Hi all! Today, I will write about the forth and last customer service book I read before my reapplication. It was the thickest book, but I personally found it to be the easiest book to read out of the four I read. The author is quite blunt, but gets right to the point. The illustrations and real-life stories he shares are hilarious and made the reading quite enjoyable.
So here it goes! My short review of…
Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless
How to make customers love you,
keep them coming back
and tell everyone they know
Jeffrey Gitomer
Striving for Customer Loyalty
As the title of the book explains, the author believes customer satisfaction is worthless to a company. Satisfied customers perceive that they got what they paid for. But that is what any service provider ought to be doing. Anything less would be, well, robbing the customer to some extent. Customer satisfaction is the lowest level of acceptable service.
This is the same theme every one of the books I have read has mentioned. Each author says it in their own unique style, but the message is the same. Satisfied customers will consider their options again next time they need a service performed. There is no guarantee that they will be back again for business. On the other hand, Loyal customers won’t even have to consider. They will be back to that company for their services next time they have a need.
Test Yourself
This author provides many self-evaluation tests in his book to see what areas of customer service you are strong/weak in. He also provides many practical points you can go and implement right away, regardless of what policy your company currently has. I can see myself going back to this book every so often and seeing how I am doing in areas of service. It contains good practical lists to compare yourself against and measure your own growth.
Don’t Quote Policy!
Something this author absolutely loathes is customer support reps quoting company policy. Read this book once and you will never be able to quote policy again!
He explains, company policies are usually written from a company’s point of view. It may be good as an internal document, but customers have absolutely no interest in knowing about it. Even if it does dictate the extent to which customer support reps interact with customers, it should never be quoted or even hinted to the customer. If company policy is hindering me from helping this customer in some way, then that policy may be my concern, but is irrelevant to the customer.
Final Thoughts
Looking back at some of the answers I gave in my last application process, I can see I referred to Automattic’s customer support policy twice. Policies have their place in an organization, but it shouldn’t determine how I help others. As I have learned over the last few months, I should have my own support philosophy I live and work by.
The last three months have been a good time for me to study, evaluate and articulate what my support philosophy is. How have I been interacting with people until now? How do I want to interact with people from here on? Rather than finding out company policy and matching my philosophy with it, I should probably be finding a company whose policy matches my philosophy. So far, I still believe Automattic is that company! We’ll have to see what they think about me…??