Welcome to the Monthly Mash, a mashup of tools, tales and tips on customer service and the customer experience from around the blogosphere.
What differentiates your product or service for your competitors?
If you answered yes to one of the above questions then congratulations, you have a competitive advantage that has nothing to do with customer service. However, for many, the answer to the above questions (and other questions like those) is no.
No, our product is not really special…
When you can’t differentiate your core product or service, then your last bet hope for differentiation and competitive advantage is to provide a superior customer experience around your product or service. Customer experience can be the ultimate competitive advantage.
A collection of the best posts about customer service and the customer experience we read this past month.
Sometimes the most popular post from the previous month; sometimes just the one I liked best.
We received some great feedback on our recent post Putting the Customer Ahead of the Customer Service Checklist. Having a customer service checklist can be a crucial part of providing a consistently good experience. However, when checking off a box on the checklist is allowed to override judgment at a customer touch point, the checklist is not being used correctly. The checklist is there to bolster your customer’s experience, not to diminish it.
By Adam Toporek. Adam Toporek is an internationally recognized customer service expert, keynote speaker, and workshop leader. He is the author of Be Your Customer's Hero: Real-World Tips & Techniques for the Service Front Lines (2015), as well as the founder of the popular Customers That Stick® blog and co-host of the Crack the Customer Code podcast.