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7 Best Practices for Transforming Service Transactions into Valuable Customer Experiences

Businesses have to rethink their customer service operations radically. For today's empowered customers – whether B2B or B2C – customer service is more important than ever before. This is especially true of socially-connected customers. In this article, Ernan Roman outlines the seven best practices for transforming service transactions into valuable customer experiences.

by Ernan Roman

Ernan Roman, President, Ernan Roman Direct Marketing Ernan is recognised as an industry thought leader. He was recently inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame for his pioneering work in creating three transformational methodologies: Integrated Direct Marketing, Opt-In Marketing, and Voice of Customer Relationship Research. Clients of his marketing consultancy include IBM, NBC Universal, Microsoft, Disney, MassMutual, and Symantec. Ernan was named ino “B to B’s Who’s Who” as one of the “100 most influential people” in Business Marketing by Crain’s BtoB Magazine. He is the author of the widely-read blog, “Ernan’s Insights on Marketing Best Practices”, (http://www.erdm.com/). He has authored four books on marketing best practices. The latest is entitled Voice of the Customer Marketing: A Revolutionary Five Step Process to Create Customers Who Care, Spend, and Stay.

For today's empowered customers – whether B2B or B2C – customer service is more important than ever before. This is especially true of socially-connected customers. The American Express Global Customer Service Barometer, released in May of this year, found that “1 in 5 Americans have used social media to get a customer service response at least once in the last year”.

Socially-engaged customers also communicate their experiences far more broadly than the general population. On average, they tell twice as many people about bad service experiences, and nearly three times as many about good ones. They also spend 21 per cent more in exchange for good service (compared with 13 per cent among the general population).

Most importantly, customer service has a direct impact on the bottom line. According to a recent Dow Jones study, companies lose 50 per cent of customers every five years. And 68 per cent of customer defections take place because customers feel poorly treated.

The upshot is clear: businesses need to transform their service transactions into valuable customer experiences. Do so, and your customer service call centre can contribute to growing customer value and engagement, instead of being part of the reason customers leave and complain. »

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