By Arunabh Sinha
Partly out of curiosity and partly to manage operating expenses, I have been personally managing our UClean customer delight WhatsApp myself ever since the lockdown. While it is a challenging and daunting job, it has also been replete with learnings and insights which would have otherwise eluded me. With 6+months of customer delight experience behind me, I have certain insights and observations which I would love to share here for the greater common good. Without much ado, here we go.
- First and foremost, it is critical to understand that you are not the company and vice-versa. Any bouquets or brickbats which you might receive on the chats/calls are directed at the company and not at you personally. Never react to them personally
- Most of the customers are not looking to engage in small talk. You are always better off sticking to the point. Value the customer’s time
- Always have a comprehensive understanding of your own business. You should be able to respond to all the questions promptly and precisely. Brevity is the soul of wit.
- Customers love fishing for discounts, offers and promotions. Keep them handy
- Education is at the heart of building customer confidence. Be prepared to educate your customers. Visual clues always work better than texts. So, share images and videos of the process to make it easier for them to understand the process
- Customer delight is possibly the most abused word in consumer-facing industries. Do it like you mean it. Or don’t do it at all. Delighting customers is a rather difficult job since there is always a give and take involved. If you really intend to delight your customers, be obsessive about it and never treat it as a bargain
- There will always be some customers who are going to be absolutely unreasonable and impossible to please. Never judge. However, be prepared to weed them out once you find them. Don’t beat yourself up about it.
- As a CXO, this is an exercise in humility. It is a mirror to your company’s performance and the best metric to judge your company. Ask every customer for a feedback and rating once she has availed your service. I have developed the following thumb rule to judge the performance of our UClean stores (on a scale of 5) and to
- Avg rating of >4.5 means the store is tending towards perfection and should be motivated to push the bar higher
- Between 4 to 4.5 means the store is doing good but can get better
- Anything under 4 is not promising, and the store needs to significantly up their game. Or face the axe.
- Most importantly, this stint allows you to appreciate the kind of patience, focus and tolerance displayed by your customer delight team. A team that often goes unnoticed and rarely rewarded for their relentless pursuit of OCD (Obsessive Customer Delight) of the right kind.
To all the founders and CXOs out there and especially to those who are not already doing it: Try managing the call center or customer delight department for at least one day every month. You will well and truly feel much closer to your customer than you have ever felt before. You will also get candid feedback which will help you improve upon your products and services. No number of audits and analysis can match this feedback. Side effect? This role can get addictive.
