Video: Is great customer service worth it?

Two reasons why excellent customer experience is impossible to achieve for 90% of retailers, and why it doesn’t matter anyway.

Wow customer service, delighting the customer, our customer journey, however you say it,
customer experience is an endlessly fascinating subject. Just running a business, happily
harnessing individual skill to corporate goals, is difficult.

Keeping that beneficial balance while making the modern consumer happy is a Rubik’s Cube in mittens. With a two-minute time limit. 

Researching this subject for the upcoming Next Generation Retail Summit, I realised that a
lot of pro-customer experience writing – and there is ONLY pro-customer experience writing
– is conjecture, bias and opinion. We believe that making the customer feel a million dollars
is worth it because… well, because.

So if it’s conjecture, bias and opinion you’re after, then pull up a seat. Here are two reasons
why excellent customer experience is impossible to achieve for 90% of businesses, and why
it doesn’t matter anyway.

1. Short-term goals count against it

At the end of every year, you have to be left with more than you spent.
Facebook’s former CMO, Randi Zuckerberg, once tweeted the entrepreneur’s dilemma:

“Maintaining friendships.  Building a great company. Spending time w/family. Staying fit. Getting sleep. Pick 3.”

Let’s change that to the CEO’s dilemma:
Shareholders. Sales. Product development. Marketing. Customer service.
Pick 4. And you have 12 months to make a financial difference.

2. People prefer a deal

Ryanair is Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, but was voted the worst of the 100
biggest brands serving the British market. People love the deal, not the service.
This, then, is where we should start our summit conversation: is customer experience a
provable competitive advantage? And if so, what is its rate of return?

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