Last year we took a family holiday of a life time and spent time in California - Orange County and the Disneyland precinct to be precise. My eyes were opened to a world of truly first class customer service. I literally commented out loud, several times, at how wonderful it was, not just to experience service from staff that genuinely wanted to make your day better, but to experience this service, from every working person you encounted. From bus drives, concierges, ticketing staff, receptionists, waiters, tour guides, it didn't matter. The importance to them, of serving you, of making your experience of, not just their company, but their place in the world, enjoyable and remarkable, was obvious, and was not being faked. It was also remarkable how the massive, multi-national companies, managed to ensure this attitude permeates right throughout every aspect of their operations.
Now I guess, if you don't buy into this culture, you just don't make it in this, the customer service capital of the world. This is not new, I know, but it really hit home during our holiday last year, and I started to pay attention to this, in other areas of my personal and professional life.
I'm assuming that Disneyland (and surrounds) is the major league for those people making their living in customer service. A hotel concierge at the Hyatt in Orange County, is probably the top of the tree in the concierge game - so we were experiencing the best of the best. Never-the-less, like watching the best of the best in anything - sport, music, business, whatever - it was inspiring. This was quite literally, World's Best Practice.
I recently experienced this yet again, in a situation which to many could appear creepy, but due to what I'm sure was no accident, the company in question, HubSpot had picked their target perfectly, no doubt as a result of the world class analysis and underlying algorithms, and the result was mighty impressive....
I was browsing their web site, again, this time, just to get some ideas for our blog layout. My desk phone buzzed, and the call was put through. The details were vague. I took the call anyway, expecting a Telly marketer.
"This is 'HubSpot' , we think there's something we can do to help....".
It sounded reasonable, "That's a coincidence, I was just on your website".
"Well, no really a coincidence. I can see you've checked out information on out site several times...."
This is fantastic! Some think it's creepy. I have no problem with it. If I visit a store, multiple times, looking at the same stuff, why can't the store attendant pick up on the fact that I'm interested. I can where a disguise if I really want to hide (read Google Incognito) but this really helped. I learned stuff from the ensuing conversation, about a topic I was clearly interested in. And the guy on the phone wanted to help. This was service.
Customer Service by con-artists feels cheap, manipulative and dodgy. It leads you to feeling ripped off.
Customer Service by elite, world class service providers makes you feel like you've got a friend who you've just dropped in on at work.
Seth Says...The only purpose of customer service is to change feelings! I guess if you change (or set) feelings, you profit. So the cynics can say, the only purpose is to make money. That will always be the bottom line, won't it. But truly great customer service and profit are a self fullfulling (positive feedback) loop. It's not just about making a profit for your company either We can all do better for ourselves (financially if that is your ultimate goal) by lifting our games - becoming linch-pins . It may just be that you become the best concierge, fruit shop attendee, burger server, in your neighbourhood, but you'll still profit. And the better you get, the more you'll profit.
So here was all this world class customer service I was experiencing. It was not a TED talk on what we will be able to do 10 years from now when technologies align and systems are built - this is happening now, this is here, and this is very quickly becoming the new norm. It has opened my eyes to what is possible now, and what will be expected tomorrow. We will begin to expect this not just from Disneyland or HubSpot, but from the corner store, the supermarket and our local sporting club. It's time to get on board, quickly!
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