What Is Awesome Customer Service?

We recently enlisted the services of Jeff Toister, President of Toister Performance Solutions to gauge the alignment of our customer service team at Phone.com.  It took Jeff a matter of minutes to discover that no one on my team, including me, could clearly and concisely define AWESOME customer service. Sure, they could name many wonderful aspects of AWESOME customer service.

After hundreds of blog posts and probably thousands of mentions of the word, it’s sobering to realize that we hadn’t boiled AWESOME down into something everyone can remember and rally behind.

Awesome Defined

I am pleased announce that after looking at our company goals and all of the work we have done on this blog, we have arrived at a definition of AWESOME.  Here it is:

To consistently serve customers in a way that builds meaningful and lasting connections and leaves them awe-inspired.

Unpacking Awesome

There are several key terms in here that I want to unpack.

• Consistently- Shep Hyken defines amazing service as being consistently above average.  If we consistently achieve a high level of customers service above that of our competition, our customers will be delighted!
• Serve- I tried to remove this word but serve is such a powerful word.  As a customer service professional, it gives me a sense of mission and purpose.  There is an element of selflessness when we put the needs of others above our own.  Service is an extremely noble profession!
• Meaningful Connections- We talk extensively about using empathy, learning the customer’s name and sending things like thank you notes.  These are all ways we connect with people on a human level.  We should never treat another human being any other way!
• Lasting Connections- This concept is very simple.  If we don’t have customers, we don’t have a business.  Customer service plays a HUGE part in making customer’s stick.  We aren’t solely responsible for this but keeping customers around for a long time is critical.  That starts with connecting with customers and helping them solve problems.
• Awe-inspired- This is me reclaiming the word AWESOME.  It’s a cliche word that has nearly lost all meaning in our language.  In the same way you look at Mount Whitney in California or Niagara Falls in New York, our customers will look in awe at our customer service.

Next Steps

This is just step one.  The next step is making sure our team knows the customer service vision and knows what they can do within their power to help us achieve that.  In the coming weeks, I’ll share our values and how we are progressing on our goals.

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