Dedication to Customer Experience Creates Raving Fans

Customer service and customer experience. On the surface, these two phrases look relatively similar, right? They are both phrases geared towards customer-oriented strategies which teams and businesses focus on in order to define their reputation and draw in new customers. The difference, however, comes in the form of the mindset you have when approaching these two phrases. Customer service can be described as what we as a team or company are doing for our customers. This is something we can influence directly and change immediately if we feel inclined to do so. Customer experience, on the other hand, is the overall perception that your customers or patients have about your business or your practice. This is more challenging to change because our opinion or perception of our business doesn’t matter… only theirs does.

Great Customer Experiences Start with Leadership

Exceptional customer service is what will eventually lead to an exceptional customer experience. Consistency in how we treat our customers or patients is the only way to cause them to value our service, be a raving fan, and refer us to others. This is why having fantastic team member interactions with our customers is so important in day-to-day activities. However, how do outstanding customer interactions occur? Where exactly should your team go to in order to observe examples of how to interact with the people who are paying you and your team for your service? One of the most effective ways to get your team to “see” and experience these examples of superior interactions is from the top down. You, as the owner, manager, team leader, etc., have to be the driving force in initiating the customer service that you want to see. You have to set the bar and create the example for the rest of the team in which there is only one way that customers and patients are to be treated and handled, and that is with understanding, care, respect, etc. There can be no exceptions in the way that you handle situations because your other team members will automatically point to you as the leader and say, “Well, I saw him/her do it/say it that way, so I figured that that was okay to do”. Take a moment to think of your own personal expectations when you’re seeking out a product or a service from someone else. You will have high expectations regardless of what the product or service is, anywhere from the service you receive at a restaurant to your own visit to the doctor’s or dentist’s office. Your expectations for others can be a good starting place of how to approach the expectations for your own practice or company. Once those expectations have become apparent to you, it will be easier to relay those high expectations to your team. Sure, everyone makes mistakes and has those days where there is a perfect storm of patients not arriving on time, a mother on the phone trying to cancel an appointment, a team member who is off today, and many other things going not quite the way you imagined. You might get stressed out. However, one of the keys to great customer service is maintaining consistency even when your day is not perfect.

Ask for Feedback

Above we talked about being the leader and the example for your team when it comes to exceptional customer service. However, we may find ourselves asking, “What defines a fantastic customer or patient interaction?”. That answer doesn’t come from you, it doesn’t come from me. The easiest way to find out what your clients or patients want is by doing a simple task that we may often overlook in preference of more sophisticated methods of answering our questions. The simple way to evaluate our clients’ or patients’ expectations is to just simply ask them. Are we consistently asking the questions, “What have you liked in the past that we can repeat for you here at our practice?”, “How can this visit be the best visit to the dentist you have ever had?”, “What are you looking for in your experience here with us?”. These are just a few questions that your patients or your clients should be asked before any business takes place. You want to know where each client is coming from in terms of their past experiences working with practices or businesses like yours. Even just putting the question out there and letting the patient or client know that you are committed to go above and beyond their expectations will go a long way in ensuring that the exceptional customer service blossoms into an overall exceptional customer experience. Perception matters.

Along with questioning your customers or patients before you have initiated service; how will you know if you have met that need or exceeded their expectations? With the same answer as before, just ask them. With knowing their answers in advance, you have a cheat sheet into how they should be treated and how they want to be cared for in your practice or in your business. Using a survey afterwards or during the treatment process or business exchange will show you how you performed in the eyes of the patient or the client. The end goal of these surveys is for your customer experience to match your customer service goals. You want your efforts to be so well known and so obvious that the clients or patients can clearly see that you genuinely want to create a service for them that is unlike anywhere else. With these later surveys, you hope to receive great feedback. If you are lucky, they will tell you what to fix.

We’ve talked about asking the right questions and making the clients’ experience what they want it to be. The questions, however, are only half of the interaction and they have no meaning unless they are paired with their “answers”. This seems obvious, but there’s a question that still remains: What do we do with their answers? Do we assume someone will make it happen? Do we scribble them down on a sticky note during a break? Or maybe this is as far as we have gotten in the past, simply just asking the questions only to forget the answers. When these preferences come up in the next engagement with this client or patient, maybe we ask the same questions and they take notice that these questions were asked last time. Remember… to you, a patient or client is one of hundreds or thousands, but to the patient or client, you’re the only one. We should be making them feel like they are the only one. A simple example of this occurring can be taken from my own personal experience finding a barber. Stephanie, my current barber, knows exactly what to do every time. Does she remember the thousands of customers’ preferences on what they want done during their appointment? No. But how does she know what I want each time I walk in? The first time I walked in, she simply asked. That’s step one. Once I gave her my wants and needs, she logged them into her software, which I was surprised to see because I’ve always had to tell any other barber the same thing each time I stepped into their store. When I came back for my second appointment with her, she used my name to greet me, checked her computer, and then asked me if I would want the same thing as last time. It’s for that reason that I have been going to Stephanie ever since. Even if I don’t remember the specifics of my preferences, Stephanie will. She took the information I gave her and made sure it was recorded for easy access in the software. Be like Stephanie. Ask the questions. Record the answers. Put them into the system. Be prepared for the next interaction.

In the paragraph above, we saw that Stephanie recorded our preferences into a system. That system for us is our CRM or Customer Relationship Management. The name itself gives away what the goals of using a CRM should be… managing relationships with our customers. We must prioritize putting all of their information and preferences into our CRM so we remember everything about our customers. Record their family members’ names, events in their life, what is interesting to them, what trips they plan on taking, etc. They may have told you in passing about a trip that they are going to go on before the next visit. Put that into your CRM system and ask them how it went the next time you see them. It’s a simple thing to do, and may take a little bit of time, but it will make your clients or patients feel appreciated and feel like they are continuing a conversation from six months ago with a friend. This is one of your most cost-effective internal marketing strategies with potentially the highest impact.

Do We Ask Our Customers to Share Their Experiences?

When we do exceed the expectations of our patients or customers, it can be very easy to notice. Especially when they keep coming back! When reading their body language or the way that they react to our team members, many times it is easy to know when we have gone above and beyond for our patients or customers. There are even times where our clients or patients will give us verbal compliments. These are opportunities to grow the public perception of your business. If customers are telling us that we met or exceeded their expectations, the only logical next step for us to take is to kindly ask them to grab their phone or go on their computer when they get home and type up the exact compliment into Google or Facebook reviews. You can explain to them that it is very beneficial for others to find your business so that they too can have the same experiences that they have experienced. Having that constant influx of reviews does a great service to your business. It allows for that customer service to translate into phenomenal customer experiences which can be shared in the form of a review online to further promote you, your brand, and the public perception of your business or your practice. Where else can you share your customer’s experiences so effectively or inexpensively?

Are We Focusing on the Wrong Things?

When we are trying to please our customers and ensure their satisfaction, there is such a thing as doing too much. We can have a TV set up in the reception area, we can have magazines or books to read, we can even have toys for their kids to play with to keep them busy while the parents are visiting us. All of these are great tools that will help overall with customer satisfaction. The key here is overall. Every client or patient you deal with is unique with their wants and needs that you have to and should be catering to. Sometimes it may seem sufficient to order the usual keep-people-busy things for the office while checking your checkbox of customer service or customer experience. However, customer service isn’t about throwing a handful of darts at a dartboard and hoping one sticks, it is about taking that one dart and precisely calculating and measuring out the arc it will travel to go from your hand to the bullseye. Focus on the customer’s or patient’s specific wants and needs. These blanket methods that cover hundreds or thousands of customers or patients are great too, but they only deserve so much attention. If you ask a client or patient which is more important, having a refreshment center or having someone who is present and attentive during a conversation, asking the right questions, and attending to their needs… I believe the answer is pretty obvious.

“Good Enough” Is NOT Good Enough

Take a moment to ask yourself a chain of questions that may illuminate for you the importance of customer service and customer expectations. This should be relatable to the vast majority of people in their day-to-day lives. The questions I want you to ask yourself are:

  • Do I go to the doctor who is closest to me?
  • Do I go to the dentist who is closest to me?
  • Do I go to the barber or hair stylist closest to me?
  • Do I think everyone goes to the doctor, dentist, or barber closest to them?

Some cases, the answer might be yes, but I would say the vast majority of you have other criteria that supersedes convenience when deciding where to bring your business. How, then, do people decide where to go to solve whatever problem that they have? Distance can be one factor; however, reviews and word of mouth are key when potential customers decide where to take their business. Think, for example, how many times someone has asked your opinion or you have asked a friend or colleague’s opinion on where to go out to eat. Or if one auto parts shop is superior to another. I guarantee that distance or convenience is never the only factor because when a problem needs to be solved, people don’t mind going a little out of their way if it means receiving quality service that will exceed expectations.

Exceeding expectations is the common theme in this article for a good reason. If there is nothing special about a business or a practice to the customer, there is no reason that they shouldn’t go find somewhere more convenient to them. For example, let’s say that there are two Starbucks shops. One makes your drive home from work 20 minutes and another makes your drive home 23 minutes. Which one do you go to? Obviously, you go to the Starbucks that makes your drive home from work the shortest, right? Not always. Your expectation in this Starbucks example is to get your coffee and get back on the road so you can be home after a long day of work. However, let’s say that the Starbucks that allows you to be home in 23 minutes has a barista named Kathy who remembered your name since the first time you ordered and remembered your exact order. She is friendly and provides a warm experience that frankly brightens your day because she took the time to remember your name and what you ordered. Now, you don’t mind that this Starbucks takes three minutes longer to get home because of the experience that the barista working at the Starbucks provides exceeded your expectations, so you willingly take those three extra minutes to support that Starbucks and that barista who took the time to commit you and your order to memory. That is what exceeding expectations does to your customers. It creates loyalty and respect by doing the unexpected for your clients or patients. They now have the inclination to leave that five-star review or tell their coworkers or friends when they are asked about their experience with you, because you went above and beyond what they were expecting and they appreciated you for it. Be like Kathy. Give your customers a reason to drive past your competition.