Dominican University of California hosts monthly Business Edge Briefing events that bring industry experts to share their wisdom. On November 3rd, they hosted Sary Stefanki, Director of Global Customer Success at Zendesk, a leader in web-based customer service solutions. Students, faculty and community members joined in to hear about “The Art of Customer Service” and learn helpful tips. The challenge of today, as Stefanki noted, is that whether a customer has good or bad experiences, they will share them with others; however, bad experiences have a habit of being expressed more.
Technology transformed how people interact with one another. In a way, it has formed customer service with one click. Instant communication, personalized service and transparent operations are now familiar characteristic of customer service. Technology has also made consumers’ expectations that much harder to predict.
Improving customer retention and increasing the lifetime value of your product are essential to keep a company’s effortless ally – a customer’s loyalty.
Top drivers of customer disloyalty involve more than one person contact, repeating information, perceived effort and being transferred. The goal of your product is to give effortless customer experience and at the core of it are:
- Minimize channel switching;
- Maximize next issue avoidance;
- Equip their agents to engineer experiences; and
- Empower their own employees.
Business decisions made based on support usage data and internal analysis have been shown to improve customer satisfaction. A common tool, journey mapping, can help us understand why or why not customers are satisfied and how much effort they are putting in to resolve a bad experience.
According to Stefanki, here are 7 ways to build lasting relationships:
- Don’t overestimate your importance in the customer’s life
- Consider the entire customer experience
- Recognize the right relationships and adapt
- Be something actual humans can relate to
- Be transparent
- Empower your people to do what’s best
- Put a face to your customers
Out thanks go out to Sary Stefanki and Zendesk for sharing these valuable insights with us.
Zendesk provides a customer service platform designed to bring organizations and their customers closer together. With more than 60,000 customer accounts, Zendesk is used by organizations in 140 countries to provide support in more than 40 languages. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, Zendesk has operations in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. Learn more at www.zendesk.com.
Business Edge Briefings are a series of panel discussions especially for organizational leaders and business owners. Discussions are designed to highlight cutting-edge strategies and techniques for businesses to be resilient and competitive in domestic and global business environments. Hosted by the Institute for Leadership (ILS) of the Barowsky School of Business and in partnership with the North Bay Leadership Council and Stanton Chase, the Briefings seek to ignite innovation, inspire creativity and ultimately increase profits and productivity. Learn more at the Business Edge Briefings website.