Ignore Your Customers (and They’ll Go Away): The Simple Playbook for Delivering the Ultimate Customer Service Experience
Micah Solomon
HarperCollins Leadership January 2020)
How to create customer evangelists
In the updated edition of The Experience Economy (first published in 1999), Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore develop in much greater depth brilliant insights that were introduced in a Harvard Business Review article (1998). During the past 20 years, I think that competition for customer time, attention, and money has become at least 20 times more difficult. According to Pine and Gilmore, time is the currency of experiences. “Think of it this way: How and why ‘services are about time well saved, while experiences are about time well spent.'”
I was reminded of that observation while working my way through Micah Solomon’s “simple playbook for delivering the ultimate customer service experience.”
Most companies do not ignore their customers but many companies take theirs for granted. Apparently their leaders do not realize that the cost of adding a new customer is (on average) at least six times the cost of retaining one. Also, they are apparently unaware of the results of the most recent major studies of customer satisfaction that indicate “feeling appreciated” is ranked at or near the top what is of greatest importance to them.
Of course, Solomon fully understands all this. In fact, he wrote this book in order to help organizations — whatever their size and nature may be — to deliver “the ultimate customer service experience” or at least one that retains customers that would otherwise be lost.
He recommends taking a five-step process to having a workplace culture in which to create what Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell characterize as “customer evangelists”:
1. Define your purpose in a sentence or two.
2. Set down a short list of principles that are fundamental to your desired culture
3. Express your cultural expectations at every possible junction, from recruitment onward.
4. Maintain a repeating ritual for cultural reinforcement.
5. Develop an obsession with talent management.
These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the scope of Solomon’s coverage:
o Automatic positivity (Pages 1-10)
o Zappos (23-26 and 62-65)
o Customer-focused innovation (27-30)
o Trait-based hiring (39-40 and 43-44)
o Generational differences in the workplace (48-52)
o Millennial employees (49-52)
o “Wow” customer experience (61-81)
o Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company 66-67 and 69-75)
o Cinematic approach to customer experience (83-86 and 86-97)
o Customer experience 83-110)
o Service recovery systems (117-121)
o Vertical communication (134-136, 139-140, and 188-189)
o Digital communication and technology (147-170)
o Judgment calls (149 and 165-166)
o Social sharing (171-181)
Readers will appreciate the provision of a “Cheatsheet” and “Reading Group Guide” at the conclusion of each of the ten chapters.
Micah Solomon provides thorough coverage of the WHAT and HOW of delivering “the ultimate customer service experience.” (The WHY is obvious…or at least it should be.) It remains for each reader to absorb and digest this material, then apply it in ways and to the extent it will have the greatest impact.
In this context, Maya Angelou offers an especially valuable observation: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”…for better or worse.