The 4 Foundations of Exceptional Customer Service and Satisfaction

One mistake many customer service professionals make is to equate a satisfied customer with one that displays loyalty and engagement. Because while customer satisfaction is essential to gain loyalty and engagement, it is just the first step of the customer journey.

A merely satisfied customer is still a free agent exploring the marketplace for better service or products. That person still has a roaming eye. However, you can't lock up loyalty and engagement without satisfying them first. Today, I will break down how you can achieve excellent customer satisfaction in the marketplace.

How companies can achieve great customer satisfaction

Luckily, tons of modern research — plus two thousand years (give or take) of practical sales experience with consumers — show us that customer satisfaction is grounded in four fundamental principles. Customers are happy whenever they consistently receive:

1. A high-quality product or service
2. Delivered by a caring and friendly human being
3. Completed in an appropriate amount of time (appropriate to the customer, that is)
4. And, supported by an excellent problem-resolution process

Let's take a quick look at each of these four factors.

1. High-quality product or service

Customers want defect-free products and services from you, so you need to design them to perform correctly within foreseeable parameters. It's a given that things will go wrong with your products and people from time to time due to unpredictable circumstances. However, shoddy and incomplete design in products or service procedures is an unforgivable sin in your customer's eyes.

2. Service by a caring and friendly human

The rise of automation, chatbots, and AI in customer service attitude is a beautiful thing for many customer service departments. Chatbots are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and can handle many tasks, including account inquiries, order statuses, bill payments, and more. But today, it's not enough to answer uncomplicated questions or carry out easy transactions. 

Your perfect product now requires caring and friendly people to deliver it. A single interaction with a supportive and friendly employee can make us feel good about doing business with an entire company. A well-trained human with a modicum of emotional intelligence is far better than the most sophisticated software in reading a customer's emotional state and delivering perfect customer service.

3. Timeliness

We live in a world of 5G phones, instant internet searches, and Amazon's omnipresence, which means you don't measure reasonable timelines any longer. Your customers count them. Even the most perfect product delivered by friendly, caring people is no better than a malfunctioning one if it's late.

Since customer experience guides expectancies, timely delivery standards continue to get more challenging all the time. What your typical 24-year old customer considers "on-time delivery" today is far stricter than what her parents would have accepted. In fact, it's probably harsher than what her older sibling would have tolerated.

Amazon's tight supply and delivery chain has single-handedly raised the timeliness bar in the online world, but that's not the story's end. It has changed expectations offline as well. 

Today, the idea of special ordering for walk-in customers is practically archaic for most brick-and-mortar merchants. Suppose you don't have it in stock when a customer walks in? In that case, he or she will probably go online and find it for themselves elsewhere. Most likely looking it up and ordering right there in your aisle.

The only exception to this is when a customer wants something truly customized just for them, such as a piece of fine art, cabinetry, or a gourmet meal. In this case, providing it too quickly can be seen as low quality or prefabricated.

But, the trick here is the same. Learn your customer's definition of "on time" and meet it,

4. A practical problem resolution process that values every customer

Problems happen. Products go out defective. It's as sure of a thing as you'll ever have in business. But here is where your company can shine and set the stage for creating powerful bonds of customer loyalty and engagement. Breakdowns and problems experienced by customers are crucial emotional moments in a business relationship. Therefore, solving these problems will have an enormous impact on your business success. That's why you need an efficient problem resolution process.

But, what is that to your customer? Satisfactory problem resolution can't be measured by whether you have restored the situation to the pre-problem status quo. It's measured by whether you have restored customer satisfaction. 

The most beloved companies resolve problems quickly and with a minimum of stress for the customer. When it happens with your customers, they will become more loyal to you than if there had never been a problem at all. Why? Because it's simple to provide great service when nothing goes wrong. On the other hand, problems and challenges let your team "strut their stuff" for the customer and create a good impression. That is worth its weight in customer service gold!

In closing, pay attention to these four principles of achieving customer satisfaction and put your company ahead of your competition — and never stop researching what they do and see if you can do it better. The chances are that you can. Here's an earlier blog I wrote on how you can measure customer satisfaction and loyalty to ensure you're on the right track.