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September 20, 2012 at 12:00 AM
“Eighty percent of success is just showing up.”
— Woody Allen
And 80 percent of customer service is just being nice.
Recently, I’ve been writing more about the simplicity of customer service. The concept of customer service is simple: Just be nice. OK, maybe I am oversimplifying this a bit. A great customer service experience consists of two other elements: operations and the quality of what you sell. That’s the other 20 percent. (Without that 20 percent, it doesn’t matter how nice you are.)
First, let’s cover operations as it applies to the customer experience. Anything that isn’t considered part of the frontline customer service experience but impacts the customer experience can be put into the category of operations. This can be accounting, warehousing, the manufacturing process, hiring or anything required to run a business and produce a product.
Then there is the quality standard. Whatever you sell has to meet the customer’s expectations. If you sell expensive leather shoes, the customer will expect them to last a long time. Conversely, if you sell cheap shoes, the customer shouldn’t be surprised if they fall apart after a year. Either way, you have a quality expectation that needs to be met, if not exceeded.
