Preemptive Customer Service Process

Posted on Jun 11, 2010 | 1 comment

Isn’t it great when you find a company that demonstrates excellent customer service? Unfortunately, in today’s world it seems that such great customer service is the exception rather than the rule. It’s actually quite sad when you think about it.

I’ve personally experienced more companies than I can count on two hands in which simply receiving a response from customer service seemed like a win. It shouldn’t be this way. With the interconnectedness of people and an abundance of technology to support communication, there is no longer the need for a customer inquiry to be written down on a notepad for someone to respond the following day.

The minimum bar for customer service is now higher. The target response times for customer service organizations should be hours; it definitely should not be days and an argument can be made for a response time metric in minutes.

Shutterfly is one company that I have found (well, thanks to my beautiful bride!) to demonstrate a preemptive mindset when it comes to customer service and the implementation of key business processes. Check them out if you are into photo taking, printing, or digital scrap-booking.

How is this for customer service?

• Immediate and live chat with a Shutterfly support agent while you are building your digital books <== talk about preemptive
• No questions asked extension to expired coupons
• Over apologetic responses and re-shipment of items that “might” be lost in the mail
• Responses from customer support in hours (not days)

The desire of most companies is to meet the minimum bar for customer service. Doing so will create a business that is viewed as just that. Take that path only if you want your business to be perceived as middle of the road and average.

Shutterfly gets it. They are not building their customer service process to be like everyone else. Their customer service processes are preemptive and demonstrate innovation and “outside of the box” thinking. As a result, they are different. And better.