Genuine Caring – Part 1

December 22, 2009 by Yuval Brisker

I spent the afternoon and then dinner with one of my favorite customers. He’s an important vice president at a very large communications and media company, one of the largest of its kind in the world.

Over the years, we’ve spent many hours talking about the service business, which both of us are in, and today we talked about the idea and the practice of service differentiation, one of my favorite topics.

In product and technology, almost everything is a commodity at this point. Everything. You can always find someone who will give it to you cheaper (and sometimes, even, better).

So what can never be commoditized?

Genuine Caring.

What is ‘Genuine Caring’?

It basically means giving customers a feeling that your concern for their satisfaction is something beyond the ‘same old, same old’.  It’s not just a post-service survey. It’s making that survey count. It’s not just asking what was good and bad or wrong and right in the service – it’s letting them know how their experience will change the way you’ll do business with them in the future. It means asking them what they think and then giving them a sense that what they said REALLY matters. A tall order when you have millions of customers.

And how do you do this?

Well what did that old Dean Witter ad say?

“One customer at a time.”

To be continued….

Preparing for my joint webinar with Aberdeen Research

December 13, 2009 by Yuval Brisker

Getting ready for my joint webinar with Aberdeen this coming Thursday (12/18/09)  -  organizing my slides and my thoughts… and it got me to thinking about the things I was going to focus on in my talk. I was again struck by how important managing customer expectations is to sustaining a great relationship with customers.

I always think of my own experiences as a customer:  The more I know about what to expect – the less anxiety I feel.  The more I am communicated with about what to expect – the less unknown and  the less worry I have.

Pro-active, continuous, relevant and actionable communications throughout the  process is key to a good relationship – in life with the people around you and in the vendor/service provider to customer relationship, as well. It’s really that simple. Why is it so hard then for most vendors/service providers to do?