By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions Today's businesses face many challenges, including how to provide top-tier customer service. This reality is especially true due to the current labor shortage of qualified customer service agents. In light of this fact, what steps can companies take to elevate their customer service capabilities? One shining example is the pet care company Chewy. I recently had one of the best customer journeys I've had in a long time, and my experience with them serves as the inspiration and case study for today's blog. Here are three things that Chewy does with excellence that if all businesses would do, they'd reap incredible benefits: 1. Notify Customers of Actions You Plan to Take When I ordered some dog food several months ago from Chewy, I forgot to cancel my auto-ship feature with them. I realized this when I received an email letting me know Chewy planned to auto-ship a bag of dog food the next day. This would have been a simple fix if I had read that email the day I received it, but I didn't. So, the next day, I received a notification that Chewy had shipped my order. If I hadn't seen the notifications, I would have never known there was a problem in the first place until the box showed up on my front doorstep. 2. Make it Easy and Enjoyable for Your Customers to Get Help After discovering this news, I pulled up their app on my phone. I was happy to find Chewy's phone number displayed right at the top, making contacting Chewy simple. After I clicked on the number, their phone system immediately connected me with a super personable and fun-to-talk-to agent. 3. Fix the Problem Until Your Customer is Satisfied Within a matter of minutes, the rep had cheerfully canceled my auto-ship, refunded my money, and told me that if he didn't catch the auto-ship in time and I didn't need it, I should donate the $43 bag of dog food to a shelter. There was no need to return it or pay for it. He did a great job solving my problem quickly and to my satisfaction, and it was all accomplished in 5 - 10 minutes. I was delighted with the result! One More Bonus Point… A common thread throughout my positive experience with Chewy made it possible: their current workflow automation platform. It fuels their ability to satisfy their customers highly. The right tool can certainly do that! But, the right workflow automation platform can also help offset the challenge associated with labor shortages of qualified agents or other employees. How is this possible? I'm glad you asked! When a company can consistently help customers more quickly (like Chewy does), productivity can increase significantly, decreasing the need for more representatives. This capability can allow organizations to provide more amazing customer experiences through their current staff. And who wouldn't want that? # # # One great way to better serve customers and prospects is to have a robust CRM that can perform traditional functions, like contact management. But wouldn't it be even better to have expanded marketing and sales functions, such as automated onboarding of customers and facilitating their retention, email and SMS marketing, Kajabi-type training, a website builder, capabilities similar to ClickFunnels and Calendly, and content AI generation at ~$0.50 for a typical blog? These attributes are just the tip of the iceberg of what this CRM can do and at a fraction of the cost of similar platforms! If this sounds intriguing and you want to learn more, click the below button to schedule a chat!
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By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions Imagine the following scenario: Your business launched a highly anticipated new product or service into the market, and results were well below expectations. So much time, money and effort were spent on creating it, and the development team was positive it was going to do well in the market. Disappointed is hardly a word that describes everyone’s emotions. The ramifications were not too pretty as well--one person lost their job, another was demoted, revenues plummeted, etc. Everyone on the team was asking themselves: ”What could we have done differently?” Perhaps you don’t need to imagine this situation, because it unfortunately happened in your business. If that’s the case, here’s a possible answer--your business could have done a better of job of listening to the Voice of the Customer (VOC), before you ever started the development project. If customer requirements were well documented in advance, your new product or service could have been tailored more to meet the customer needs. By doing so, the likelihood of a more successful product or service launch would have significantly increased. So, what are the warning signs that your business could use VOC? Let's dive into that! 1. Product or Service Launch Failures The example described in the previous paragraph is often an indicator that your company needs to use some VOC techniques. Having a robust process should lessen these failures significantly. 2. High Levels of Customer Churn There’s no need to scratch your head, wondering why they left. The best solution is to reach out to them and find out the reasons for their departure. Perhaps a survey or focus group would be beneficial. Then, armed with these insights, you can put together an action plan to resolve the issues. 3. Rising Customer Complaints If you’ve noticed an uptick in your customer complaints, it’s time to start doing a better job of understanding what is making them unhappy. Next, devise a plan to reverse the trend. 4. Depressed Revenues It’s not a far leap to find a connection between less-than-stellar profits and less-than-happy customers. Digging in deep to find out the reasons for their disenchantment can provide actionable insights for your business. 5. No Formalized Method of Gathering, Recording or Acting on Customer Feedback It’s so important to a business’ profitability to have a standardized way of ensuring feedback is properly gathered, stored, and acted upon. In fact, one study proves that companies with VOC programs outperform all others by as much as 22% across a number of categories, including revenue, customer churn, among others. There’s proof that VOC works! If your business hasn’t encountered these warning signs, congratulations! You’re most likely doing a good job of listening to your customers. However, if any of these situations sound familiar, your business could be a good candidate for using VOC techniques. If you’re in this boat, I’d love to brainstorm with you some possible solutions! All you have to do is click the button below to schedule a time on our calendars.
By: Kathy Kent Toney, CEO & Founder of Kent Business Solutions As a business leader, have you ever experienced significant shortfalls with your customers that resulted in poor reviews or lost business? If this rings true for you, there is a solution that can prevent this from happening again—Voice of the Customer (VOC). It’s an invaluable tool for any business leader’s toolbox! Here's a great example of how one of my amazing clients turned a potentially harmful situation into a multi-million dollar outcome using VOC. The Problem This local manufacturer didn't have a standard process for gathering customer requirements to ensure proper incorporation before new product development efforts started nor to monitor them continually during the process. This problem became very evident when the following scenario happened. My client had recently established an innovation arm of their business for developing smart technology products. One day, they called upon an electrical contractor to install a prototype of their first new innovative product at a work site. Much to my client's chagrin, the contractor informed them that they had made a massive mistake in the housing of the product, making it non-functional in its current state. This mistake could have caused ALL kinds of serious issues, especially if they had to go back through a lengthy UL approval process. Thankfully, that wasn't the case! The Solution That's when the CEO decided to bring me in to develop a new approach they could integrate into their product development process. We got right to work! I teamed with them to create "how-to kits" for each different VOC type: surveys, focus groups, and customer visits, to name a few. Then we integrated the how-to kits into different phases of their product development process. That way, end users would know how to gather customer feedback at the correct times and places. Not only that, the process helped to ensure they incorporated that feedback into developing products. The Results The outcome was excellent! The first new product that used the VOC process experienced the following:
My client has been thrilled with the results! Another great thing about this process is that it's a drop-in system that can be easily adapted to other product development processes and even works for service delivery models. This aspect can benefit a company, allowing quicker and less costly implementations. And when it comes to process deployments, who doesn't want that? # # # As a "thank you" for reading my blog, here's a freebie I'd like to share with those of you who develop products—a Product Development Checklist. If you're new in this space, it can start you down the road of creating such a process or help you improve the one you already have. If you have a mature approach, feel free to adapt any new insights to improve your current process. Either way, I'd love to have you check it out! Just click the button below to download it.
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