Once upon a time in customer service: lessons to be learned from three great experiences

As United Airlines demonstrated, there’s nothing quite like a horrendous customer service experience to capture the world’s attention…and send a company’s stock plummeting. While incidents like this one certainly grab headlines, there’s a tremendous power in positive customer service experiences too – even the ones that don’t go viral.

As digital customer service solutions provider Nanorep says in their own blog post on standout customer service experience examples, research has shown that satisfied customers who get their issues resolved tell between four and six people about their experience with a brand. Furthermore, 67% of people make purchases after getting recommendations from friends and family on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. A great customer service experience may not ever be the lead story on CNN, but it certainly does pay dividends to the company responsible for it.

Excellent customer service experience #1: an alarming incident with Gaylord Opryland

For three years a customer had been staying at the Gaylord Opryland while attending an annual conference. During each of her visits she came to love the alarm clock in her room, one that played soothing spa-like music. Try as she might, she couldn’t find this alarm clock anywhere for purchase, so she reached out to the hotel on Twitter to ask where she could get one. The customer service representative manning the Twitter account informed her that unfortunately those alarm clocks were not available for purchase by the general public.

For many brands, that would have been the end of the interaction, but not so for Gaylord Opryland. When the customer arrived for the conference the next year she found two alarm clocks in her room with a note inviting her to take one home and enjoy it, and thanking her for reaching out on Twitter. The customer vowed that the hotel had made a lifelong fan out of her.

The lesson to be learned: Retention, retention, retention. According to a Gartner Group study, a whopping 80% of a business’s future revenue comes from just 20% of that business’s existing customers. When a brand goes the extra mile for a customer, that customer’s personal connection to the brand increases as does his or her loyalty, and with both of those things comes an increased lifetime value. For the price of an alarm clock, the Gaylord Opryland has guaranteed itself future business.

Excellent customer service experience #2: ultimate reachability from Hyatt

This isn’t a customer service experience that positively impacted one customer. Rather, this extra customer service step has likely impacted hundreds of thousands with its ease and convenience. In November of 2015, Hyatt Hotels decided to bring customer service to Facebook Messenger, enabling its customers to easily get in touch for customer service requests, everything from room bookings to restaurant recommendations. With a reported one billion active monthly users on Facebook Messenger, this was a good move.

The lesson to be learned: To increase customer engagement and, ultimately, customer satisfaction, a brand needs to be where their customers are and make it easy for contact to be made. Currently that means Facebook Messenger as well as other popular messaging apps including WhatsApp and Kik, even standard SMS text messaging. If it sounds like too much for your customer service employees to keep up with, well, don’t put that responsibility on their shoulders. Certain chat bots can easily automate this process, using natural language understanding to communicate with people the way people actually communicate, seamlessly providing helpful answers and recommendations and even completing transactions within the messaging app.

Excellent customer service experience #3: a little understanding from Starbucks

A regular Starbucks customer in New Jersey stopped by a store for a drink and handed over his Starbucks Gold Card, which entitled him to 10% off. However, because the location he was at was not corporate-owned, the employees did not honor the 10% discount. The customer asked to have his order canceled and money refunded, but the employees refused as the drink had already been made.

Frustrated with his experience, the customer called the Starbucks head office. The customer himself stated that his goal was to spend five minutes on the phone to tell them that customers should be made aware if a location is not going to accept the Gold Card discount, as the communication on the issue fell well short of his expectations and ultimately resulted in a highly dissatisfying experience.

After the customer delivered his message, the customer service rep to whom he was speaking insisted on mailing him a $50 Starbucks card to make up for his crummy experience.

The lesson to be learned: The initial disagreement was over roughly 60 cents, and many brands may have shrugged their shoulders over that seemingly minute amount. Instead, Starbucks recognized the lack of communication surrounding the discount card was a pain point for this customer and they went above and beyond to make up for the frustration he suffered. As insignificant as an issue could seem, a big part of successful customer service is understanding that to the customer, insignificant is not how it feels.

A little effort for big results

There are plenty of grand customer service stunts including fancy giveaways that gain plenty of positive attention for the brands behind them, but these gestures aren’t realistic for many businesses. It’s just not in the budget. However, as can be seen in the examples above, small gestures that show customers your brand truly cares don’t have to be expensive and ultra-impressive. Doing something special for a customer, making support available 24/7 on the most convenient platforms, and taking the time to understand customers’ pain points and putting forth the effort to make it right all helps to increase customer loyalty to retain existing customers as well as generate positive word of mouth to draw in new business. It doesn’t take a viral news item to see the value of excellent customer service experiences.