“There’s a new humanitarian effort taking place in the underbelly of modern business. Customer Support used to be a wasteland where customers would go to die. Today, there is a movement that is radically changing the way companies interact with their customers. This movement is shifting more than the bottom line, it’s transitioning the transaction economy into human-centered engagements of reciprocity.” -Unknown
As we grow into our 13th season of helping American businesses prosper, I often look back at all the times that we bent over backwards for a client who never said thank you. I reflect on the different situations where we knocked it out of the park as a company, and also the times we failed our clients.
I’m constantly over thinking our sales and service processes to see how we could have done better. I think I always come back to the place of understanding that it’s in our human nature to complain or criticize more than we praise people and companies.
I always say to myself I know we provide amazing service, but why is feedback so slow to trickle in? I’m not just tooting our own horn, our current customer attrition averages 5%-7% , while the The Strawhecker Group says the industry average sits at about 23% . We know we are great at servicing our clients, but how do we get them to tell us that we did a good job?
I don’t know the answer to that question but, my wife and I often joke that if we had just started a restaurant or bar we would get the positive feedback from our customers that we are looking for. It’s much more sexy to rave about food and drinks at the newest local hotspot! We know our company is not perfect, and we fail sometimes, but we also know how important service and follow up is to our customer success story.
A few months back I watched a live session from Full Sail University about The Humanization of Customer Relationships and it blew me away. The speaker talked about Wowing clients through genuine empathetic kindness. I scratched my head and wondered “is this possible in the financial services industry?” Can you really transition the transaction industry into human-centered engagement?
Once again my answer to that questions is “I’m not sure?” But, I am damn well going to try!
For now we will strive to do business different. In an industry that is plagued with being Reactive and Impersonal, we want our Customer Success stories to be Proactive and Personal. That is how we will be different.
by: Jon Loveless | President | PaymentSolutionPros