What many people really misunderstand about customer service is that there’s actually 2 different types

Functional and friendly.

People seem to only ever focus on the friendly element.

But that’s the easy bit, its quite straight forward to train staff effectively, to make sure they say ‘Hello how are you?‘ or ‘Have a great day!’

You won’t necessary be able to make all of them care as much as you want to but you will do a really good job of covering up failures in other areas of the business.

This post talks about the other kind of customer service – Functional.

Functional customer service is the difference in your actual product/service and is fundamentally important if you use this to add value to your offering and differentiate it from rival companies. It could literally come down to doing what you say you will do, whether that be called out as a product feature or simply what your brand stands for.

Forcing your self to look at your service in this way can also be uncomfortable process but is essential to ensure there isn’t a disconnect between what your brand and the service experience.

Here’s 3 customer service ideas worth considering.

Continue reading →