Kendra LustyLast month, we released the article Superior Customer Service: Your Loyalty Program's Secret Weapon. In it, we discussed the importance of customer service to any business, but especially to those with loyalty programs, which rely on positive customer engagement to succeed. In part 2 of this series below, we give some tips on how to enhance your own customer retention strategies through superior service.
I worked in a call center. Briefly.
Fresh out of college, I wanted to make money as I searched for a "real job" so I took a position that was notoriously easy to get, at a place that would hire just about anyone.
Admittedly, this company put a lot of effort into training according to client expectations. However, it's very hard to make a group of teens, job seekers, recently laid-off, etc., really care.
I saw a whole lot of stereotypical behavior. You know, like an agent who puts on a friendly voice during the call, but puts the customer on hold to call them names. I've seen agents listen halfheartedly while their real attention is on some homework they're trying to covertly finish. I've been the agent that reaches veeeeery slowly for the answer button hoping someone else picks it up instead.
Unfortunately this scenario is exactly what people have come to expect as "acceptable" levels of customer service. Companies rarely offer anything beyond this bare minimum standard of service. After all, it is a huge expense to hire and train the number of people needed for improved efforts.
Smart businesses are catching on to the great need for better customer service as a core customer retention strategy. However, few seem to know how to actually get there.
The Customer Experience is Key to Customer Retention
If you've heard about the customer experience, that's because more and more companies are talking about it. The customer experience is the sum of all interactions, thoughts and emotions the customer associates with a business.
Positive customer experiences have a direct relationship on metrics businesses care about, like acquisition, customer retention, referrals and more. Nowhere is this more clear than among businesses executing on such strategies as loyalty programs, white label travel platforms and member benefits for associations, just to name a few.
More than anything else, people will remember how you made them feel. Nothing breaks this important emotional connection with members faster than a bad experience with customer service.
People often call customer service during times of high emotion—something has gone wrong, they don’t understand instructions, they’re unhappy with a product, etc. Sometimes people call because they’re big fans, asking for the latest exciting news or bragging about a good experience. Either way, these high emotions signal a moment of truth on the member journey. What is that? These moments of truth are the times customers are most open to your influence.
Customer service is already in a position to use the power of these moments to reinforce loyalty or repair trust. If you only provide so-so customer service, you’re leaving it up to chance whether you succeed or not. However, if a member is calling in, you can be sure they’re presenting you a great opportunity to tip the customer retention scales in your favor, or risk losing them forever.
Luckily, businesses everywhere are starting to get the hint that it's time to start implementing best practices focused on customer loyalty and retention. If you're a business looking to provide better service, but don't know where to start, consider that the industry may not be setting the best example to follow.
Go Above and Beyond Industry Standards
One thing is clear. The bar for customer service is currently very low. Unfortunately for customers, this level most often only meets the "what is the bare minimum we can get away with offering?" standards.
Worse still, some companies are big enough, they’re getting away with offering intentionally bad service. The aim is to frustrate customers enough that they give up on seeking a refund or repair. They may save money in the short term, but they lose out on loyalty in the long run.
This leaves a huge opportunity for businesses willing to take the risk and shoulder the expense of offering higher tier customer support. They are still rare today, but people are increasingly gravitating toward them.
Businesses can benefit from setting their own bar higher—preferably much, much higher—and backing their member benefits programs with a trained support team.
Here at Access Development, we’ve grown and developed our customer service team over the course of 40 years and learned a lot along the way. Access is a member benefit provider, working with brands, membership associations, travel clubs and more, basically any business that wants to turn customers into lifelong loyal members. The decision to back our product: the nation’s largest private discount program, with 24/7 concierge-level service has been a major selling point in finding new partnerships, because businesses can rest assured we’re serving their members as well as (or better than) they are themselves.
Here are the biggest lessons in customer retention we’ve learned. These strategies will help ensure your customer service department aids company goals by encouraging loyalty and member engagement.
Design the Ideal Team: Keep it Human, Keep it Close
Maximizing your service experience often means taking more aggressive control over your customer service team: who they are, where they work, how they’re trained, etc. Otherwise, you risk letting your service commitment fall short of the quality of product or service, thus allowing the whole experience to feel disjointed and unsatisfactory.
The most common money-saving efforts (outsourcing, downsizing, relying on technology, etc.) may cost you big in the long run, if you start losing the loyalty of members who were costly to acquire in the first place. The more other businesses move away from the friendly human touch, the more opportunity you have to provide your members with the experience they crave.
Building Your In-House Advantage
One standard that makes retention difficult is the prevalence of outsourced support to call centers. While a business can save money and building space, they sacrifice oversight of hiring personnel and the agility to fine tune the customer experience as needed.
The trend of outsourcing to call centers overseas continues to grow, despite the fact that as much as 75% of Americans prefer to speak with domestic representatives, citing communication difficulties as one of the top three reasons to switch to a competitor.
The solution is to make sure your service experience emulates your vision for the company as a whole, which is much easier to do if your team is on-site. The method will be unique to each company and might include customizing a memorable sign off script. Some might find they need to standardize answers to difficult questions, while others will do the opposite by empowering representatives to find a unique solution tailored to each member.
However you decide to proceed, gaining this level of control may require you to find a way to house your customer service team in the same building as the rest of your employees.
We at Access Development take pride in keeping our customer service team in-house and training each employee in soft touch and active listening skills. This ensures each member is treated exactly the way we want them to be. It's an investment that has reaped many rewards, and it helps prove how hungry people are for a consistently positive customer experience.
The Human Touch vs. Automation
In a short time, AI (artificial intelligence) in customer service has evolved from experimental to business-critical infrastructure. It’s estimated AI will soon be behind 95% of customer interactions. While AI and automated systems are excellent at certain things (like routine inquiries), they should never replace the human connection that drives true customer retention.
- 57% of consumers would trust AI only to handle low-risk support issues like product information
- 90% of customers prefer to get customer service from a human rather than a chatbot when dealing with complicated issues
- Customer expectations for politeness and empathy have increased by 43%
Politeness and empathy are uniquely human traits that no AI can truly replicate. When customers have complex problems, experience frustration, or need someone to truly listen and understand their unique situation, they need a real person.
Think of technology as your customer service team's assistant, not their replacement. Use it to make your human agents more effective, more available for meaningful interactions, and better equipped to deliver the concierge-level service that truly drives customer retention.
Set Customer-Focused Metrics to Define Success
To preserve the customer experience and improve customer retention, you want every call to end with the customer satisfied, even delighted with the help they received. But there seems to be a gap between how customers and companies define a good experience.
Only 8% of customers felt they received "superior" customer service, despite 80% of companies reporting they provided it. This disparity can only be bridged if businesses prioritize customer needs before their own.
One standard that makes this difficult is the set of self-serving metrics by which a company might define a department's success. Businesses may feel they are succeeding if they can keep certain metrics high: short wait and call times, more upsells, etc. While these things are important, they mostly help define if the team is "pulling its weight" in helping the company's bottom line.
Why Call Time Obsession Hurts Customer Retention
The industry obsession with keeping call times short is often misguided advice. It's true that agents should be excellent communicators, able to convey all the information in less time. However, short call times have become a goal in and of themselves. At its worst, this causes agents to rush customers through calls, at the expense of clarity.
Kelly Do, director of member services at Access Development believes the most important metric is the customer experience. Her team rejects the industry standard of short-as-possible call times, meaning Access representatives stay on each call until they've answered every question and resolved every issue.
"Whether it takes 2 minutes or 60, we feel it's worth it for the member experience that they hang up feeling well taken care of."
Gather Metrics That Actually Matter
To preserve the customer experience and improve customer retention, the metrics that truly matter are those that focus on the customer's experience, not just operational efficiency. One of the most effective ways to gather this data is through a short customer satisfaction survey immediately following interactions with customer service. These post-interaction surveys capture feedback while the experience is still fresh, providing invaluable insights into what's working and what needs improvement.
The most effective customer retention examples prioritize these customer-focused metrics:
- Overall service experience ratings - How satisfied was the customer with their entire interaction?
- Issue resolution completeness - Was every question answered and every problem solved?
- Customer effort score - How easy was it for the customer to get help?
- Emotional satisfaction - Did the customer feel valued, heard, and well taken care of?
To ensure customers are well-satisfied, Access encourages a post-call survey asking people to rate their service. Quick 1-2 question surveys like these ask customers to stay on the phone only a few extra seconds after their call ends. The instant data can help you nimbly make changes to improve service quality.
Alternatively, you can follow up by email to dive even deeper into your customers’ experience with open ended questions like: "why did you give us the rating you did?" and "what could we have done to earn the top score from you?" Doing so can help you gauge customer expectations.
Support Your Customers Proactively for Better Customer Retention
Customer service departments are great for diffusing and repairing a negative situation. But have you ever considered the potential your agents have for preventing that situation in the first place?
Proactive customer retention strategies significantly outperform reactive approaches. Research shows that proactive customer service interactions consistently raise customer perception. Even so, only 13% of customers say companies anticipate their needs.
One standard that makes this difficult, particularly in the world of loyalty programs and membership benefits for associations, is the trend toward unsupported benefits. In these instances, customers and members are left to fend for themselves to ensure the benefits they receive end up actually delivering the value they expect.
The Cost of Reactive-Only Service
For example, let's look at the travel discount benefits industry, especially in regards to white label travel platforms. There are many programs out there boasting great deals on hotel rooms, car rentals and more. Unfortunately most of them strive to be "set and forget" providers, expecting the members to take care of themselves after purchasing.
Some don't even provide a phone number to call. This means if a member arrives to find a wrong or absent reservation, their only option is to send an email and wait, stranded, for a reply.
Slow response time is a widespread problem in the travel industry. As many as 66% of travelers are dissatisfied with their customer service experience, with many of them reporting that their experience was “slow and frustrating.”
This isn't good enough when customers value great service even over low prices when deciding which company to book through. If your goal in offering discounts in the first place is to delight your members, poor customer service accomplishes exactly the opposite.
What Does Proactive (AKA Concierge-Level, White Glove) Customer Service Look Like?
A much better way is to proactively engage with members. Keeping with our example above, travel service providers can improve customer retention through these proactive service approaches:
- Anticipate problems before they occur - Monitor common pain points and reach out to customers who might encounter them
- Confirm critical transactions - Personally verify that reservations, orders, or appointments are set up correctly
- Provide follow-up touchpoints - Check in after purchase to ensure satisfaction and offer additional support
- Educate customers preemptively - Share tips, guides, and resources that help customers get maximum value from your service
As a loyalty discount program and white label travel portal provider, Access Development sets a standard of "concierge-level customer service." For example, many discount hotels require non-refundable up-front payment. However, we’re aware events sometimes arise and force people to change plans. Our customer service team will assist any member in seeking a refund. Even though we can’t guarantee it, we care enough to try.
Brad Conner, senior director of wholesale travel tells potential client that Access is a dying breed of customer service because businesses forgot about the member experience and started caring more about profit margins."
When engagement and usage is critical, like in loyalty programs with member benefits, it's an even better idea to help users more aggressively, even performing tasks on their behalf. It would be a worthy investment for any business offering value-added benefits.
I talk to many businesses who have partnered with providers that don't back their benefits product with customer service. They're tired of complaints. They want benefits that will make them look good and smell good, and they're realizing choosing unsupported benefits was a mistake because they just stink."
How do you Measure Up?
So on a scale of bare minimum to concierge-level customer service, where do you fit? Most companies assume their efforts are good enough, without envisioning all the good they could do if they really upped their game.
Implementing an effective customer retention management system isn't just about having the right customer retention platform—it's about committing to a culture where every interaction matters and every customer feels valued. When you combine smart use of technology with exceptional in-house, person-to-person service, you create an unbeatable formula for customer loyalty and retention.
If you want to partner with a member benefits provider that makes customer service a top priority, give Access Development a try. Contact us here and see how Access can help you retain your members with excellent benefits and service.
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Topics: Customer Engagement, partnership marketing, Discount Programs, coupon marketing, customer service, coupon strategies, private discount programs, customer loyalty, Membership Organizations, loyalty programs, travel statistics, Employee Benefits, member travel benefits, white label travel platforms
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