How to Transform an Angry Customer into a Brand Evangelist

Are you feeling the pressure of high customer demands? Customer service is on the decline, and now is the time to stand out. To differentiate yourself from the competition, you must anticipate your service defects and put protocols in place to make it right.

Are your team members trained and equipped to handle challenging customer conversations? Or is it dependent on which manager is on duty, what type of day they are having, or how much experience they have?

Your team members must be prepared and equipped to respond to common customer challenges. A few of the most common customer challenges right now are: shipping delays, product availability, staffing shortages, extended hold times, lack of follow up, and quality of service or product. All employees must have full awareness of the potential service defects that commonly arise at each stage of the customer’s journey. You must train and empower your employees to handle challenging conversations and provide consistent service recovery.

Creating a Customer Service Recovery System that all Employees can Execute

As you can see, Tarter’s CEO, LuAnn Tarter, showed her commitment to the service recovery model, GATE in this quick training video.

*Related – How to Train your Employees to deal with Irrational Customer Rage

An article from Salesforce recently revealed that 68% of customers expect empathy and only 37% of customers say brands demonstrate empathy. I believe the disconnect exists because employees are burnt out, potentially overworked and lack the empathy training that they need to be successful.

Tarter Farm and Ranch Equipment has recently committed to service recovery & empathy training. They have been extremely successful in creating and implementing tools to help train their team on what to do when a challenging customer issue occurs. One simple model they created was the GATE method. The acronym stands for Gather all information, Assess the situation, Thank and empathize, and Explain the solution.

Since not all problems are created equal, and what may be a minor inconvenience to one customer is a major inconvenience to another, they created a “Behind the Gate” tool to define each. This tool helps to explain the context around what service recovery should be if the situation is a major inconvenience, a frequently occurring scenario, or a minor inconvenience.

*Related – Are your Managers “Heroes” or “Zeros” when Putting out Customer Fires?

The Revolution is Back!

On October 5^th – 6^th, The Customer Service Revolution conference was held in-person in Cleveland, and it was truly incredible. It had been two full years since we were able to be back together again face-to-face. We all needed this both professionally and personally—the collective energy and positivity this group of speakers and Revolutionaries (attendees) brought. Thank you to everyone (in-person and virtually) that was a part of this year’s Revolution. Click here to check out all the photos from the event.

Podcast Episode 62 – The Customer Experience Olympics

Chief Revolution Officer John DiJulius of the DiJulius Group discusses how to make your customer experience training more fun and effective. Your customer experience strategy is worthless without ensuring it is retained and executed by every existing and new team member. Just because your employees were in attendance at your customer service training or watched the presentation online doesn’t mean they retained everything that was taught. There must be a certification component. It is important to test each employee to make sure they learned and retained the information that was taught or launched.

Last Chance to Register for our CX Coach Camp November 15-18

The DiJulius Group is holding their next CX Coach Camp, training passionate CX (Customer Experience) Coaches. These entrepreneurs will be licensed to train businesses on the exact same methodology that has been used with the best customer service companies from all over the world, to start their own six figure coaching business. Become a licensed Customer Experience Coach—register for November’s Coach Camp, November 15-18, 2021.

Register now for the 2022 Customer Experience Executive Academy

We are now accepting applications for the 2022 Customer Xperience Executive Academy (CXEA). Having worked with the top Customer Service organizations in the world, The DiJulius Group’s Customer Xperience Executive Academy (CXEA) gives you both theoretical and practical Xperience on how to elevate the levels of service at your company. With the need for rapid growth of the Customer Xperience Executive in businesses today, the Customer Xperience Executive Academy uses the X Commandments Methodology, which covers all facets and responsibilities that fall under Customer Xperience. Unlike any other institution, the CXEA’s focus, strictly on the Customer and Employee experience, prepares leaders to champion change at any company, regardless of industry.