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Concierge Customer Service:How to Tilt the Playing Field in your Favor

Jeanne Hurlbert, PhD and Randy MacLean

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Copyright 2016 WayPoint Analystics and Optinet Resources, LLC. First

Edition

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without the

permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions

contact Jeanne Hurlbert, PhD; www.ConciergeCustomerService.com.

Table of Contents

Introduc)on……………………………………………………………………………………………………….2    Becoming  Customer-­‐Centric:  The  Role  of  the  Chief  Customer  Officer……………..…4    What  Concierge  Customer  Service  Really  Means:  The  Key  Elements……………..…..6    How  Can  You  Afford  It?  The  Financial  Founda)on  of  Concierge  Customer  Service……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….9    Where  to  Start?  PuQng  Concierge  Customer  Service  in  Place……………..…………..12    Customizing  Concierge  Customer  Service  for  Your  Business—and  Your  Customers…..................................................................................................……..15    Moving  Forward………………………………………………………...……………………………………20  

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Introduction

What’s the #1 concern of most wholesale distributors? Profit. But as you face such

challenges as disintermediation, the growth of nontraditional competitors, and technological

transformation, ensuring profitability has become increasingly challenging for many wholesale

distributors.

Despite these new challenges, things haven’t changed as much as it may seem. Your

keys to profitability lie exactly where they always have: with solid strategy. Three of the core

goals of that strategy should focus on CPR: conversion, penetration of your market, and

retention. Concierge Customer Service, or CCS as we’ll sometimes refer to it, helps you to

achieve those goals:

1. Retention—Because you offer Concierge Customer Service only to your most profitable customers, as we explain in this book, it plays a key role in retaining these valuable customers and protecting your profit. Concierge Customer Service achieves that outcome in 2 ways.

• First, you provide your most profitable clients with a level of service that your competitors can’t give them, making it impossible for those competitors to wrest these customers away from you. And the retention benefits actually extend beyond your top-tier customers: Because the mindset of Concierge Customer Service will “trickle down” through your organization to change its very culture, and because the system will provide feedback from customers at all levels of profitability, you will see retention benefits across the board. That means you can retain more of the customers whom you want to keep.

• Second, because a true Concierge Customer Service system includes a process to constantly garner customer feedback, you can ensure exceptional levels of customer satisfaction and continuous process improvement throughout your organization.

2. Penetration of Your Market--As the benefits of Concierge Customer Service become apparent, other customers—such as your marginal accounts—will want access to it. This gives you the opportunity to show them what actions they need to take to gain access to the higher-level service. Those actions, of course, are the actions that will make those accounts profitable for you. 3. Conversion—Instituting Concierge Customer Service will allow you to draw from your competitors the customers who resemble closely your most profitable customers. Why can you do that? Because this exceptional level of service—a level your competitors can’t afford to match—becomes a potent sales tool for your team.

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In this book, we show you exactly how to gain these conversion, penetration, and

retention benefits, by building a Concierge Customer Service System that creates an exceptional

experience for your customers. Your CCS strategy embeds within your overall strategy to garner

profit gains and put your company ahead of others in the marketplace. Crafted correctly, your

overall strategy can tilt the playing field so that the best, most profitable customers in your

marketplace will gravitate to your company—away from your competitors--and the worst, most

unprofitable customers will defect to your competition, leaving you with profit gains. And as

long as you execute the strategy well, your competitors will remain unable to lure those best

customers away from you.

But, if you permit your competition to execute strategy more successfully than you do,

you’ll lose customers and you may never be able to draw them back. Whether your company’s

cash flow will be positive or negative, then, depends directly upon whether you, or your

competition, succeed in siphoning off the best part of your market. So let’s get started—let’s

learn how you can gain the benefits of Concierge Customer Service by becoming customer-

centric.

CHAPTER ONE

Becoming Customer-Centric: The Role of the Chief Customer

Officer

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Becoming Customer-Centric: The Role of the Chief Customer Officer

The importance of the Concierge Customer Service strategy becomes clear when we

recognize the extent to which top companies continue to become customer-centric: Whereas

fewer than twenty companies, worldwide, employed a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) in 2003,

more than 1 in 5 Fortune 100 companies and 1 in 10 Fortune 500 companies had instituted that

role by 2015. What does a Chief Customer Officer do? He or she:

• ensures that the company understands who their customers or clients are, at a deep

level;

• builds lasting relationships with those customers; and

• ensures that they serve those customers at the highest level.

To compete successfully in today’s environment, then, requires that you establish

formal systems for being customer-centric, so you increase customer retention. Designating a

CCO increases the probability that Concierge Customer Service will achieve the desired results.

Why? Because Concierge Customer Service has the highest probability of success when it’s led

by someone for whom customer is their chief priority, rather than just one of their priorities.

That’s why your company should seriously consider how you prioritize this key strategy. For

example, if you operate a relatively small business with limited personnel, you may not be able

to devote a full-time staff member serve as a CCO. In that case, consider putting a good manager

in place and make the responsibility for Concierge Customer Service half of his or her role.

Establishing a Chief Customer Officer dovetails beautifully with another critically-

important trend, the creation of the Chief Profit Officer (CPO). The CPO

• elevates the importance of profitability,

• evaluates the profitability of various actions,

• ensures the company pursues profitable strategies, and also

• ensures that customer service remains paramount in priorities and practices.

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Because establishing these two C-level roles ensures that the intertwined outcomes of

profitability and customer service receive the priority they deserve, establishing them formally

differentiates your company in the marketplace and does much to ensure your success.

CHAPTER TWO

What Concierge Customer Service

Really Means: The Key Elements

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What Concierge Customer Service Really Means: The Key Elements

Your objective in establishing Concierge Customer Service should be to deliver a

differentiated, distinct, exceptional customer experience by giving customers MORE, an

acronym that encompasses mindset, ownership, referability, and experience. It means giving

your customers more than your competitors give and often more than your customers expect. To

maximize the conversion, penetration, and retention benefits of Concierge Customer Service, it

should be come more than just policy—it should become part of your culture, something

ingrained in your corporate DNA. Achieving that doesn’t require anything mystical or magical.

It’s primarily about executing the fundamentals, executing them well, and executing them

consistently.

Let’s look more closely at what this really means. Certainly most companies have a

customer service department. But in wholesale distribution, the term “customer service” has

become a codeword for “order entry.” Because customer service representatives receive the

orders, they’re also the people who talk to customers and are tasked with resolving customer

problems and complaints. You may call that customer service, but that’s not Concierge Customer

Service. Concierge Customer Service requires MORE—a reality in which customer service

means not just expedient ordering but also reliable problem resolution.

Concierge Customer Service is, by definition, EXTRAordinary, going “above and

beyond” what is typical. In a 5-star hotel, you might receive such amenities as having your bags

transported for you, being greeted throughout the hotel by your name at all times, and enjoying

complimentary limousine service. The level of service that your most profitable customers

receive should be similarly frictionless—and just as extraordinary.

Let’s look at the 4 key elements of Concierge Customer Service, the components of

giving your customers MORE:

Mindset means that the people who own customer service in your organization need to

• be patient,

• be good listeners,

• be oriented towards solving problems rather than providing excuses,

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• be lifelong learners, people who want to learn new things and learn how to put

them into action.

That also requires that you, as the business leader, support CCS representatives in that learning

process. The Concierge Customer Service mindset entails being able to “take the role of other”

easily and often, which means they know how to gather details on a problem and find out what

the customer wants. Their ability to understand well the customer’s point of view, taking notes to

ensure that they do so, proves critical to customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention—and when

you supplement it with a birds-eye view of customer preferences, through the Opportunity

Generator,™ you increase both retention of customers and conversion of prospects.

Ownership means that those charged with Concierge Customer Service take ownership

of customers’ problems, become an advocate for the customer, and provide solutions, ensuring

that they keep the customer apprised of each step through the process.

Referability should follow automatically if this process works well: When you provide

an extraordinary experience, people should be ready, willing, and able to go generate new clients

for you. This is true for two reasons. First, the “norm of reciprocity” a fundamental principle of

social life, demonstrates that when you give something to someone, they’re highly motivated to

give you something in return. Second, when we find something exemplary—whether it’s a

wonderful new restaurant or a business that provides extraordinary customer service—we’re

immediately motivated to tell others about it. And that’s why Concierge Customer Service makes

you so referable. Those referrals provide gold for your business because they let you reach deep

into your target market at exceedingly low cost, to virtually clone your best customers. The

fundamental question is: Will your customers refer you or will they send others to your

competitors? The answer to that question provides the ultimate measure of customer loyalty.

Experience. Providing an experience can be as simple as consistently executing the

fundamentals—something many of your competitors probably fail to do. The Four Seasons Hotel

seeks to “[s]ystematize the predictable so that [they] can humanize everything else.” When you

systematize predictable elements, you gain the ability to go above and beyond to provide that

extraordinary experience. Continuing to provide a wonderful customer experience proves key to

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distinguishing your business in the marketplace; the key to referability; and the key to

satisfaction, loyalty, and retention.

When you select, train, and motivate your Concierge Customer Service representatives so

that they embody these 4 elements, you differentiate your business immediately. Just think of the

number of times you’ve experienced some kind of problem and had a customer service agent

shuffle the problem off to another agent—or worse, try to foist the problem back on you. When

your Concierge Customer Service representatives respond to any problem by saying, “I can’t

believe that happened to you. I’m on it. Go back to your job, I’m going to take care of all of it,

and I’m going to call you in a couple of hours and tell you how to solve your problem or I’ll tell

you what’s going on,” you change the game in your business. The key to your success, then, lies

in finding people who will make that happen because they have the right mindset, they take

ownership consistently, they provide an exceptional experience, and make you imminently

referable.

CHAPTER THREE

How Can You Afford It? The Financial

Foundation of Concierge Customer

Service

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How Can You Afford It? The Financial Foundation of Concierge Customer Service

Because this level of service is so extensive, it is also expensive. Funding this service

requires that you offer it only to the customers who generate the most profit for your business. At

WayPoint Analytics, for example, 40 of our 1,000 accounts produce 80% of our profit; some of

our clients have 10,000 accounts, with less than 100 of them accounting for 75% of the profit.

For that reason, Concierge Customer Service will likely extend only to the top 5% of your

customers. How do you know to whom to extend Concierge Customer Service? Your

profitability ranking of your clients will show you which clients are sufficiently profitable to

fund Concierge Customer Service. When you examine the Net Before Compensation (NBC)

ranking report or any profitability rankings in WayPoint Analytics, you will see something your

competitors can’t: You will see that the accounts with the highest volume are not necessarily the

most profitable. Why? Because their cost-to-serve stands higher than that of many lower-volume

accounts. Once WayPoint reveals those high-profit accounts, you can retain them—and the

profit they generate--by providing them with service that far exceeds that of your competitors.

The first thing to analyze, to achieve those benefits, is the balance between gross profit

dollars and cost-to-serve dollars on every invoice, on every account, in every territory. The math

proves simple: The profitability of your business depends upon whether the gross profit dollars

that you generate exceed the cost-to-serve dollars consumed by your logistics. When you apply

this principle to customer service, you recognize quickly the importance of watching this element

carefully—otherwise, you risk generating significant account attrition as you start to develop

new priorities, processes, and systems. You must retain the gross profit generation from you

most profitable accounts—the core—and Concierge Customer Service provides the

mechanism for doing so. This is the first benefit of CCS.

Once you’ve assessed carefully the balance between gross profit dollars and cost-to-serve

dollars, the second element is to prepare for the eventual loss of gross profit dollars from

accounts that are actually losing money—that is, accounts in which the cost-to-serve dollars

exceed the gross-profit dollars they create. The answer isn’t to just “fire” these accounts

immediately. Doing so would prove imprudent because you would have to either rationalize your

infrastructure and personnel to compensate for the loss in gross profit, or garner additional gross

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profit dollars to replace the gross profit dollars lost from the “drain” accounts. That’s why your

second step is to make the necessary preparations to lose those accounts without hurting your

bottom line.

And you can do so in a way that will add conversion and market penetration benefits to

the retention benefits that CCS brings: The best way to garner the additional gross profit

dollars you will need is to convert to customers companies who resemble closely your top

accounts. You do that in two ways. First, you target the accounts of companies that compete

directly with your best accounts by offering them a service advantage—Concierge Customer

Service. You can afford to do so because, as long as your logistics costs remain far below the

gross profit dollars you generate, you can afford to earn lower profit margins to woo those

accounts away from your competitors. Concierge Customer Service, then, quickly becomes a

wonderful conversion tool for attracting new high-end customers. And the more visible your

Concierge Customer Service engine becomes, the more powerfully it draws those highly-

profitable customers away from your competitors.

As you can see, the second element that allows you to achieve these conversion benefits

is mastering and managing cost-to-serve and pricing. Here’s a secret that many of your

competitors don’t know: Our research shows that most companies can offer 8-10% price (or

margin) reduction to your best accounts without losing money—in other words, your most

profitable accounts will likely remain profitable if you reduce the margin by 8-10 points.

Although we aren’t suggesting that you immediately approach your best customers and reduce

prices, you can find customers that resemble closely your most profitable accounts, or companies

that generate 10-15% bottom line net on what they’re bringing to you. If you reduce your margin

by 1-2 points to bring in accounts that are very similar to these highly-profitable companies, you

can have them give you 10%, rather than 15%, NBC (Net Before Compensation). In this way,

you use the superior customer service strategies and pricing to go after the best accounts at your

competition without affecting your bottom line—thus, you increase the conversion of

companies who resemble closely your most profitable accounts.

But don’t stop there. Concierge Customer Service can serve a market penetration

function by transforming money-losing accounts into money-making accounts. The accounts

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that sit mired at the bottom of your profitability ranking report cost you money because their

high volume comes with a correspondingly high cost to serve. That high cost to serve

overwhelms the gross profit that the accounts produce. “Reforming” those accounts can be as

simple as having your salespeople invite them to become platinum accounts, so they receive the

Concierge Customer Service that will make their lives easier. Your salespeople might explain to

them that “The problem that we have right now is that your account is out of balance because

you’re buying too much stuff too often, in too-small quantities, and that’s destroying your ability

to be profitable and our ability to provide the service that we provide to other companies.”

As Concierge Customer Service embeds in your company, it will transform your culture

so that the benefits “trickle down” from the most profitable to the less profitable customers—and

so will your retention gains, enabling you to retain the customers whom you want to keep. As

you change your orientation to customer service and put in place systems to monitor customer

satisfaction and expectations across the board, you will find retention increases across profitable

accounts (beyond the most profitable accounts who receive Concierge Customer Service).

CHAPTER FOUR

Where to Start? Putting Concierge

Customer Service in Place

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Where to Start? Putting Concierge Customer Service in Place

Although all of this may sound complicated, the reality is that simple steps can achieve

these gains. The first thing we recommend is to select and train at least two people whose role

will be solely to provide Concierge Customer Service to your top accounts. From the point of

view of those customers, then, they will gain exclusive access to these dedicated “problem

solvers.” You will then establish a dedicated phone number and email address that leads directly

to these two dedicated representatives—and customers should know that when they call that

number, one of those representatives will answer the phone, with no automated menus.

Once those representatives answer the phone, they will follow a clear process to

• Identify the problem that the customer needs to solve, • Ask questions to ensure that the representative understands the problem fully, • Take notes on the nature of the problem and the desired resolution, • Summarize the problem to the customer (to ensure the representative understands

it completely), • Outline for the customer the steps the representative will take to resolve the

problem, • Give the customer a time interval within which the representative will update the

customer on the progress, and—most important of all • Assure the customer that he or she will personally solve the problem, and then do

so.

Remember, the key is that these representatives give customers MORE, bringing the right

mindset, taking ownership of the problem to ensure resolution, making your company referable

through their actions and the satisfaction they create, and providing an exceptional experience

for your high-level customers.

Remember also that your representatives can only accomplish these goals if they are

empowered—if they have sufficient knowledge, training, and especially authority to solve the

customers’ problems. High-level hotels often authorize their front-line personnel to spend up to

$2,000 or $3,000 to make customers happy, if a problem arises. Amazon provides another

example of the kind of service we’re describing. Why choose Amazon? In part because, if

something goes wrong, you will not have to disrupt your day and divert your energy from your

business to solve the problem. Instead, you can simply push a button beside your order on the

Amazon website to request help. Your phone will ring within five seconds and you will speak

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with someone who is completely empowered to be not only empathetic but also effective in

solving your problem—even if that means sending a new product to you before the problem

product has been returned. They will even give you a $25 credit for your trouble. In short,

customers buy from Amazon because they know that they’re just a phone call away from a

complete solution. So you’ve got to make sure that you’re actually making a financial, personnel,

and logistics commitment to ensuring that these things are in place. You have to ensure that your

representatives can go outside the norm to solve problems, whether that means going to the

warehouse themselves, holding a truck back, or putting a replacement item on the next truck.

Once you have the program in place, you need to introduce it carefully and systematically

to your eligible customers. This means that you absolutely must have the buy-in of your sales

team—and you must secure that buy-in before the inception of the program. In fact, when we

work with clients to design and implement Concierge Customer Service, we often survey not

only the customers but also the sales team, so that we gain “intelligence” on customers from both

perspectives and so we can also uncover objections the sales team might harbor. Once you

uncover any potential objections, you can overcome them in the introduction and training.

The goal is for sales team members to be eager to deliver this delicious new perk to their

top clients. To achieve that goal, you must provide both the training and the tools they need.

First, they must be fully conversant on the nature of the new system and receive hands-on

exposure to its operation. Particularly important will be ensuring that they understand fully the

benefits of CCS and its exclusive nature, so that they can and will communicate those benefits to

their top customers. Then you need to provide tools that will allow them to introduce the

program in a way that elevates it appropriately. For example, you might purchase a gift item for

the customer’s desk (such as an iPhone holder, iPad case, letter holder, magnet, or picture frame)

imprinted with the Concierge Customer Service phone number. Salespeople should deliver the

news of the new Concierge Customer Service program as if they were gingerly and excitedly

bringing a gift that will change the customer’s business--because that’s exactly what they’re

doing.

Once the program is in place, each participating company should receive reports at least

quarterly on the benefits they’ve received from the program. You should give each customer a

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“scorecard” that underscores what you accomplished for them. This, too, will become a key tool

for increased customer retention and for market penetration. Emphasize to the customer the

extent to which you’ve gone beyond the norm to provide extraordinary service, highlight any

problems you solved for them and the resources you saved for the company. Creating that

report, then, requires that each CCS representative track every customer interaction,

documenting clearly the nature of the problem, the resolution of the problem, the customer’s

reaction, and an estimate of the time, money, or other resources saved by solving the problem

for them. Redacted versions of these data can be used to encourage less-profitable customers to

reform and join the ranks of the most profitable customers.

CHAPTER FIVE

Customizing Concierge Customer

Service for Your Business-and Your

Customers

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Customizing Concierge Customer Service for Your Business—and Your Customers

At its core, the goal of Concierge Customer Service is to ensure you’re serving your

customers, especially your best customers, well. To accomplish that, you must be able to answer

2 key questions:

1. What do your customers want?

2. How satisfied are they with the extent to which you’re giving them what they

want?

You can’t serve your customers well if you don’t know them well. That means you must

understand, from their point of view, what kind of service they want. Your CCS system should

be tailored to those specific wants—so although every CCS system contains a set of core

elements, company-specific elements also exist. Once you design and implement the system with

your custom elements, you must constantly gather feedback from your customers to ensure

you’re giving them what they want. That doesn’t mean just putting together a few questions and

sending them out; your feedback system needs to be carefully crafted so that it enhances the

critically-important bond you’ve built with your customers, rather than undermining it. In other

words, if you’re treating your customers with velvet gloves, you don’t want to send out a survey

that feels to them like a slap in the face.

You accomplish these goals by implanting Concierge Customer Service in three phases.

Phase I— The Opportunity Generator™ and the Feedback Generator™ allow you to

answer the two fundamental questions of what your customers want and how satisfied they are

with the extent to which you’re giving them what they want. By using these tools to answer those

two questions, you not only place your Concierge Customer Service system on a firm foundation

but also gather information that most of your competitors won’t have.

The Opportunity Generator™ shows you what the top priorities of your customers are or

what problems they want to solve most urgently; in many cases, you’re focusing on “what keeps

them up at night.” Once you understand that, you not only know where to focus your customer

service efforts but you also know how to orient your content, products or services, and marketing

so that they align directly with your customers’ core concerns. That means you not only gain

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invaluable information for your Concierge Customer Service system, you also gain added value

for your content creation and marketing.

Of course, one of the key issues you should measure with the Opportunity Generator™ is

the customer service touch points that are most important to your customers. For example, how

do they want you to communicate with them? How quickly do they expect answers to their

questions? What do they want in a customer service system? When we’ve measured these kinds

of customer preferences, the data have proved invaluable.

The Feedback Generator™ in Phase I proves critically important for two reasons. First, it

illuminates areas in which you need to improve and in which customer service problems are

likely to arise—if you can improve in those areas, you can reduce customer problems and

complaints. Second, these data provide a baseline measure of satisfaction and loyalty against

which to measure the results of your customer service and Concierge Customer Service efforts.

Most importantly, you’ll leverage this investment in Phase III, because this survey will become

the core of your ongoing feedback mechanism. And here, too, you gain added value because you

can leverage this same information in your marketing, to skyrocket conversions externally; and

to ensure continuous process improvement and ensure you retain your best customers,

internally.

Your ability to achieve these outcomes comes from the five core forms of social proof

that your Feedback Generator™ provides:

1. Testimonials provide the “stories that stick” with prospective customers. These stories persuade best when they describe: 1) what the problem, issue, or challenge was, before using your product or service; 2) the experience of purchasing from you, working with you, or using your product or service; and 3) the results the customer obtained. The Customer Feedback Generator™ employs a proprietary Testimonial Generator™ that automatically invites a customer to leave a testimonial when he or she has provided positive feedback. If the customer isn’t happy, the system asks why AND automatically sends an email alert to your customer service team, so you can contact the customer quickly and correct the problem immediately. Thus, you’re not only generating powerful testimonials that increase conversion but also increasing retention by ensuring that you spot problems quickly and respond immediately. This

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is key to providing Concierge Customer Service. But no matter how glowing your testimonials are, they may not be enough to convince your prospective customers, who may worry that the testimonials were hand picked or don’t represent typical results. The stark reality is that many of your competitors won’t have the information to answer those questions or overcome those objections. Statistical satisfaction data provide the most powerful form of social proof to overcome that hurdle.

2. General satisfaction data come from measures in the Customer Feedback Generator™ that tap the global, or overall satisfaction with your product, service, or business. These measures typically provide useful information for your marketing, because they’re easily interpreted and offer a summary indicator. To really ensure that you serve your customers at the highest level, and to ensure continuous process improvement for your business, we recommend that you combine these measures with specific satisfaction data.

3. Specific satisfaction data augment the general or overall data in 2 ways: • If overall satisfaction is high, they can illuminate areas that can still be enhanced.

This proves key to continuous process improvement. • If overall satisfaction proves to be low, these measures provide vital information

to identify critical areas of improvement—including customer service—on which you can take action to increase overall satisfaction before it affects your bottom line. This proves key to customer retention and offers the secret to true concierge customer service.

These general and specific satisfaction measures aren’t just useful internally; they can also fuel your marketing by providing even more ammunition to increase conversions, sales, and revenue. And here’s a tip to make them even more powerful: If you target your specific satisfaction questions in your Satisfaction Data Generator™ at areas in which customers’ objections typically arise, you’ll gain a powerful weapon for overcoming those objections.

4. Referrals come most easily when you invite satisfied customers to refer their connections to you. Because your customers’ connections are highly likely to be similar to your current customers—your ideal target market—and because your customers’ connections are much more likely to trust you if they receive a referral directly from someone they know and trust, conversions on referrals prove to be extraordinarily high. The Referral Generator,™ then, is the tool that lets you glean easily the referrals that concierge customer service creates—and it also provides an indicator of how well your Concierge Customer Service system is making you referable.

5. Online reviews often lie “off the radar” for wholesale distributors. But these reviews have become a key driver in consumer decision-making: A recent study by Deloitte reveals that 1 in 4 (25%) of all Americans do “comparison shopping” on the web and fully 75%--3 in 4--of surveyed respondents indicated that the

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information presented on online rating sites is “generally fair.” This means that the decision-makers in the companies you serve will increasingly turn to these reviews. In fact, we’ve found online reviews that some wholesale distributors’ customers have placed online—and the distributors didn’t even know they were there. Because so many distributors underestimate the importance of these reviews, those who do implement a system--like the Online Review Generator™-- to ethically encourage positive reviews can quickly move ahead of competitors who don’t take action. If you’re providing concierge customer service to your customers, satisfied customers can automatically be invited to leave online reviews with the Online Review Generator.™

Phase II—In Phase II, you use the information gleaned in Phase I to customize your Concierge Customer Service system.

Among the key elements of this phase are:

1. Identifying potential CCS representatives--individuals (either inside or outside your organization) who embody the necessary characteristics to give customers MORE. Useful tools for this phase can include such assessments as Kolbe™ or the DISC® profile. In some cases, you may be able to promote individuals in your company to the dedicated CCS positions; in other cases, you will need to recruit individuals from outside your company.

2. Whether you promote individuals from your ranks or hire individuals from outside, you will need to train them thoroughly in your CCS system. The customer interactions and problem-solving that we described above are “front stage” interactions. Those interactions only go smoothly if you have created and instilled a solid system of “back stage” job descriptions and procedures. Remember, though, that no matter how good your job descriptions and procedures become, these representatives must be sufficiently knowledgeable and autonomous to be able to make good decisions on a case-by-case basis.

3. As your new CCS representatives move through their training process, let them know that no matter how busy they are, they must drop everything and respond to the customer when the phone rings. The immediate, genuinely enthusiastic response to the customer must be, “I’m on it, and I’m going to get back to you after a few hours when I have the solution.” That customer must feel as if he or she is the only customer you serve.

4. Your sales team, too, must be trained in the new system and aligned with its goals.

5. Systems should be created that allow the CCS representatives to track all customer interactions, identifying clearly what problems the customer presented, who presented them (company, position, and name/contact information), the actions taken, and the outcome.

6. Reporting mechanisms need to be put in place so that customers can see the benefits of their participation in this system.

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7. Once the CCS system is in place, use data from Phase I to identify problems in general customer service (the service given to non-CCS customers) so that you can improve that system, as well.

And as you begin to introduce that system to your customers, the data you collected in Phase I will prove invaluable. Reporting back to your customers on survey results always cements your bond with them by showing that you’re listening to them, but that process can be particularly advantageous as you introduce Concierge Customer Service. Here’s what we suggest you include in your report:

1. Report on positive results—for example, “we are so gratified to find that 98% of you are satisfied with our company and 95% would recommend us.”

2. Identify at least 2 aspects of customer service that showed an opportunity for improvement.

3. Identify the customer service preferences revealed in the survey. 4. Use #2 and #3 as a rationale for your new customer service program. In this way,

you tie the program directly to your customers’ sentiments, preferences, and feedback.

Phase III—In Phase III, you capitalize upon the investment you made in the Opportunity Generator™ and Feedback Generator™ in Phase I. Here, you use the survey that provided your roadmap to customizing Concierge Customer Service to collect feedback on an ongoing basis. This can be done at low cost by setting up autoresponders that invite customers to provide feedback at designated intervals. For example, you might decide to re-survey all customers who were invited to provide Phase I feedback every 9 months, then to survey all new customers 3 months after on-boarding and every 9 months thereafter. This provides a cost-effective way to keep your finger on the pulse of customer sentiment, to ensure that your Concierge Customer Service—and your customer service, more generally—produces satisfied, loyal customers. Remember that your feedback system pays for itself, because the added benefit will be testimonials and statistical data that can transform your marketing and content creation to skyrocket conversions.

CHAPTER SIX

Moving Forward

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Moving Forward

More and more companies are crafting and implementing strategy to steal the best

customers from their competitors and foist the worst customers on those competitors. As these

strategies permeate the market and adoption of WayPoint Analytics proceeds, you must choose

either to implement and profit from these strategies or to fall victim to them when your

competitors adopt them. Making the commitment to Concierge Customer Services constitutes an

investment in your future that yields dividends in customer retention, market penetration, and

conversion. The retention benefits mean that you not only tie your most profitable customers to

you tightly (by providing service that your competitors can’t match) but also increase retention

of all profitable accounts, by constantly monitoring satisfaction and loyalty. Conversion benefits

derive from your ability to “clone” your top accounts by drawing similar companies from your

competitors and market penetration comes from converting unprofitable to profitable accounts. If

you execute this strategy well, then, you render your competition irrelevant.

To help you move forward right away, we’ve provided for you the opportunity to

schedule a complimentary, one-hour strategy session with Dr. Jeanne Hurlbert. To schedule your

session, just go to www.ConciergeCustomerService.com.

SCHEDULE A

To help you move forward right away, we’ve provided for you the opportunity to schedule a

complimentary, one-hour strategy session with Dr. Jeanne Hurlbert.

LEARN MORE

Strategy Session