Lately, I’ve been pondering the following quote attributed to Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
“The best customer service is if the customer doesn’t need to call you, doesn’t need to talk to you. It just works.”
It sounds straightforward, almost too simple.
But, behind such a notion of “self-service” lies a principle that is a crucial success enabler: I call it rational compassion for your customers.
Some clarification first:
Empathy is trying to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Compassion goes much farther. It is about doing whatever you can to enable someone’s success.
Add “Rational” to it, and compassion can now live in a business context.
Rational compassion is challenging yet powerful. And it starts early in the customer journey, with a proper understanding of the customer problems you’ll be best positioned to solve.
It continues with building the best possible product and offering it – I mean selling! – to your customers.
The story doesn’t end there. Even with the best possible product, business execution is full of unplanned events, defects, and mistakes that risk wreaking havoc on the customer experience.
Successful companies know how to create the right experience throughout the whole customer journey. I’ve seen at least three areas where it can have the most significant impact:
- Educate customers about the products offered and their alternatives and clarify expectations upfront. Transparency and honesty will pay off big time and avoid disillusions down the line.
- Promptly respond and act on all feedback from customers. Whether positive or negative, you’ll demonstrate and show you sincerely care.
- Delight customers with creative and unexpected actions on shipment problems, returns, exchanges. It goes a long way in keeping customers for life and having them become your best ambassadors.
But the best companies go even farther.
They let customers take control of their own experience.
Again, Amazon is an excellent example of giving complete control to its customers at every step of the journey. Before the actual purchase, they can research products, compare prices, review customer reviews and ratings, and more. If you need some support, you’re encouraged to “self-serve” before you even talk to an agent.
Such practices are raising the bar, and customers, like you and I, now expect a high-quality level of self-service with all the products and brands we adopt. Interestingly, automation and artificial intelligence now pave the way for significant continuous improvements in this area and will likely help democratize self-service.
Businesses that genuinely embrace rational compassion and apply it to the whole customer journey will thrive. So, think further about using this critical principle for your customers.
And if you ever come to a point where you get stuck, feel free to reach out to me at tanguy@theproductsherpa.com. I’ll be glad to help!