What Works: Customer Service and Success: Find Ways to Say Yes

Hello Carson City! I’ve been a little out of pocket since Burning Man. I have three sicknesses just pile on: playa lung, a head cold, and I wrapped the whole thing up with bronchitis. Doing life sick was pretty hard. But I found it was made possible by the number of times businesses in this area stepped up and said yes.

For one, InstanCart is now in the area. Delivery times are fast too. I had medicine, tissues, cough drops, and all the soup I could handle delivered to my door. Caliber Collision had promised they would correct some issues I saw in my repair. They dropped me off at Comma Coffee, so I could get some work done, and picked me up a few hours later. I was gifted a very lovely long practice at Carson City Yoga because I am a monthly unlimited member. After my practice, I met a friend at Mom and Pop’s where I was able to get sliced brisket on my baked potato, topped to order. It was a beautiful off-the-menu surprise that pulled my healing past the finish line.

What’s the lesson here?

As a business, you don’t know what your customer is going through. By finding ways to say yes, you delight your customer, keep them coming back, and increase the chances they will tell others about you. In essence, quality customer service equals joy, retention, and referral.

I do consulting in customer success in the SaaS industry. Basically, the concept is this. When someone buys software, they need a success plan. They need a way, from a to z, that they are going to have their expectations met, be trained on the software, adopt the software, assure long term adoption, educate them on features they may not have purchased, handle risks with the account, and ultimately ensure those customers will be so delighted that their NPS (net promoter score) will shoot through the roof and they will tell others.

I don’t care what business you are in. You can glean a lesson from the SaaS industry. Think of a customer service problem like a support ticket for software (or feature request). If you follow up on that well, you delight your customer and you improve that relationship.

What is you took that a step further? What if you went above and beyond to not stop at service? What if you, instead, focused on creating a process and a path to success for every single customer that walked through your door? Of course, this gets more complicated as your product or service does. But the rewards are great.

For one, you don’t spend so much on marketing. Why? It’s because your customers become a marketing engine for you. You are also giving more value to your existing customers, so they do more business with you. This increases your monthly, annual, and lifetime value of a single customer. Third, you reduce churn. Churn is when customers leave. There’s a reason for every customer churn incident that can create an opportunity for you to fix your processes. By being open to WHY customers leave, you can fine tune the machine and make more money.

What can you do to make your customers (and therefore your business) more successful? The floor is yours, Carson City.

GET BUSINESS MOMENTUM
If you want help with this, or any other way to create business momentum, I’m happy to announce I will be back over at Adams Hub for Innovation every Monday from 10 am to 2 pm offering complementary sessions to the community: business consulting, accountability, leadership, planning – anything you need to get your week started right. You can email kelli@adamshub.com to set up those sessions. I provide two complementary 30-minute sessions or one complementary hour. Because I’m so excited to be involved again, I will even see those I’ve already seen. It all starts next Monday, September 23.

ABOUT DIANE DYE HANSEN
Diane Dye Hansen has more than 20 years of experience in communication and change management gained in the sectors of government, non-profit, healthcare, publishing, advertising, entertainment, and technology. Her Critical Opportunity Theory helps organizations and leaders turn challenge into opportunity through proper leadership and team communication.
She is the president and founder of What Works Consultants, Inc., a consulting firm which helps business leaders communicate when communication is hard. This is done through research, strategic communication planning, change management consulting, human resources recruitment and training. She is a columnist on CarsonNow.org. To meet her and learn how she and her team can help your company, visit What Works Consultants, Inc. online at www.whatworksconsultants.com.