Build a Customer Service Machine That Delivers

The companies that focus on delivering a world-class customer experience not only have higher sales growth, a stronger bottom line, and lower employee turnover, they also have a distinct competitive advantage in their marketplace. So says salon owner John DiJulius III in his new book What’s the Secret? To Providing a World-Class Customer Experience. The book presents an in-depth, inside look at the world-class customer service strategies employed by the world’s most customer-friendly companies. It also provides insights into what are the biggest obstacles that prevent organizations from delivering quality customer care. In addition to offering an assessment tool, called the C-SAT (Company Service Aptitude Test) for determining what level customer service your company is currently at, DiJulius writes at length on what he calls the

“X Commandments to Providing a World-Class Customer Experience”.

(I) Service Vision: Be able to articulate why your business exists.

(II) Creating a World-Class Internal Culture: Attract, hire, and retain only the people who have the Service DNA.

(III) Having Nonnegotiable Experiential Standards: Everyone must follow these.

(IV) Developing Secret Service Systems: Utilize customer intelligence to personalize their experience and engage and anticipate their needs.

(V) Training to Provide a World-Class Customer Experience: Institute systems and processes that remove variation and provide a consistent customer experience.

(VI) Implementation and Execution: How to go from ideas on a paper to being consistently executed.

(VII) Zero Risk: Anticipating your service defects and having protocols in place to make it right.

(VIII) Creating an Above-and-Beyond Culture: Constant awareness and branding of how to be a hero.

(IX) Measuring Your Customer’s Experience: What gets measured gets managed.

(X) World-Class Leadership: Walking the talk.