first needle up, it must go all the way up. Remember this from your childhood? “Young woman, when I ask you a question I deserve an _________. “ That’s right. “Answer.” Well, that’s what you need to expect when you roll out any customer service “moment of truth.” You need to put the systems and coaching in place to absolutely, undeniably double and triple that needle in a few weeks.

Step 3: Forget about the “let’s bring in a training company—that will do it” idea, or the “let’s hire a trainer to do this” approach. Customer service rollouts, and the associated systems, coaching, measurements, celebrations and visibility, need to be an “all-out effort” where a team who knows exactly what to do is aligned with executive strategies.

Three things. Blended learning, with a measurement system, combined with the coaching and celebration that truly moves the needle with blow-away progress that is immediate. Follow that with the sustain and advance process so you don’t ever hear those ugly little words that kill your profits—“this too shall pass.”

By doing this, you get the satisfaction in your soul that you don’t have “good” customer service—you have “talk about it all over town” service, which grows your bank and your community’s pride in you.

Don’t miss the next episode, when I’ll show you the three most-often broken marketing principles that cost banks millions in opportunity cost.