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"I have to tell you, this report is great. We have made it
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It's become our 'best practices' document and we'll be implementing
initiatives to improve our services based on items in the report."
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ASPonline.com >
Reports >
The Great Customer Experience
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The Great Customer Experience
Publication date: 11/08
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Executive summary
Not long ago, the common working definition of “great support” was
something like “the best we can do in the cheapest way possible.”
That’s classic cost-center thinking, and for a lot of service
businesses—think WalMart and discount airlines—it can
be a pretty successful strategy. But for many technology companies,
the growth of fee-based services and loyalty-based marketing have
radically transformed this cost-focused approach. Increasingly, the
goal now is to stand out from the crowd, to deliver a
knock-their-socks-off experience, to be “world class.”
Being proud of your service quality is always more fun than
nickle-and-diming the customer, of course. And there are lots of
examples in daily life that show high payoffs from extraordinary
service quality. The fanatical helpfulness of a Nordstrom’s or a
Ritz-Carlton, the legendary Avis “We Try Harder” campaign, FedEx’s
near-perfect on-time delivery record, and the top-to-bottom
friendliness of Southwest Airlines—have all helped turn commodity,
cost-centric businesses into market leaders.
Despite these examples, however, when we look at the support world,
it’s surprisingly hard to figure out who’s really offering “great”
service. In fact, support managers themselves seem a little fuzzy
about what it takes to be outstanding. We recently asked ASP members
and other support professionals, “What makes your users feel they’ve
encountered a ‘great customer experience’?” The answers were often
fascinating and insightful, but the most common answer was a
variation on this response:
“Someone who listens, gives a complete and accurate answer, in
a timely fashion.”
In other words, exceptional support consists of answering the phone
without too much delay, listening politely, and providing a correct
answer. Ouch: If this is the standard for great support, it’s
chilling to think what average support is like.
To be fair, average support these days tends to be pretty good and
is often excellent, especially by comparison with the standards
that prevailed 10-20 years ago. But a rise in standards is a
two-edged sword: When most companies are delivering a reasonably
high level of service, it becomes far harder to be truly
distinctive. As customers begin to encounter good support
everywhere, they ratchet up their own expectations. And they become
far harder to impress.
That’s probably where we are now. Judging from our survey data, for
example, a large percentage of support managers now feel they’re
delivering “world class” support. If that’s a realistic assessment,
then being world-class has become pretty ordinary; for all practical
purposes, world class now means little more than “above average.”
But there’s always an opportunity to dramatically exceed market
standards and customer expectations. For that reason, we’ve
assembled a series of short essays by support experts and
in-the-trenches practitioners on the general theme of how to achieve
a genuine Wow! experience in support delivery. We hope these essays
inspire some of our readers to look for new ways to delight and amaze
their customers—and ultimately to move overall industry standards
even higher.
Copies of the survey are free to ASP members in the
members-only area.
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