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What do customers expect from brands? PissedConsumer interviewed @ShepHykenSpeaker, a Customer Service & CX Expert, to learn more about customer service. In this video, Shep Hyken uncovers key things to help create amazing customer service and what it means both for consumers and companies. Watch why asking an extra question can make a difference.
0:00 - Introduction
00:23 - About Shep Hyken
00:49 - How to achieve amazing customer service
02:26 - Has consumers changed their expectations
04:09 - Negative online reviews as an opportunity
06:19 - Why do consumers complain?
08:00 - Tips on handling customer problems
10:30 - The future of self-service solutions for customer service
13:40 - Why monitor consumer feedback
14:03 - Behind the ‘extra question’ method
17:00 - Tips for consumers
22:40 - How to contact Shep Hyken
You may learn more about Shep Hyken at https://hyken.com/
#customerservice #customersatisfaction #customerexperience #pissedconsumer #thecustomerfocus
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0:00
My name is Shep Hyken
0:01
You can call me Shep. And what is your name again? Great. Look, I'm frustrated
0:06
I'm even angry. I'm not sure what to do. And I'm really hoping that you can help me out
0:11
Hey, I need this quickly. Don't just say yes. Customer does need you
0:16
And it's a good customer. I'm a customer service and experience expert
0:25
I help my clients create amazing experiences for their customers and clients, guests, residents, whatever they want to call them
0:33
I travel around the world doing the speeches similar to what you saw. I've written eight books, published over 3000 articles and gosh, probably hundreds of publications
0:44
So I've been around for a while. I know I don't look that old, but I've been around for a while
0:49
Thank you, Chef. Thank you for the introduction. And again, thank you for coming on to this conversation, to this interview
0:56
How do companies achieve amazing customer service? What's in your point of view as amazing customer service
1:02
And how would you advise companies to do that? So the word amazing is kind of misleading at times because most people think amazing
1:09
is about being over the top and blowing people away with the best experience they've ever had
1:15
But the truth of it is amazing is just doing what's expected
1:19
And if you wanted to do more than it's expected, you don't have to do much more
1:24
I mean, it's like five or 10 percent better than average. But when you do it, and here's the key, consistently and predictably, what your clients and customers
1:33
are going to say is, I love doing business with them. They're always so quick to respond
1:38
They're always knowledgeable. They're always helpful. That word always followed by that positive word like helpful and knowledgeable
1:46
And even when there's a problem, I know I can always count on them. That word always creates is in the mind of the customer, that consistency
1:53
And when that happens, they say they're amazing to do business with
1:57
That's not about going over the top. But I will tell you when there are opportunities to do so, when something falls in your lap
2:04
like a great problem to resolve or you overhear something that you can take advantage of and
2:09
really deliver an even better than expected experience than anybody was expecting
2:14
that's a time to grasp and take advantage of. But otherwise, day in and day out, just be consistently and predictably the tiniest bit better than average and meet those customers' expectations
2:27
Has consumers changed in the past 10 years in their expectation of customer service
2:33
The big change, and it happens every year, and it's my number one prediction I make every year when I write my predictions for the end of the year, getting ready for next year
2:43
And I just did this this week, is that the customer's expectations continue to become more demanding
2:51
Year over year, customers expect companies to deliver better service. Here's why this is happening
2:57
There are great brands out there, brands like Amazon and Apple and hotel chains like the Ritz-Carlton and the Four Seasons and other amazing brands that really set the bar for what good service looks like
3:12
The majority of people would agree that these companies are amazing at what they do
3:17
And guess what happens? All other companies get compared to those companies because we're all consumers
3:22
We've all had consumer experiences. and regardless of whether we're a B2B business, B2C business, or any type of business in the industry
3:31
we are comparing our experiences to others. And what we're really looking for is for people to do the basics right
3:38
And I've already mentioned what those basics are. We need to be knowledgeable. We need to be helpful
3:43
We need to make it easy for customers to do business with us. That's what amazement is
3:48
So these rock star companies set the bar high. What happens is a lot of companies that aren't getting the ratings they want, they're still working at it
3:56
They're just not keeping up with what the customer's expectations are. And if that happens, long term, you're going to see competitors usurp you in your efforts to own and gain customer share
4:08
For those unlucky companies, which is 99% of the companies that do get negative feedback online, when you speak to companies, how do you advise them to react to negative feedback that shows up online
4:23
I see negative feedback as two opportunities. A negative online feedback, which means the feedback is there for the world to see. Number one, it's the opportunity to resolve the customer's problem. The customer took the time to complain
4:38
And by the way, if they made that complaint based on trying to reach out, make a phone call and an email, didn't get response, and this is their fourth or fifth attempt at being recognized, that's a bigger problem unto itself
4:51
OK, but let's assume that customer decides to go out there and leave some negative feedback or, you know, mention a complaint
4:58
So first and foremost, customers taken care of. And the nice thing is you can go online and respond directly to that customer, ask them to move offline to a direct message format, and then come back on and say, thanks for letting us take your problem, take care of your problem
5:14
So that's number one. Number two is to recognize that this is an opportunity for a good PR experience
5:22
Customer complain, and the rest of the world gets to see that you resolve the complaint, hopefully to the customer satisfaction
5:30
And in the perfect world, if you come back and say, hey, thanks for letting us take care
5:33
of you, that customer is going to come back and say, hey, I'm so glad that I reached out
5:37
to you on whatever social channel or whatever review site it is. The third opportunity that I want to mention is that complaints are really an opportunity
5:46
to find out what wrong with your process It not just about solving a customer complaint If you start hearing the same problems and complaints popping up over and over again you need to do something to mitigate if not eliminate it altogether So we need to look at
6:00
the root cause of those complaints. So every complaint that comes to you is an opportunity
6:05
to not just resolve the situation to make the customer happy and restore their confidence
6:09
doing business with you. It's an opportunity to also improve your process. If it's online and it's
6:15
public, it's also that opportunity for the world to see you. You know, we come from the road from
6:20
online complaints, you speaking to this consumer. Majority of the reviews that shows up on our
6:27
platform are negative. It's much easier to get the negative feedback from consumers. We've done
6:32
customer development on our site, and I just want to share my experience with you. Why consumers
6:37
come to the third-party platforms and not go to company directly? There are two problems mixed into
6:43
First, today's consumer does not trust the brand to keep the negative feedback on the platform
6:50
They don't trust brands. But why the consumers are still going online and publishing it
6:57
Because consumers actually want to do a favor to the company, so the company learns from
7:04
its mistakes, improves its processes, so future customers don't suffer. So that's what customers are actually telling me when we speak to them
7:15
Some of that is accurate. I believe that some customers, because they've gone to a third-party review site
7:22
it's probably because they didn't get the response they wanted elsewhere. And I jokingly say they're seeking revenge on the company because they want the world to see
7:32
hey, these guys didn't respond the way I want them to. Now let's see what happens
7:37
Typical customer sees interaction with customer service. Most of the complaints on the sites are speaking about experience with customer service. But in reality, I want you to talk to the following
7:54
In reality, it's the entire communication of the company, how the company communicates outwards
8:02
Customer service is just easiest person to reach at the company for consumer to talk to
8:09
That's a job. But in reality, it's a behavior and communication from the entire company
8:15
How the consumers see. If the salesman sold me the wrong product, I'll be angry at customer service, not the salesman
8:25
But the problem in the organization is actually within the sales team, not necessarily customer service
8:32
Can you speak about it? I would think that the customer is angry at the company and they're taking it out on someone in customer service if they are, in fact, angry
8:42
or if they may be angry, but if they try to resolve it in a way that doesn't appear to be angry
8:48
it's still about the company. It's not about the individual. One of the things we train to and we emphasize over and over again, and this is old news
8:57
this is nothing new from me, is that if you are a customer service rep
9:02
just realize that if the customer comes into the call and they're angry and upset, it's not you
9:09
It's something that happened. It is your opportunity to diffuse the anger, to fix the problem and do it in such a way that ideally restores confidence for that customer to want to come back and do business again, which is why I hate that so many times companies look at that customer service department as a cost center
9:28
And the reality is they're a customer retention and potentially revenue generation center by holding on to and ideally creating that confidence with the customer
9:39
One of the things we're going to teach our customers to do, we want them to complain
9:44
But when we teach them to complain the right way, that means they're going to call us next time
9:48
They're going to reach out to us next time and they're going to say, hey, you guys always take such good care of me
9:53
I've got another problem. Let's start over. And then they get this
9:58
And what happens, and I go back to that word I used at the beginning of our interview, the word always pops up
10:04
You know, even when there's a problem, I know I can always count on them. And so we train our customers to become demanding customers
10:12
We want them to reach out to us when there's a problem. We want to give them such a great experience that they would never want to go anywhere else
10:19
And if they did, they would demand the same level of service that they'd been getting
10:24
and that other company would say, you know what, you're too demanding. Go back to where you came from
10:29
We rely on communications a lot, voice communications, but the world is changing around us
10:37
Facebook, Google, you want to have a voice communication with Facebook? You want to have a voice communication with Google
10:43
Forget about it. It's nonexistent. Large organizations are moving towards the service
10:50
where customer service doesn't exist in the voice format. How do you feel about it
10:55
There are large companies that you can't reach a human being, which is a shame
11:00
I think they're substituting technology for human to human connection with companies like Google and Facebook
11:06
They're saying, you know what? So few customers really need to talk to us
11:10
We're not going to provide that. I think that at some level that could be a mistake
11:16
There needs to be a point in time that if a customer does need you and it's a good customer
11:21
And if you've got, you know, if you're just having trouble with the Google search and you call and say, I can't find what I'm looking for, that's probably not a good reason to have a customer support call
11:32
But if I using one of the Google products and granted some of them are complimentary and it not working I should be able to find my answers That the key Create self solutions We do a survey every year 71 of customers we surveyed are
11:52
willing to use self-service solutions, provided they're easy to use. That's very important
11:57
They're intuitive. They're easy to find. A lot of the times we teach our clients in the customer
12:03
support world to teach customers how to use these self-service solutions so they don't have to
12:09
call and be put on hold and then be authenticated. It's easy for them to just go online, log into
12:14
their account and look for a video tutorial or a frequently asked questions knowledge base where
12:20
they can get some answers really quick. If we've got a robust search engine of our knowledge base
12:25
where a customer just types in their question and it comes up, what's easier than that? And when we
12:30
teach our customers to do that, they're going to want to get support that way versus the traditional
12:36
human to humanist work. Now that said, to your point, what's frustrating is that the majority
12:43
of customers, coincidentally, 71% of customers prefer the phone over any other communication
12:50
channel. Email's number two, and then it goes down from there. By the way, at the bottom of the list
12:54
is social media. And oftentimes social media, it's not about the first place they go. It's about
13:00
a second, third, or fourth attempt. And finally they decide to go social on you and share it with
13:05
the rest of the world. So I hope this is an answer that's helping you get an idea of what we're
13:10
looking for here. You're absolutely right. Consumer firstly tries to address the issue
13:15
by talking directly to the company, by whatever means, email, phone, chat. They go directly to
13:21
the company trying to address it. If the company is unsuccessful in addressing the issue, it is a
13:28
consumer's choice where they go to post the feedback online. Social, special websites, whatever that might be
13:39
Shall the company monitor all of the social reviews that exist in the world
13:44
TikToks, YouTubes, Facebooks, LinkedIn, and so forth. Shall the company take it upon them to monitor all the possible channels of communication
13:55
that consumer could think of to leave the feedback about it? The short answer to that is one word, yes
14:03
I think you've got to be where your customers are. And it's very inexpensive
14:09
And there's technology out there that will allow you to track every time your name is mentioned in any of these social channels and review sites
14:17
So it's very easy to track and monitor all of those posts
14:21
You often ask in your presentation about asking an extra question. That's kind of a thing that you do. Can you talk about it for our consumers so our consumers understand what kind of religion you are spreading out there in the world
14:41
Wow. Thank you. That's actually one of the favorite points that I make in some of the presentations. And that is, we don't want to have a communication breakdown. So it's one thing if I'm upset because I received the wrong bill. If I'm a cable TV company and the power or the internet goes out in a particular area, as a customer, I might be upset with that, but it's going to get fixed. Right? Okay
15:07
And if I call and the way you handle it makes me happy, that's great
15:11
But in the process, you can fix a lot of operational issues
15:15
But something that's really hard to fix is a communication issue because customers walk away and say, you know, they don't understand me
15:22
As a result, there's a little trust. And, you know, that's a barrier to moving forward in the relationship
15:29
So I talk about this idea called the extra question, which is to get better understanding about what the customer's expectations are
15:36
So if the customer says, hey, I need this quickly, don't just say yes, because even if you can do it quickly, wouldn't it be nice to know what the customer's version of quickly is
15:46
So you might ask, well, how quickly do you need it? Is there any way I can get this within the next hour
15:50
Oh, yeah, piece of cake. I'll probably get back to you with the next five to 10 minutes. Well, you've just made that customer really, really happy by asking the extra question
15:58
However, if they say I need it in the next five minutes and you know you can't get it done until two or three hours from now, you need to realign that expectation
16:07
So what you're using that extra question for is to understand expectations, realign expectations, and make sure you can deliver on the expectation once you finally decide what it is
16:19
And by the way, it might not just be one question. It might be two or three questions
16:24
So I remember when I was younger and I was involved in sales, they always talked about asking those extra questions to make sure you understand the customer
16:33
But I take that idea to the customer service world and the customer experience world
16:38
In sales, if I was trying to sell a car and somebody said, do you have this car in green
16:46
You might ask, why do you like it in green? And they may go, oh, I'm so glad you asked
16:49
No, I actually hate the color green. And if I ever saw this color on that car, I would never even buy it for myself
16:57
Isn't that nice to know that information rather than just say, oh, yeah, we have it in green
17:02
Let me go show it to you because that's the exact wrong answer. You ask that extra question, you understand the expectation
17:08
Same thing happens when you're servicing your clients and your customers. Given that you have a lot of experience with customer service working with customer service organizations
17:19
Do you have tips to give to consumers when interacting with customer service
17:27
What shall they expect? How they shall treat customer service Whatever recommendations you can give to my side of the world I believe it pretty quote pro You got to be able to treat people the way you want to be treated
17:45
So if I'm calling you as a consumer and I get you on the phone, you're my customer support
17:50
rep and I'm angry at you and I start coming at you, what kind of behavior might I expect
17:55
Now, these are trained professionals. They will deescalate your anger. They will do what they can to get you to be neutral so that they can start to resolve the question
18:05
But wouldn't it be so much easier to come in with a more positive attitude
18:08
You might be upset. I always love to start by saying this, you know, whoever it is, when they introduce themselves on the phone, I say, well, my name is Shep Hyken
18:18
You can call me Shep. And what is your name again? Great. Look, I'm frustrated
18:23
I'm even angry. I'm not sure what to do. And I'm really hoping that you can help me out
18:28
I hope I'm talking to the right person. Right now, you've like put this request out there right before you even started to talk about the problem just to say, hey, I want you to help me. Please help me. And that's a whole lot different than coming at you. Let me tell you how bad you guys are
18:44
You know, so you start off with the right attitude. If you're not getting the answers you want, I really want you to think about this, because oftentimes you may not realize that what you're asking for, it may seem logical, but it may not be reasonable
18:59
And I really want you to think about, is this a reasonable request? One of the techniques that we use with our clients who are in the customer service world is we will say, if you're on the phone with a client that's being extremely unreasonable and you're using all the techniques that we've talked about
19:14
there's a question that you can ask. It's a dangerous question in the fact that you might not get the answer you want
19:20
and then you're gonna have to deal with it. But if you get the answer you want, it's gonna start to make things go smoothly
19:26
And that is to say, let's reverse this for a moment. Let's say that I was the customer
19:30
and I came to you with the exact same problem and request that you have of me
19:34
and you work for my company. What do you think the truly reasonable thing
19:39
would be to do here? How would you handle it? And it's like you're role reversing because you might actually get a different answer than the original answer or the original request that they had
19:51
Very, very powerful question. But at the same time, you've got to be prepared if you don't get the answer you want, which means you're really still where you were and you're working on other techniques
20:01
A few other thoughts. You know, if you know right away, you don't want to repeat your problem
20:07
You know, it happens. as soon as you recognize this, stop the conversation and say, look, I'm not so sure you're the person I need to be talking to
20:17
I would like to speak to your supervisor or manager, or maybe I need a higher level of support
20:23
Oftentimes their job is to prevent you from getting to that person. But you just sit there and you say, I'm waiting and do it patiently and recognize if their calls are truly being
20:36
I will also say this. So I know that it says on the front end that this call is being recorded for quality assurance. Right now, I don't think I'm getting the quality that I was hoping for. And I'm really hoping that I don't think it's going to happen here. I need to speak to someone else. I think you've got to be nice about it. You might get there
20:55
One of the techniques that we tell our clients to use or tell our clients that I've written about for consumers to use is to stop, hang up nicely, call the corporate headquarters and ask to speak not to the president, but to the office of the president
21:13
You will get somebody on the phone whose job is to make sure you don't talk to the president so they could help you the way somebody else might not help you
21:23
I was dealing, and I'll give you a quick example of this. I was dealing with a major retailer
21:28
Many of us have been there. I was not happy with the response I was getting
21:33
I knew I was totally within my right, within reason of what is normal
21:37
They weren't helping me out. I hung up the phone nicely, called the headquarters, spoke to somebody in the president's office, one of his or her assistants
21:46
I'm not sure what their position was, but when I explained the problem and the way I explained it, they go, I get that
21:52
I totally understand why you would be upset. I'm going to call you back within an hour and hopefully I'll have an answer for you
21:59
And by golly, they called me back and they gave me the answer that I had hoped for
22:03
Why couldn't this person on the front line have done that? My explanation as to why I thought there was a problem was the correct explanation
22:12
I'm from outside the company and yet my customer support rep, the original person I talked to, didn't see it that way
22:18
When I explained what the problem was, what I thought was causing the problem
22:22
turned out I was right. In the process, not only did this person take great care of me
22:27
they restored my level of confidence to immediately turn around and double my order
22:34
That's how this should work. Chef, thank you for the recommendations. Thank you for your time
22:41
It was a great experience. How shall a company contact you if they're interested in your service
22:48
in advising them in customer service? What are your preferred channels of communications
22:54
You will share it as well. Sure. Well, thank you for asking
22:58
Just go to my website, hyken.com, www.hyken.com. Plenty of information there. My contact information is on every page
23:08
Hint to all companies out there. If you have a website, contact info on every page
23:13
All right. Make it easy for the customer to find you. Anyway, I'll be there for you
23:17
You call me. We're quick to respond, I promise. And thank you so much for having me on your show
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