Xtreme Customer Loyalty is achieved by consistently creating positively emotional customer experiences.

Trust begins when the customer perceives the event to be a purposeful intention by the brand.

If the effort is not obvious, let them know you cared enough to do it.

here is perfect example from my dry cleaners.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCL

While putting the finishing touches on a white paper on contact center cultures, this spilled out onto the keyboard.
It’s may not be right for the white paper but I thought I would share it.
(This is what happens when you listen to Schubert while working.)

Contact Centers form very specific kinds of cultures, which require special care and attention, and present challenges not usually seen elsewhere in the organization.  They are labors of love.

At times, it is difficult to discern a contact center culture from that of a production line, a command center or a hospital.  The origins of the contact center workforce is often diverse, at the same time, constant and committed.
Contact centers may have the highest turnover rate of any corporate discipline, but are kept running by devoted individuals that often offer entire careers to the service of those they don’t know.
A contact center reads the life-pulse of any organization, feels the tremblings of a failed business and the trends of immense growth, usually before the rest of us.
Customer contact centers hold the key to the future of our businesses through their access to the hearts and voice of our customers.  Yet, we often see them as cost centers, necessary evils in our effort to create brands.
Contact centers collect the leaks of corporate miscalculation and work knee-deep in water everyday.
Customer contact centers are one of most powerful touch-points we have, and the most directly impacting tool in creating Xtreme Customer Loyalty.

Support and visit your customer contact center, it’s good for business.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCL

This story is sad, but a little funny at the same time.

Continental Airlines Flight 47 kept about 50 passengers on this regional Jet on the tarmac overnight.
Fifty people in a regional Jet with babies and backed up bathrooms can be a pretty scary thing.

The airplane was diverted and landed in Rochester about 12:30 am.  Passengers were not let off of the plane because the security officers had already left for the day.  The airport reports that it told the crew they could deplane, but the crew disagrees. (full story on USA TODAY.)

Of course, we can expect confusion when a flight is diverted after hours to a small airport that is not serviced by the airline.
But what a difference a little front-line EMPOWERMENT would have made !

A crew member calling the police on their cell phone saying – It seems very unreasonable for us to keep 50 people in here all night.  Can you help us reach some authorities that could give us options? – Instant emotion, Instant Loyalty.

Take a chance on Empowerment, it works !

(I wonder what a SouthWest Airlines crew member would have done)

Rudy Vidal
Committed to Extreme Customer Loyalty

Copyright 2009 – Rudy Vidal

One of the most common hurdles in trying to improve the customer experience, is that we view the customer’s situation through our own internal filters, limitations, policies and generalization. In effect, we can hear the customer but what we “know”, doesn’t let us listen.

Those that touch the customer daily know more than anyone about what the customer considers important. As surprising as it may be however, I find that those that touch our customers every day are not the ones designing the customer experience. Those that decide are often somewhat removed and rely on their “past experience” to make the right decision.

Some time ago, I gave a contact center manager a challenge to transform the customer experience with the representative by only changing the rep’s greeting. At first, the feeling was that the greeting could not change the experience. The content of the experience was so much more important than the greeting that it could not be overshadowed. Just to be nice, she played along. After considerable thinking and word-smithing, the new greeting was surprisingly similar to the original. The reasons for the measured change were all logical and full of merit, backed by experience and knowledge in customer service.

Because I had done this exercise before and new the potential results, I pressed on. Otherwise, I would have likely agreed with the logic and “let sleeping dogs lie”. Instead, I provided an idea for the new greeting. “Hello, thank you for calling XYZ, my name is Rudy Vidal. I am committed to resolving your issue today, please let me help you.” This new greeting was received with raised eyebrows and determined to be “corny”. I agreed it could be “corny” , but in whose eyes?

To a contact center person who is aware of all the difficulties associated with actually resolving an issue, it may sound corny. But to a customer who is having a bad day, who has just gotten escalated and has lost hope of resolving her issue, this greeting could be comforting, perhaps even surprising. It could disarm a person who is ready to take two full minutes to expound, at high volume, why she is so upset. At the very least it is unexpected.

We tried it in a small group of representatives. Customer Satisfaction increased by double digits, representative satisfaction did the same, first contact resolution went up.

Sometimes, it is difficult to put ourselves in the customer’s shoes. We see their situation, only through our own. We try to walk in their shoes, but fail to remove ours.

By the way, the most surprising aspect of that experiment, was the effect it had on the representatives. They were more loyal to the customer, more engaged in the solution, more committed. First call resolution went up, not because empowerment policies changed, but because the representatives changed. What they said to the customer changed what they did.

Two suggestions:

• Make sure to include people that directly touch customers in the creation of new solutions.
  Have them represent the customer without regard to internal limitations or
  common knowledge.

• Try new things, after all nothing will change until something changes.

Rudy Vidal
Committed to XCS