Charter Communications Customer Service

There Kevin Peters was sitting alone in his automobile in the rains observing the entry of an Office Depot shop. During the last half hours, he had observed one customer after another coming out of the shop. Neither of them was carrying a sack. As they were heading outside, they passed an Office Depot staff member sitting against a partition under the sunblind who smoked a smoke out of the rains.

Speaking as head of the Office Depot Americas retailing department, he came to this New Jersey car park on a grey, dull morning to see first hand how clients experience one of his branches. He used a methodology that had already been used in a dozen other places, observing clients come and go, then entering the hallways, going and talking to clients about whether they found what they needed and how they liked the business in general.

It was the outcome of each and every visitor that was decisive for the branch director, who did not know that he was there. He wanted to see the shop as a customer on a purchasing spree, not as a leader on an inspecting spree. Fustrated clients left without produce, while one of his staff not only ignored them, but deposited a cloth of cigarette smoke for them to pass through on their way out.

Was he supposed to expose his guard by letting the executive tell him to bring his flabby co-worker back to the shop to help the buyers? He had no way of standing by and watching his company undermine one customer after another. Leaving his ambush plan, getting out of his auto and going to the shop with a new one.

Since he had been planning to leave anonymously, Kevin hadn't taken the trouble to find out the name of the branchleader. However, he knew that every sales outlet near the shop had a stake with a photo of the managing director and this service commitment below: "If you're not happy with your buying experiences, please contact me or another deployed executive.

" When Kevin went to the stake, looking up to see what the branch director was like - and found a repeated image of the outside cigarette smoker: "The one with whom we confided in our customer relationships. "What went wrong at Offices Depot? Obviously, what basic issue did Kevin take hundred of leagues away from his boardroom in Boca Raton, Florida, and into one of his own businesses - disguised?

This was not a good period to take over the management of a retailer group. In general, the onset of the 2008 recession was not favourable to the retailing industry, and turnover at our branches fell even more than that of our peers. Visiting more than seventy offices in the United States, Kevin expected a sophisticated experi- one that differentiates it from other stationery and big boxes merchants.

" However, never good enough to really distinguish it from the other possibilities of its clients. When Kevin had completed speaking to and observing thousands of clients shopping, he had started to resolve the mystery. "Not his clients, as it turns out. You want to find the stationery you came for quickly and simply.

However, the Office Depot branches did not help them. Large and overcrowded and bewildering, their signs made the shops difficult for clients to negotiate. You had been coaching all the time to concentrate on the task, not on developing customer relations by attentively hearing and reacting to your needs.

Whoa, there, thanks customer, and... oh, hold on... did you forgot to buy something? Delivering customer experiences is something that is essential to the overall sucess of any company. Customer experiences are for most businesses the biggest indicator of whether a customer is returning to a rival - or defective. It is so crucial that even online stereotypes like wireline operators and insurance funds are suffering if they fall through (which most do, as we will see in the next chapter).

The customer empowerment is at the core of all your activities - how you run your store, how your employees act when they engage with your clients and each other, what value you offer. Quite simply, you can't really afford not to, because your clients take it personal every touches of your product, service, and customer care.

Why are so many managers apparently blindfolded to the importance of customer experiences? First and foremost it is because they do not know what they do not know - beginning with what "customer experience" actually means. Of course, most managers have at least listened to the word "customer experience," but they often believe it's just another way to say "customer happiness.

If you don't comprehend what customer experiences are and why they matter, you run the risks of loosing your customer to businesses that think Apple, Amazon, Southwest Airlines or USAA. In order to better comprehend what customer experiences really mean, let's begin by clarifying some of the more persistent misunderstandings. We will do this by enumerating some of the things that the customer is not.

It'?s not smooth and fleecy. Naturally, you like your clients - if not for them, you cannot afford your mortgages. However, your passion for your clients will not help you to be successful unless you do something about it, such as offer them items that suit their needs and make it simple to find, buy and use those items - all crucial facets of customer satisfaction.

It' not customer service. Humans call customer service when they have a dilemma. To equate customer service with customer expertise is like saying that a security net is a trapezium act. So, if these are some of the things that the customer experiences are not - what is they? It' s about what your company's product and service offerings are, how you run your organization, and what your trademark is for.

It' what your clients think, what happend when they tried to find out about your products and rate them, buy them, use them and maybe try to get help with a bug. What is more, it is about how they felt about these interactions: agitated, fortunate and calm, or edgy, disillusioned and disappointed.

The customer experiance is how your clients see their interaction with your organization. As soon as you have understood this, you can steer your enterprise from the outside to the inside and bring the perspectives of your clients into every single choice.