Customer service.

A term misused enough it’s difficult to know what it means.  A real shame, because its meaning is more vital to business success than ever.

The problem is that every business claims to prioritize customer service.  It’s become a platitude consumers ignore.

Worse, customer service policies get lip service from within organizations.  For all our talk, we tend to focus inward.

This is not all out of greed or self-absorption.  Gerry McGovern notes how it’s not natural to be customer-centric.  Organizations, he says, are tribes, and the customer is not part of tribe.

Employees who are customer-centric risk rubbing the tribe the wrong way.  They ask awkward questions, slow down projects. They push to simplify things for the sake of user experience.  They strive to provide customer value more than feed management’s ego.

Inevitably, customer service conflicts with time usage and profit.  McGovern notes than in his experience, this can in fact cause management to disdain employees who make real efforts to be customer-centric.

Instead, customer service becomes an act of obsequious affirmation (the customer is always right!) and apologetic fire-fighting (we’ll make this right!).  Behind the scenes, the tribe can’t get around seeing the customer as a meal ticket.

The Review Bite and Customer Advocacy

In the last decade, businesses who paid lip service to customer service felt a sting.

Call it word of mouse.  People tell other people about their experience with a business.  They write online reviews.  Tweet complaints.  Share experiences on Facebook.

An organization can quickly find itself snake-bit by poor reviews and online information sharing.  This content spreads quickly and remains visible indefinitely.  Business reputation blown in a digital lightening strike.

Just as bad, you won’t have anyone talking (in the same places) about how good you are.  Today, a major component of any marketing plan is how you’ll get happy customers to tell their friends about you.  Consumer today look more to unbiased information sources and consumer created content to inform the buying decision.  They actually expect you to deliver unique value.  Overtime, a business needs customer advocates online as a marketing channel.

Organizations have different goals when it comes to customer service.   It’s important to align these goals with products and policies.

But increasingly, you must be customer-centric in your overall business approach.  Lip service applied to the customer’s posterior isn’t enough.  And while you must be profitable, your client must be as well.  You can’t separate the customer’s success story from your own.

Profit at the cost of customer satisfaction will be paid for, sooner or later.