Customer Service as Product Experience

To stay com­pet­i­tive and com­mand a pre­mium, brands need to sell a cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, not just a prod­uct. Cus­tomer ser­vice is at the heart of this effort. Increas­ingly, cus­tomer ser­vice is con­sid­ered part of the brand promise, the prod­uct, and the mar­ket­ing that helps sell it.

A decade ago, cus­tomer ser­vice was fre­quently asyn­chro­nous, imper­sonal, and offered no guar­an­tee that you would ever con­nect with a real human. In 2004, most con­sumers emailed ques­tions or con­cerns to a com­pany. Usu­ally, they would receive a generic auto­mated cus­tomer ser­vice email in response. Even­tu­ally, and only if nec­es­sary, they would con­nect with a sup­port rep­re­sen­ta­tive. For the most part, one-to-one ser­vice was only avail­able in-person at local merchants.

Today, con­sumers have higher expec­ta­tions when it comes to cus­tomer ser­vice, in part because of the unprece­dented access to these com­pa­nies through social media and forums. For one-third of Inter­net users, social media is the pre­ferred mode of con­tact. To meet this need, 40 per­cent of com­pa­nies now pro­vide some form of social sup­port for their cus­tomers, includ­ing Twit­ter and Facebook.

Con­sumers expect instant per­sonal responses. The one-to-one inter­ac­tion that tra­di­tion­ally occurs in-store is now expected online. To meet and exceed those expec­ta­tions, brands will need to shift their think­ing from man­ag­ing cus­tomer ser­vice as a cost cen­ter and bench­mark­ing suc­cess against cost effi­cien­cies (e.g., reduc­tion in inquiries) to invest­ing in it as a profit cen­ter and dif­fer­en­tia­tor. They will need to take advan­tage of new tech­nol­ogy to pro­vide that instant, human-to-human inter­ac­tion and approach every cus­tomer as an indi­vid­ual rather than a mar­ket segment.

Ama­zon Imple­ments Instant Cus­tomer Service

Amazon’s May­day but­ton on the Kin­dle Fire HDX main screen gives cus­tomers instant, 24-hour access to sup­port. A user presses the May­day but­ton, and a sup­port rep­re­sen­ta­tive appears on a por­tion of the tablet’s screen, ready to coach the user through what­ever issue he or she is hav­ing. The May­day but­ton has become hugely pop­u­lar not just for basic tech­ni­cal sup­port but for the unprece­dented con­nec­tion it provides.

May­day but­ton rep­re­sen­ta­tives have responded to a num­ber of unortho­dox cus­tomer requests, includ­ing

• Coach­ing a user through a level of Angry Birds, after the user hit the May­day but­ton and com­plained about being stuck on that level for weeks.
• Singing “Happy Birth­day” to a cus­tomer who hit the but­ton after learn­ing that the cus­tomer received the Kin­dle as a birth­day gift.
• Set­tling an argu­ment among a group of friends about how to make the per­fect peanut but­ter and jelly sandwich.

Cus­tomer sto­ries such as these have gone viral on social media, pro­vid­ing valu­able word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing for Amazon.

Ama­zon reported that the May­day but­ton is now the most pop­u­lar way for Kin­dle Fire HDX users to get sup­port, and they man­age a response time of just 9.75 sec­onds per cus­tomer. The fea­ture is so pop­u­lar that Ama­zon is report­ing that 75 per­cent of Kin­dle users use the May­day but­ton for support.

Ama­zon is bank­ing on the fact that cus­tomers who use the May­day but­ton will be more likely to pur­chase higher profit prod­ucts and ser­vices because of the supe­rior expe­ri­ence they’re receiv­ing. In fact, Ama­zon added the May­day but­ton to the recently released Ama­zon Fire Phone, the company’s first foray into the smart­phone mar­ket, to guar­an­tee that con­sumers using the phone’s new fea­tures will get instant sup­port and, more impor­tantly, a great experience.

Apple-Quality Per­sonal Support

Apple has made its brand syn­ony­mous with prod­uct expe­ri­ence. Apple prod­ucts seem to work auto­mat­i­cally, pro­vid­ing a seam­less expe­ri­ence between hard­ware and soft­ware. Open­ing my lat­est iPhone reminded me of being a kid at Christmas—even the pack­ag­ing felt spe­cial. It comes as no sur­prise that Apple’s approach to cus­tomer sup­port reflects the company’s sin­gu­lar focus on cus­tomer experience.

Any­one who has ever dealt with cus­tomer sup­port for their com­puter knows it can be a frus­trat­ing process. You might expe­ri­ence long wait times or you might have to tell a new sup­port per­son about the same prob­lem, over and over again, as you’re trans­ferred around.

Apple Care gives cus­tomers the option of hav­ing a cus­tomer sup­port rep­re­sen­ta­tive call them right away, or even sched­ul­ing a time for the sup­port per­son to call. When the issue requires more in-depth research, Apple­Care pro­vides the cus­tomer with a call­back time.

More impor­tantly, you will know to whom you are talk­ing and they will know what you are talk­ing about. Patri­cia Sey­bold describes her Apple Care expe­ri­ence:

“It’s always the same per­son I was work­ing with. If they know there will be a shift change and they’ll be off duty at the appointed time, they tell me that ahead of time, and reas­sure me that the next per­son who calls me in 60 min­utes will know exactly what’s going on. And they always do.”

That has been my expe­ri­ence as well. Apple’s magic blends hard­ware, soft­ware, and human inter­ac­tion. It’s personal.

Sell­ing the Experience

Com­pa­nies might invest thou­sands of dol­lars to cre­ate ways to keep cus­tomers loyal, either through rewards pro­grams or expen­sive soft­ware. Many com­pa­nies now rec­og­nize that the moment of truth in cus­tomer ser­vice—i.e., those very short inter­ac­tions with a cus­tomer who is hav­ing an issue—can be just as good for mar­ket­ing as an expen­sive cam­paign or rewards pro­gram. Instead of try­ing to reduce the num­ber of cus­tomer inquiries, these com­pa­nies focus on pro­vid­ing one-to-one cus­tomer ser­vice interactions.

Cus­tomer ser­vice is one time when you are guar­an­teed an engaged cus­tomer. This is an oppor­tu­nity given the scarcity of atten­tion with today’s con­sumers. How the cus­tomer feels about that inter­ac­tion, whether they believe they are get­ting the expe­ri­ence they are pay­ing for, will go a long way toward expand­ing your company’s rep­u­ta­tion and build­ing a rela­tion­ship with your cus­tomers. Con­sumers expect instant per­son­al­ized ser­vice as part of their prod­uct expe­ri­ence. How is your brand delivering?