Retail Chains with the Best Customer Service

This article is a reprint of from Barbara Farfan of About.com. Click here for the entire article.

What make a good customer experience? According to the Temkin Group research and consulting firm, it's a combination of three aspects of a customer's interaction with a company - functional, accessible, and emotional. The annual Best Customer Experience ranking list is based on these three aspects of the customer experience. In 2013 customer rating and rankings reveal that in 2013 they viewed their experiences with retail grocery store chains Publix, Trader Joe's, Aldi, and fast food restaurant Chick-fil-A to be better than their experiences with Amazon.com. This is significant since Amazon.com and its leader Jeff Bezos are well known for an almost fanaticalcustomer satisfaction commitment. 

When consumers are asked just three questions about their latest interaction with a company, it can be determined how they rate their experience with that company for functional (completely failed to completely successful), accessibility (very difficult to very easy), and emotional impact (upset to delighted). Individual opinions are averaged and a customer experience ranking is obtained based on the average customer scores. 

Even though the 2013 Temkin Customer Experience rankings included ratings of companies from 19 different industries, it is clear that the masters of customer experience in U.S. business is the retail industry (which includes restaurants, automobiles dealers, and companies with significant retail operations). Of the top 20 companies that consumers rated as having the best customer experience, 19 of them are retail companies. Banks, insurance companies, financial services, wireless providers, TV services, computer manufacturers, and car rental companies crowd the bottom end of the customer experience rankings. As in 2012, of the companies that are strictly retailing companies, RadioShack received the lowest customer experience ratings from retail customers. 

What follows is a list of the retail companies that were rated by consumers for customer experience in the 2013 ranking report. The list is arranged according to the customer experience ranking each company received, when compared to all companies rated. The number in the left column is the ranking number, out of a total of 246 companies. (The companies sharing ranking numbers received the same average ratings from the customers surveyed.) 

Which retail chains provide the best experience to their customers? The ones that can best answer that question are the customers themselves, which they do each year in a customer experience survey conducted by Temkin Group research and consulting firm. Customers have rated and ranked Aldi, Amazon, Publix, San’s and HEB as multi-year customer experience bests and Dell, AT&T, Ford, and RadioShack as multi-year customer experience worsts. 

By comparing customer experience rankings from 2011, 2012, and 2013, it’s possible to see the trends of individual retailers as viewed by the customers they serve. What follows is a multi-year customer experience comparison of all retail chains that were included in the annual Temkin research from 2011 to 2013. The numbers to the right of the dates are the ranking numbers that each retail company was given based on the ratings of emotion, function and accessibility provided by their customers compared to all other retail companies, as well as companies from other industries. 

1       Publix 
2      Trader Joe's 
3      Aldi 
3      Chick-fil-A 
5      Amazon.com 
5      Sam's Club 
7      H.E.B. 
7      Dunkin' Donuts 
5      Save-a-Lot 
7      Sonic Drive-In 

Internal Customers Need Love Too!

I used to have a boss and whenever she walked over to my desk, I’d cringe. Her desk-side visits meant one thing, I’d done something wrong. Her philosophy was when you got it right, you were just doing what you were supposed to do. She felt commendations and praise were too ‘touchy-feely’. Those efforts didn’t require desk-side visitation.

The morale of our team suffered because we never heard anything good from our manager and the overwhelming majority of the work we did was good. A little acknowledgement would have gone a long way.

Too many times, we fail to give credit where credit is due or even show a little appreciation to those closest around us. It doesn’t feel important. In my old boss’s view, criticism was a better motivator than praise. She was wrong. But she isn’t alone in her preference for criticism. People who receive excellent customer service tell, on average, three other people. If they receive poor service, however, they recount that experience to at least 11 people.

Think about how good you feel when you get an honest compliment or when someone values your hard work. Now, take that feeling and pay it forward.

Here are some ways to acknowledge and appreciate those around you.

• Don’t keep quiet! Let people know about a job well done.
• Remember birthdays. It’s a little thing but it shows that you cared enough to remember.
• Smile.
• Celebrate successes. Good grades, a promotion at work, losing a few pounds, all of these things take a lot of effort. Acknowledge the hard work.
• Compliment honestly.

Acknowledgement and appreciation help us focus on the positive and the good that is always going on around us!

A for Attitude

Recently, I started volunteering for a job readiness program. I’ve been dealing with a lot of my own struggles and I felt it was time that I got out of my own box and out of my own head and did something for someone else.

On my first day, I observed the first session for a new class full of job seekers. One of the first things the instructor said was that if they were going to be successful, they’d have to have the right attitude. And that attitude was one of professionalism and a willingness to do the work.

A man sitting next to me balked. “Attitude?” he said. “What does attitude have to do with anything?”

The instructor responded, “Attitude is everything. Your attitude determines your behavior. And your behaviors determine what you do.”

A positive attitude is critical to any real or lasting success. Your attitude is the canvas that your life is painted on.

So exactly what is attitude? Well, it’s more than emotion or a feeling. It’s more than positive thinking.

Your attitude is your overall outlook. It’s how you view a situation. It deals with how you see yourself and how you perceive others. Having a positive attitude doesn’t mean that you are always happy but a positive attitude does mean that you will get back up sooner than later after falling down. A positive attitude is one where you accept that you — and not a partner, job, economic downturn, political party or society — has the ultimate control over your life.

A positive attitude doesn’t come from a place of helplessness. When it encounters obstacles it doesn’t throw up its hands and declare defeat. Instead it puts its head down and gets to work, finding another way, looking for other options and sometimes even creating opportunities.

Attitude fuels belief. Consider this. You can’t have a positive attitude and negative beliefs. It just doesn’t work. You can’t have a positive attitude that says ‘anything is possible and then believe that ‘nothing good will ever happen’ for you. If yours is a negative attitude then it will be difficult to have positive beliefs come from it.

Beliefs fuel action. If you believe in persistence, then if one door closes, you will continue to push forward because you believe that you will eventually get that open door. If you believe that nothing good can happen for you, then as soon as that door closes, you will take that as proof of your negative belief. And chances are you will not find that open door.

It all starts with attitude. And you, … not anyone else has the power to create your attitude and the power to control it.

I'm Baaccckkk!

The Colors of Customer Service blog is being revived. Look for new blog posts every Wednesday and join us on Twitter at @Colorfulservice.

We'll blog on the best in worst in customer service, tips and tricks for Customer Service Reps and reprints of informative customer service articles.

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The Human Touch

It is entirely possible to go through an entire day of customer service interactions and never encounter a human being.

• In the morning, I need gas. I go directly to the pump, swipe my card, and complete the entire transaction.
• I go to the ATM to check my balance and withdraw some cash. Later in the day, I'll call the 1-800 number and use the automated system to make sure a specific transaction has cleared.
• I got turned around trying to find an address. I didn't pull over and ask a gas station attendant, I pulled over and pulled out my GPS.
• That evening, I'll pay a few bills on line.
• I have a question about a cable service, so I log into my account, and check the FAQ section to find my answer.
• I need to buy some clothes and a few books. I won't bother going to the store, I can do it all online.

You get the point.

Since we do so much without human contact, it's important that we remember to be human when we talk to an actual human. Many of the more mundane and common interactions can be handled through some sort of automated phone tree or simple online service.

Yet when I encounter a problem, those automated services cannot help me, in fact, they can be downright infuriating. So when I finally get through to a person, it helps if they can give me something the automated services can't: empathy, understanding and help with a difficult problem.

In a world of automation, the human touch cannot be replicated, no matter how 'human' they try to make the automated voice sound. Only a human can be a human and that can make all of the difference in delivering a positive customer service experience.

Colors of Customer Service

This blog is named after my book The Colors of Customer Service. As a trainer with a decade and a half of experience, I've done my share of customer service training. I've taught a number of off-of-the-shelf training courses and attended a number of customer service trainings.

Of course, the basics of each course were the same but for me something was missing. Sure, its critical to keep hold times down, to make warm transfers, to speak clearly and pleasantly and to show empathy. Yet, the focus was 100% about placating the customer and placing the customer first. On the surface that sounds right but dig a little deeper and you'll see the fallacy in that line of thinking.

A conversation takes two people. An interaction or exchange of information is not a one-way street. Yet, most customer service training was very omnidirectional. I found that no matter how many times you say 'the customer is always right,' no matter how many mirrors you pass out or how much role-playing you do, there is a dimension of training that is missing.

Often times CSRs enjoy training because it's a day away from the phones. However, when those same CSRs return to their desk, there is very little, if any, behavior change.

When I had the opportunity to tweak a customer service training I was asked to deliver, I added the critical component that I felt had been missing. Adult learners are always interested in "What's in it for me?" when it comes to learning new concepts. What can they apply to make their jobs easier or their performance more effective? What can they take away from the training that will make a marked improvement for them? When it came to most customer service training, the answer was "Not much."

I added some simple tips on staying engaged and staving off boredom. I gave them advice on organizing their desk more effectively. I told them how to handle an irate customer so that not just the customer would leave satisfied but so that they hung up the phone without taking the residual frustration onto the next call.

Not only were the participants more engaged, but they left with actual concepts that could not only improve their job performance but their outlooks as well.

Those are the concepts that I applied to The Colors of Customer Service an allegorical tale that takes place in a world run by chameleons that change color based on mood. When Peter, the new customer service manager starts, he's mortified to meet a team made up of discouraged blues, disengaged yellows and disgruntled reds. Through the course of this short book, he'll meet with each team member and change their colors. By the end, he's got a team made up of professional greens, friendly pinks and confident oranges and purples.

Available exclusively via Amazon, over the next few weeks, I'll be introducing some of the characters. While they are all chameleons, I'm sure you will see shades of people you know in them.

Improving Customer Service ... Government Style

This article by Elizabeth Montalbano is reprinted from Information Week, October 28th.

New online services from the IRS and the State Department are among those in the works to meet a new federal mandate to improve federal customer-service engagements.

In April the White House by executive order required federal agencies to develop plans to identify steps they would take to improve customer service.

 

This week agencies are posting their plans online, according to a White House blog post by Federal Chief Performance Officer Jeffrey Zients.

 

Specifically, the plans are supposed to show how agencies will adopt best practices from the private sector, develop service standards and track performance against them, and benchmark themselves against the private sector to improve customers' experience.

 

The plans also were required to include a so-called "signature initiative" that specifically leverages technology to achieve goals.

 

The feds' plan to use the Web more to help customers comes at a good time, as a recent study found that people increasingly are using this channel to communicate with the government.

 

To that end, Zients highlighted new technology investments the IRS, State Department, and Department of Health and Human Services will make to bolster online engagement with customers.

 

The IRS is developing an app for its website that will let taxpayers securely authenticate their identity online and then send transcripts of tax records to an authorized third party. Currently, people can request these transcripts online but can only receive them through the mail. Millions of people annually make these requests, and the new app will expedite their fulfillment, according to Zients.

 

The State Department aims to simplify another bureaucratic process for Americans as part of its customer service plan—applying for a passport card, which will be valid for travel to Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda.

 

The department is developing a pilot so people who already have a valid U.S. passport book can apply for a passport card online by uploading a digital photo and making an online payment. The pilot is experimenting with electronic signatures to see if they are viable for this type of passport processing, which the department does more than a million times a year.

 

For its part, HHS will launch an online service for small businesses that helps them identify insurance plans to offer employees. Through HealthCare.gov’s Insurance Plan Finder, small business owners will be able to see benefit and cost-sharing information for insurance plans in their local areas and basic pricing comparisons between the plans.