10 Master Keys To Superb Customer Satisfaction

▼CX, Customer Service, Customer Success, Customer Satisfaction & Service Quality▼

10 Ways to Handle Difficult Customers + Ultimate Small Business Strategy ⬆ Images Hyperlinked

MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS | 2020 EDITION | VOLUME 59

I'm often asked about my tips for handling difficult customers and I often advise that smart organizations avoid drama by first mastering the fundamentals shared here.

 

If your organization and team is staffed by people with low Emotional Intelligence and low Listening IQ, you're in big trouble.

 

Otherwise, nail the fundamentals, and you're well on your way to building, easily maintaining, and fine-tuning a robust customer-focused culture that consistently creates and delivers customer value. (NB: Old blog currently in Phase 1 migration to new platform, so some links may not work for a while, until updated. Workaround: Use Brave browser to leverage Check for saved version/Wayback Machine resource for access to older content.)

 

As you travel the world, even developed countries, and observe failures, you find that there are managers, leaders, institutions and organizations with no concept whatsoever of service quality.

 

That is why drawing on my own previously published work, Marianne DeNovellis (feature video above), Daniel Kim (further below) and others join me to help you better understand CX (customer experience), customer service, customer satisfaction, and service quality excellence. These are the linchpins I also term: fundamentals.

 

We know that service quality is “an assessment of how well a delivered service conforms to the client's expectations.” But the question is:

 

What's the caliber, quality of training, and well-being of your employees?

WANTED: Consummate Professionals ONLY ⬆

 

 

Whether in retail, tech, any sector, or concerned about reputational risk and data breach, all success flows from attracting, hiring, training, motivating and retaining the best of the best.

 

That's where consummate professionals come in. And FYI: No one said anything about Ivy League candidates or straight A candidates.

 

There's a way to hire smart, and strategic. Click/tap all image(s) and links to stay in the know.

Business Survival vs. Punching Above Your Weight — For Customer Loyalty ⬆

 

There are keys to small business success and customer satisfaction, called The Ultimate Business Strategy. And if small, I recently compiled the Smart Small Business Owners' Guide.

 

All you have to do is click/tap above, study, implement, succeed, repeat. Or consult (further below).

No Snowflakes. No Employer Abuse Either. ⬆

 

 

Apart from the soft skills needed for managing difficult customers and succeeding as a business, you need consummate trainable professionals.

 

That is, peak performers who don't crack or quit under pressure.

 

Worry less about finding them and more about exemplifying a leadership culture and management style known to respect the individual because bottom line-driven hiring in this respect will lead to disaster.

 

Put differently, if in a cutthroat business, better treat, fire, or manage your employees exceptionally well, with dignity and mind their mental health and well-being.

The Goal Is To Be Saturated With Employees Who Are Individually Quality-Driven ⬆

 

So assuming your organization or institution follows and practices the preceding principles, by now you have employees who understand what customers hate and how to always go the extra mile as a matter of individual passion rather than feeling of obligation.

 

If that sounds pie in the sky to you, you might want to pay consultants like the author good money for research listing organizations already doing it, investigate for yourself, or read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

 

Further, you might recall Marianne DeNovellis (above) mentioned Amazon. However, if you're one of those who find Amazon too controversial, take heart. Examples are legion. See #8 below.

WANTED: Employees With a Strong Sense of Urgency ⬆

 

Lest we get content and ahead of ourselves, the key argument here is that the fastest way to lose tough customers is not getting certain fundamentals right.

 

One such basics involves having systems in place during the screening process to detect and seriously consider hiring trainable prospects with a strong sense of urgency.

 

These are the disciplined, grounded, evolved, and reliable AKA consummate professionals addressed at #1 (above). Employees with no sense of urgency and difficult customers don't mix.

 

Never find out the hard way!

Your Obsession Should Be To Saturated With Employees That Think Like A Customer ⬆

 

 

This should be baked into your HR and core values.

 

It creates a culture of strategic intensity (click or tap above). In short, think China.

 

Unless you want your competitors to eat your lunch due to a few difficult customers — best handled by all the above, especially by those with a strong sense of urgency — the thrill of employees with strategic intensity is that they are born hustlers who play hard to retain customer loyalty.

3-Step Arsenal For Handling Angry Customers ⬆

 

 

Once yours has strategic intensity and all its prerequisites mastered, you have the goods for angry customers.

 

Whatever their position, cultural background, or personality type, an organization that nails the above becomes adept at effectively neutralizing tension, resolving, de-escalating, or competently escalating issues, and winning back customers.

 

I know this to be true because I have personally done it repeatedly over the years, and so can you.

 

Just study the 3-part blog above (click/tap), teach your staff, or contact me (bottom of blog) for help.

Know The 20 Ways To Handle Difficult Customers ⬆

 

In case you missed it at #1, not all difficult customers are angry customers, and vice versa.

Precisely why you and yours must be students of nuance, handling every case on it own merits.

 

For example, Jeff Bezos' own written response to a racist customer who criticized Amazon's support of Black Lives Matter recently was: “You're the kind of customer I'm happy to lose.”

 

Moreover, as incidents of racial injustice and lack of diversity and inclusion pile on, brands like Ben & Jerry's have taken a firm stance against racism knowingly prepared to lose both angry and difficult customers who may be racist or white supremacists.

 

Now another powerful linchpin of CX, customer service, customer satisfaction and service quality excellence:

The Power of Word of Mouth Marketing Through Great Customer Experience ⬆

 

 

By far the most powerful way to disarm all customers is through great customer experience and the word-of-mouth marketing wonders it works.

 

But strategically, in contentious times, being on the right side of history socially and civically exponentially cements customer loyalty, if not enhances brand reputation.

 

In fact, done right — like the chaotic scenes of China's first Costco opening — difficult or even skeptical customers will come, partly, or already disarmed, having heard tales of unbeatable CX, customer service and customer satisfaction. And service quality excellence, of course.

Achieving Strategic Preeminence Tesla Style ⬆

 

 

There are different kinds of customers. From niche to difficult and angry, to loyal.

 

But more than Apple in many ways, Tesla customers are known to be very demanding cult fans. who are frequently pampered with price reductions even amid a slew of quality and service upgrades, and offers. It's simple:

 

If you aspire for strategic dominance of your market or a sector, study both Tesla (click/tap above) and Strategic Preeminence.

 

Whether yours is an e-commerce business — in which case, know the DOs & DON'Ts — or a simply a cutthroat business, tough customers are easier to manage when all the above fundamentals are constantly in check, your brand differentiation is unrivaled, bold, regardless your size, which gives you leverage over difficult customers who concede yours is the best available, and importantly, your goal is to dominate your market.

 

Stay innovative and competitive. Consult me here. Or, follow me here.

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BONUS ⬆ Follow Dove

▼Service Quality Excellence: Mastering the “Moments of Truth”▼

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