Startups don’t tend to think about a customer service philosophy at the beginning. Mostly they’re focusing on getting their product or service into the world. However, overlooking your customer service philosophy will catch up with you eventually.
Common questions pile up, and they can be tricky to answer:
- How do we retain customers?
- How do we stand out from competitors?
- How can we improve our Net Promoter Score?
- How do we build new products and services that our customers love?
Certainly, every business asks these questions. But the ones with a solid customer service philosophy are in a better place to answer them.
It’s no coincidence that industry-leading brands have clear customer service philosophies to uphold. Often, it’s the driving force behind their success.
What is a customer service philosophy?
A customer service philosophy is a set of principles, beliefs, and practices that shape customer interactions. It includes core values, company vision, and your commitment to customer satisfaction. Knowing your customer service philosophy and embodying it helps you make clear decisions.
‘Philosophy’ may conjure up thoughts of a long document nobody enjoys reading, but that doesn’t need to be the case. In fact, the shorter and simpler it is, the better. Concise messages are powerful.
For example, leading up to the 2000 Olympic Games, Great Britain’s rowing team was determined to bring home the gold. Great Britain hadn’t done so since 1912. So the rowing team created a motto: Will it make the boat go faster? Every decision they made was weighed up against this motto. And it worked; they took home the gold.
Having a customer service philosophy helps you in similar ways. After all, you can measure every decision against it to ensure it aligns with your philosophy.
Why are customer service philosophies important?
Certainly, the obvious answer is that it will improve your customer service, which will help you grow. But there are many more benefits:
- Align employees around a vision: Every CEO dreams of having a team that ‘gets it’. They want staff to know why their jobs are important and what they expect of them. Building your customer service philosophy into your business helps you achieve this.
- Increase customer loyalty: There’s a reason we buy our coffee, clothes, and furniture from certain places. Simply put, we like what they’re doing. We want the brand’s products and the experience we get. A customer service philosophy ensures you uphold the brand experience customers have grown to love and expect.
- It’s a competitive advantage: 88% of customers say good customer service makes them more likely to purchase again. You don’t need unique products to stand out. Great customer service can do that, too.
- Enhance products and services: Instilling your customer philosophy into your products and services improves them. If a product or service isn’t in tune with your philosophy in the design phase, it’s not ready to be released.
How to create your customer service philosophy
- Revisit your ‘why?’: Why does your business exist? Why is it important to you? And why does it excite you?
- Determine your key principles: Exploring your ‘Why?’ should reveal some common themes. What are some words that encapsulate your principles?
- Reconnect with your customers and their needs: Entrepreneurs should find an audience and create a product for them, never the other way around. So revisit your audience, their pain points, and what their lives look like. How does your company help them?
- Write your customer service statement: Make it clear and easy for everyone to understand. Avoid abstract metaphors and vague language.
Examples from world-leading brands
- Google: Focus on the user and all else will follow.
- Patagonia: We’re in business to save our home planet.
- Starbucks: To inspire and nurture the human spirit—one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time.
- Tesla: To accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.
- Amazon: To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online.
How to apply your philosophy
- Lead by example: If you don’t follow your philosophy, it invites staff to do the same. This will drop the standards that your philosophy encourages. However, when you embody the customer service philosophy at the highest level, it becomes contagious for all employees.
- Integrate philosophy into training programs: Employees should be aware of your philosophy from their first day. Include it in your training programs, explain why it’s important, and include stories and examples to help new starts absorb it.
- Embed philosophy into standard operating procedures (SOPs): Customer complaints, negative reviews, and other unwanted situations put your philosophy to the test. These are delicate situations, and the wrong response makes things worse. Instilling your customer service philosophy into SOPs helps you apply them even in the most challenging situations.
- Use feedback to refine and improve: Feedback can reveal where your company’s actions don’t align with your philosophy.
- Recognize and reward alignment: Showing appreciation to staff who have demonstrated your customer service philosophy shows you value their contributions. It also inspires others to uphold these principles.
Customer service success stories
Zappos: Delivering happiness through customer service
Zappos, a popular American online shoe and clothing retailer, is committed “to live and deliver WOW” to its customers.
It offered free shipping and returns, a 365-day return policy, 24/7 warehouse, and it made it easy for customers to contact them. Zappos generated over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales by 2009 and was acquired by Amazon as Jeff Bezos adored its customer service philosophy.
Ritz-Carlton: The gold standard of service
Ritz-Carlton hotels are renowned globally for their luxury and exceptional service. The gold standards behind their success aren’t kept secret. They’re broken down into six areas and shared on its website:
Sticking to its gold standards of service ensures every hotel creates the experience customers know and love.
Southwest Airlines: Putting people first
Southwest Airlines injected friendliness, humor, and genuine hospitality into its customer service philosophy. People from the Midwest are renowned for these qualities, so Southwest Airlines ingrained them into their company.
Many airlines try to project an image of safety and professionalism, often resulting in a cold brand experience. Southwest Airlines’ commitment to safety, reliability, and low cost, with hospitality at the core, helps them stand out.
Apple: Enriching lives through technology
Unlike Zappos, Apple is known for being more secretive about its customer service philosophy. The core of it is to enrich people’s lives through technology. Whatever they’re doing is working, as it’s often lightheartedly teased for having a ‘cult-like’ following.
Apple trains its staff on its products, how to listen to customers’ needs, and empowers them to make decisions themselves. Through genius bar support (an in-store help desk) and in-store workshops, they show customers they’re here to help enrich their lives through technology.
AnswerConnect: 24/7 human connection
Our philosophy is simple: provide exceptional human support 24/7. We pledge people, not bots. Every business should be able to help customers 24/7. Why? Because human connection matters. AnswerConnect offers 24/7 call support and services like appointment scheduling and CRM integration to remove tedious manual work that stands in the way of the work that matters.
Mastering your customer service philosophy helps you make better choices when faced with common business problems. Not only that, it gives you a competitive edge that means you to stand out among the competition, even if you don’t have unique products.
As has been noted, creating your philosophy doesn’t happen overnight. Since it involves a few back-and-forth discussions and exercises to figure it out. But it’s worth the time you put in. Uniting a team around your customer service philosophy is one of the most powerful things you can do to help your business succeed.
