Yesterday we saw why customer service had gone over the dark side.Today we will learn the secret of how to return to excellent customer service.

First, change your attitude about the service center. As the CEO, commit to giving the Customer Care Officer the money and authority to make necessary changes. The CEO and the CCO must own the process to have any chance of getting it off the ground. Additionally, all executives must be educated on the impact of poor service on customer loyalty, how very few customers will actually complain to the company but many will leave. And they will broadcast their dissatisfaction to all who will listen. Global warnings, anybody?

Now, on to EBD! (Experienced Based Differentiation). Nothing like a new initiative to spawn new acronyms.

First, you have to find out what is broken. In comes the evaluation of the current process of customer interaction and engagement,  best practices, gap analysis, all of that.  For instance:

• Do users have the specific product content to achieve their goals during self service?
• Do the 45% of users who still prefer the phone have a satisfying interaction with the call center?
• Is the customer experience seamless across all channels of communication?

And what channels would those be you say? And are they expensive to use?

To answer the latter first: no.

The channels of which we speak would be those your customers most prefer to communicate with. As we said above, 45% of customers still prefer the phone. But that is less than half of your users. The rest will want other options.

One option is Live Chat. By having a chat session open automatically at a "moment of truth", like at conversion time, you could keep  more sales by helping the customer through a form plus deflect that call from the service center.

Another option is blogs and online communities and forums. In the forums, customers can help each other resolve problems and make discoveries. If problems arise with negative comments, the moderators will quickly see them and address it as soon as possible. The blog is one method of addressing any negative issues as well as becoming a useful repository of information about the industry and items of interest to your customers. And.......deflecting calls from the customer support center.

A channel that is becoming a must-have is a self service center with knowledgebase access. Through this the customer can find information on the product, information on any issues and their resolutions, or submit an incident or trouble ticket. If this channel is reliable and a consistently positive and useful experience, adoption rates will grow quickly.

If new software is needed, evaluate it with customer experience as the Number 1 Goal. Anything else is a nice to have. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be easy to use. Remember, if the service agent has trouble, the customer will have a negative experience. Everything ties back to that.

What is the outcome of all this? 

A good customer service experience increases the likelihood that a customer will do business with you again and builds long term loyalty. If the customer finds your service useful, easy to interact with, and enjoyable, they will be happy and so will the bottom line.

And so will you.

May excellent customer service be with you.....always.