Lessons on Strategic Customer Service

BrightBlue Marketing is excited to have another piece from our returning guest blogger, Susan Dodia, President of The Project Coach.

I recently had the pleasure of attending a presentation by John A. Goodman, author of Strategic Customer Service: Managing the Customer Experience to Increase Positive Word of Mouth, Build Loyalty, and Maximize Profits. That’s a long title, and Goodman backed it up with a wealth of interesting information.

Goodman’s organization, TARP, is credited with inventing the science of studying customer experiences in order to develop key knowledge that aids organizations in improving their bottom line by improving their customers’ satisfaction. Over the last 30 years, Goodman’s client list has grown to include Coca-Cola, Pfizer, Sears, Toyota, Citibank, Goodyear, and many other Fortune 500 customers.

I will share with you the biggest surprise I got from Goodman’s presentation: if you poll customers and employees about things that don’t work in an organization, 70% of the items on each list will be the same. I had never heard this statistic, but it makes perfect sense. Many times, the biggest source of pain for employees is not being able to adequately respond to customer requests.

So, the next time you stop and think about how to provide more value to customers, start inside the organization. If you can solve the problems inside the organization, you may be able to solve the lion’s share of your customer problems as well.

For more information about TARP visit their website at http://www.tarp.com/home.html.

For further reading on the customer experience visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_experience

Blog post by Susan Dodia of The Project Coach