Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary

by Steve Curtin

Discover the hidden ways to raise your organizations’ customer service experiences from ordinary to extraordinary.

If you want to know how strong your company’s customer service is, ask your employees to describe what their work entails. Then pay attention to whether they simply list their duties and tasks or if they speak to the true essence of their job--to create delighted customers who will be less price sensitive, have higher repurchase rates, and enthusiastically recommend the company or brand to others.

The latter should be every employee’s highest priority, because when it’s not, your customers are merely the recipients of a transaction, not an experience, and transactions do not make for a lasting impression or inspire loyalty. In Delight Your Customers, customer service expert Steve Curtin makes a compelling case that customer service managers need to shift from monitoring service activities to modeling, recognizing, and reinforcing the behaviors that create happy and returning customers. Things such

Expressing genuine interestOffering sincere complimentsSharing unique knowledgeConveying authentic enthusiasmProviding pleasant surprisesDelivering service heroics when neededSimply based on their own personal experiences, everyone knows that great customer service is rare. So why wouldn’t you want to provide a unique, caring, and beneficial experience for all your customers to rave about with others? With the real-world stories, examples, and strategies shared in Delight Your Customers, you can take the customer service experience you offer from ordinary to extraordinary.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

195 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 19, 2013

Reviews

[Aman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a bad book to read

[Steven Deng · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d like to share a story about “Exceptional customer service”.

Here is the story of the keyword.

After I dropped my daughter off in Fairfield park, I went to Woolworths to buy a few Apple gift cards. The cashier is a young girl who is an intern at a high school. She is not experienced But quite kind. She asked if I would like to apply the monthly ten per cent discount on the bill. I was surprised, even pleased, because the gift cards amounted to 1600 dollars. In other words, ten per cent would be 160 dollars! That’s big money! Isn’t it? So I answered,” sure, why not?” But I found we couldn't apply the policy to gift card purchases. So I asked her if she could cancel the policy this time cause I’d rather have the policy applied to my next groceries purchase. She apologised for misunderstanding the procedure, but she couldn't cancel it. Then she asked her supervisor for help, who coincidently passed by her.
The supervisor was a kind, smiling young black guy. He told me I could not use the discount policy again, and even though he could help me to cancel the order that he couldn't.
He asked me how much I usually spent on the ten per cent discount policy. I told him the range is about 400 to 500 dollars. Then he thought for a while, turned back and opened a cabinet door to find a coupon for return. He operated a computer and inputted his password; meanwhile, he turned to the girl and reminded her not to look at his input.
He finished very quickly and handed it to me.
He notified me I could use the 40 dollars returning coupon next time.
Wow, I appreciate his kindness—a perfect solution for my situation.
It is an extraordinary, exceptional customer service case, according to the book I am reading, “ Delight your customer”.

[Carolyn Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be one of the most inspiring books on service I’ve ever read. Since my thorough training at my first job at a bookstore (learning to count back change - who even does that anymore) to the week-long excellent classes with Disney before they allowed me to wear a “costume,” this echoed everything I’ve ever learned about delighting others. Some really terrific ideas and suggestions that I can implement immediately. A very relevant book for anyone who’s business involves “caring” for others - even if you’re behind the front lines.

[Anne Marie D · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's very, very dry, but I highly enjoyed learning more about customer service, job function v. job essence, and how to practically apply many of these tactics in my day to day as a sales professional.

[Nancy Jurss · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for work. Just the standard message that you need to go the extra mile to provide extraordinary service.

[Marleah (marleah_a) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half was just all right, but I enjoyed the second half. The ideas that I thought were most important were doing more staff recognition, recognizing opportunities to provide good service, and realizing that it's better to view difficult customers as "discerning" - they care about what they want, and they are disappointed when they have certain expectations and those expectations are not met.

[Leslie Good · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good book on the essentials of customer service. The book is full of specific examples of good and not-so-good service that illustrate the author's points.

[Josh Steimle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well organized and detailed read on how to improve customer service in your organization. I especially like that the author focuses on ways to improve that don't cost anything.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A concise book that delivers what it promises. Though it is concise, there are repetitive sections, but all in all, it's well done.

[Elizabeth Gray]

The author made good points about customer service, but it was hard to pay attention to those points because the author is so incredibly arrogant. I felt like the whole book had a continuing thread of him bragging about how great he is and how he should get crazy customer service requests fulfilled because he is so important. His arrogance took a lot away from the book