Customer Service: The Key to Delivering Experiences Worth Talking About

Do you believe that you provide good customer service?

Are you wondering why customer service is so important to your business?

To learn how service and social media tie together, I interview John DiJulius for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.
More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview John DiJulius, the author of What's The Secret: To Providing a World-Class Customer Experience. He's worked with companies such as the Ritz-Carlton, Lexus, Starbucks, Nordstrom, Panera Bread and many others. He's a leading expert on customer service.

John shares the importance of customer service and why the first experience counts.

You'll discover the business benefits of good customer service, who your customer is and how service plays online.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Customer Service
How John first discovered the importance of customer service

John explains that he first discovered the importance of customer service through necessity, when he opened a hair salon with his wife around 21 years ago. They knew that they wanted to be different from every other hair salon in their area. This meant that they wanted to create an experience like no other.

With his first book, Secret Service, he originally wanted to name it "Mastering a Norm Factor" from the TV program Cheers but he couldn't get the rights. John not only wanted their regular customers, but also the ones who only came in twice a year, to feel like the character Norm.

The book is based around systems that they use behind the scenes to obtain customer intelligence to be able to personalize the experience.

Although 20 years later John is no longer in the business, he still owns it. He's just finished his third book; his business, the DiJulius Group, has grown; and he now gets to travel the world to share what "secret service" really is.

You'll hear one of the great examples that they used in the hair salons that the customers weren't aware of, but the staff knew what it meant for the customer.

Listen to the show to hear other examples of how you can differentiate your first-time customers from returning customers, and give each one a different experience.

Why the first customer experience is so important

John states that people aren't actual customers until they've tried you out. That's why their first experience with you is so important. It can even take 3 or 4 experiences before they become a customer.

You have to give them an opportunity to give you a second chance. It's essential that you make them feel comfortable and create an emotional connection with them.

John says that there are certain non-negotiables that need to happen. When you're face-to-face with the customer, you need to provide the 5 Es (the first 3 only take 1 second each simultaneously to do).

Eye contact
Enthusiastic greeting
Ear-to-ear smile
Engage them
Educate them

Listen to the show to find out why it's so important to deliver one secret service at every encounter.

The business benefits of good customer service

John explains that there is empirical data that looks at companies in the top 5% for customer satisfaction versus everyone else in that industry over a 7- or 10-year period. It doesn't matter what industry it is—studies show that they have higher sales growth from year to year.

This includes more referrals and customers who are more loyal to the brand and less price-sensitive.

What really jumps out in the studies is that these companies have higher emplo...