CHAPTER 1

Energize, Excite, Elate

Chapter Objectives

• To outline the role repeat business plays for company, staff, and customer, and its link to service excellence
• To offer frameworks for continuing brand engagement
• To suggest techniques to deepen the customer relationship
• To introduce ways of keeping the brand fresh and exciting for the customer
• To offer suggestions for bringing joy to customers, and ­making them feel that the organization has gone the ­proverbial extra mile
• To consider the excitement offered by new technologies

Chapter Profile

Repeat business is the lifeblood of any organization, and also the most profitable business the organization does, as the staff know the customer, and the sale reinforces the relationship, rather than having to start the relationship as with a first purchase.

Engaging the customer over time needs to be based on the quality of the relationship, rather than merely the quality of products or ­service. This chapter will explain how drama can play a role in the customer experience, making it memorable, and drawing customers back repeatedly. It will also explore how engaging staff creates the sort of climate and ­culture that encourages staff to go the extra mile, and truly engage the hearts and minds of customers.

Key areas addressed in the chapter include the following:

• How drama can make the customer experience memorable
• Drawing customers back again and again
• Keeping your service fresh and relevant to customers’ needs
• Energizing staff to enjoy the customer experience
• Anticipating and responding to changing customer needs/environment
• Connecting with your customers at point of purchase
• Turning customers into advocates
• Inspiring customers by jumping into their activity cycle
• Building trust through authenticity
• Turn complaints into committed and delighted customers

The Importance of Repeat Business

Many businesses focus on winning new business, rather than servicing existing clients, but this is misguided and counter to service excellence. Looking after repeat customers is more cost-effective than chasing new ones; you might have to spend thousands on marketing and customer research to win new clients, but, for existing customers, the hard work is already done. As they come back time after time, their trust rises, and they buy more, boosting the value of their purchases. A repeat customer may become an ambassador for your brand, spreading the word about your company among their friends, family, and supply chain.

There are 10 simple ways you can maximize the value of your existing client base, and cash in on the work you did to entice them in the first place.

Here are the top 10 ways to get repeat business:

1. Get it right first time

   If you don’t get it right the first time you sell to a particular customer, they won’t buy from you again, so a great first impression is crucial.

   With a first-time customer, make sure every little detail is dealt with as professionally as possible. Handle all correspondence in a formal language, with a personal greeting on each e-mail, and assign a specific member of your team (if you have one!) to deal with the customer, so they build up a rapport and provide a clear point of contact.

   If you are to deliver something, keep the customer informed of every development in the delivery process, and, if the product or service you’re selling is particularly complex, offer proactive advice to help the customer understand it. A week after the product has been delivered, phone or e-mail the customer to ask if they’re happy with it.

2. Spend money on after-sales support

   This may seem slightly basic, but it’s not; many companies put all their eggs in the presale basket and don’t spend any time or money on ensuring the customer is happy after they buy.

   If you’re handling after-sales support yourself, make sure you treat each request as urgent and aim to respond the same day. If you have staff handling after-sales for you, give them clear deadlines for responses, and brief each of them on all your products, so they can give the customer real insight.

3. Keep customers’ details on file

   Again, this might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many firms fail to keep accurate records for the customers they sell to.

   Create a contacts log book for all your customers. For each one, include the following:

   • The name of the person you’ve dealt with
   • Their personal phone number and e-mail address
   • Full postal address details
   • A brief description of what they’ve previously purchased from you
   • Details of any feedback they provided—if they liked a particular aspect of the product/service, you can use this as a reference point for future business.
   • Any personal information you think relevant—if you think their age, gender, budget, company progress, personal background, or buying preferences will make a ­difference to the products they buy in the future, keep a note.

Alternatively, you might think about investing in customer relationship management (CRM) software. This can be expensive and may be beyond the budget of a startup business, but it will create permanent electronic records for each of your customers and organize your customers into clear groups. There are even some free ones available now!

4. Tailor your alerts

   Use the information you’ve stored in your contacts book, or CRM software, to deliver relevant, targeted alerts on each new product or service.

   Don’t just send out a blanket mailshot to all your existing ­contacts. Make sure you only send information on new products to ­customers who have bought similar things from you before and have the resources to purchase this new item.

   If possible, create tailored e-mails for each individual customer, explaining why they’ll like your new offering. Mention their previous purchases, and the specific benefits the new product or service will bring to their business or personal life.

5. Maintain contact

   Although product/service alerts are often effective, many customers will think repeated sales pitches are intrusive and annoying, so intersperse your pitches with relevant, objective information.

   Ask them for feedback on the product/service they originally bought from you; direct them to a particular news story, or that might be of general interest or simply ask them how they and their business are doing.

6. Think about special offers

   By offering, say, a 10 percent discount or a three-for-two offer to existing customers, you’re demonstrating to them, and the wider world, that your company really values the people who buy from it.

   Also, think about offering free trials of new products/services to your existing products—even if they don’t choose to buy what they try, they’ll be pleased you’ve thought about them.

7. Add little touches

   Think about little ways you can recognize existing customers, and show them their business matters to you.

   You might wish to send a handwritten letter, thanking them for their custom; alternatively, consider sending a small gift, such as flowers or chocolates or something from your product range, or a voucher; if you have a shop, try inviting clients to an out-of-hours party; or, if you have tickets for an entertainment event, invite them along.

8. Increase your profile

   The more visible you are in your locality, the more people will trust you—and the more likely people are to buy from you repeatedly.

   Make sure you join a local trade body, donate or volunteer for local charities, and organize networking events. Nothing should be too much trouble—if it elevates your profile, it’s worth doing.

   Badge your vehicle, and park it strategically, so that people see you as a part of their world.

9. Maximize your online presence

   In addition to creating a top-notch website, you need to think carefully about utilizing the online space. Here are some things you can do:

   • Create a forum on your website, so customers can report any problems or ask questions about what they’ve bought and make sure you monitor it actively.
   • Create an online newsletter, and invite your customers to sign up—so they can receive news about your business.
   • Encourage user generated content. both on your own ­platform, but alos selected other relavant ones such as ­Tripadvisor for reestaurants, hotels and tourist venues.
   • If you are in B2B, link to your customers’ websites—this will boost your own search engine ranking, and create a clear bridge between you and your clients.
   • Use social media—follow your customers on Twitter, or add them as a friend on Facebook.
10. Keep re-evaluating

Even if you give each client the red carpet treatment, they might still ditch you if they can find a cheaper, or better, product elsewhere.

Keep a constant eye on your competitors—the way they change their prices, their offers and discounts, and the products they bring to market. Never, ever take your existing customers’ loyalty for granted.

Rather than drop prices to meet competition, can you add value in a way that is meaningful for customers?

The Role of Drama in Service Provision

Staff in service environments often say they feel like frustrated actors and actresses, seeking an audience for their performances. From a ­customer perspective, to be served by a member of staff who clearly enjoys a bit of drama and interaction brings life and meaning to the experience. Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle has made drama such an element of its service that it has become a tourist destination in its own right. Staff engage customers creating drama by throwing fish between themselves, or using the fish as puppets and generally having fun while they work, to the benefit and delight of customers who come along to watch the spectacle.

Services and drama have many shared elements.

Both are concerned with the tactics and strategies employed by people to create and sustain desirable impressions before an audience. Both, also, suggest that one way to achieve this is by careful and prudent management of the actors’ expressive behavior and the physical setting in which it occurs. (Grove 1992)

The Servicescape

For a drama performance, the scenery creates an atmosphere that influences the audiences’ attitude; so too the servicescape or retail environment provides a context against which service delivery takes place. Retail atmospherics, which includes store décor, store layout, background music, merchandise displays, and point-of-sale materials play a huge role in putting the customer in the right frame of mind for receiving a service. Figure 1.1 shows how Hard Rock Café uses this in their Istanbul outlet; the lighting, and rock-star costumes make the customer feel as though they are at the center of a performance created for their exclusive benefit.

Figure 1.1 Hard rock café, Istanbul

Figure 1.2 Orvis store using props to transport customers to where they will use the products sold

Figure 1.3 Four roles of the servicescape

Orvis are using props, such as a rowing boat to transport their ­customers to the locations in which they might use the fishing rod, ­waders, and so on that are offered in the merchandise selection. The use of wood also suggests links to the natural environment in which hunting, shooting, and fishing enjoyed by their target market takes place.

The servicescape plays many roles simultaneously. Essentially, it gives physical evidence of the service, and this is an important element of building trust in the customer relationship.

The Actors: Staff and Customer Roles in Service

People, whether staff or customers, are an element of the marketing mix too, and require planning and management if they are to contribute ­effectively to the service process.

Staff

In a service environment, unless it is highly automated, the staff are themselves the means of service delivery, and represent the organization from the customers’ perspective. In many ways, they embody the brand, and much of the marketing communications message conveyed by the organization comes from the type of staff it employs. The attitude, enjoyment, and enthusiasm expressed by staff is a major component in creating the customer experience. Hence a large part of the role of a service manager is to create an environment both physically and emotionally that can free staff to deliver a sensitive and characterful service. Selecting staff that align with the target customer group can promote harmony, and recruiting staff for an attitude that focuses on customers is likely to produce a favorable engagement and the basis for an enduring relationship with customers.

Effect of Employees’ Behavior on Service Quality

Customers’ perceptions of service quality are affected by the level of ­customer-oriented behavior they see in employees. Although this is hard to assess, evaluations using the RATER model of service quality can be influenced by service employees’ attitudes and behavior.

Figure 1.4 The service marketing triangle

Reliability: Ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately

Assurance: Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence

Tangibility: Physical facilities, equipment, and appearance of ­personnel

Empathy: Caring and individualized attention the firm provides its customer

Responsiveness: Willingness to help the customer and prompt service

Although not included in the original model, “sustainability” and “resilience” might be added. The world has moved on considerably since 1985 when this model was proposed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry; we have seen pressure on natural resources, damage to the environment, natural disaster, and man-made disaster. Sustainability offers an evaluation of the organization’s harmony with environment, and ­Resilience indicates the organization’s capacity for springing back after a natural disaster. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the United States uses “Waffle Houses” reopening as a measure of recovery speed after natural disasters. In event of natural disaster, the Waffle House Index, or test, uses the operating conditions of the resilient Southern restaurants as a barometer for how well an area will recover from a hurricane, tornado, or other hazards. The test indicates how quickly a business might rebound, but also how the larger community is faring. When restaurants, grocery and corner stores, and banks can reopen, local economies can start generating revenue again.

Frontline service employees link external customers and the external environment with internal operations of the organization, acting as boundary spanners. Boundary spanning positions are often high-stress positions, demanding extraordinary levels of emotional labor and an ability to handle interpersonal and interorganizational conflicts. The term emotional labor refers to work that exceeds the physical or mental skills needed to deliver quality service. This includes friendliness, making eye contact, engaging in friendly conversation, empathizing, and so on. Clearly, these are all key elements in making customers feel valued and that they have had an outstanding service encounter.

Boundary spanners are important for organizations because they help:

• Improve knowledge management
• Increase external visibility
• Provide internal coordination
• Resolve conflict
• Build trust
• Speed decision making
• Uncover new possibilities.

The servant leadership model is especially relevant in such environments, as it acknowledges this, by giving frontline staff the authority to make decisions relating to customers and complaints in a meaningful way, promoting long-term customer relationships, based on trust, reliability, and commonsense.

The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?

-Robert K. Greenleaf

Roles and Competencies for Boundary Spanners

Reticulist	• Networking • Managing accountabilities • Appreciates different modes of governance • Political skills and diplomacy
Entrepreneur	• Brokering • Entrepreneurial • Innovative and creative • Tolerates risk
Interpreter	• Interpersonal relationships • Communication, listening, and empathizing • Framing and sense making • Building trust • Tolerance of diversity and culture

Boundary spanners are also referred to as T-shaped people, describing their dual characteristics. The vertical stroke of the “T” represents depth of skill facilitating contribution to the creative process in a variety of capacities from design to engineering. The horizontal stroke of the “T” addresses collaboration across disciplines and comprises two things. First, empathy, which essentially allows people to imagine the problem from another perspective. Second, enthusiasm about other disciplines, to the point that they may begin to adopt them. T-shaped people offer depth and breadth, and can as a consequence, be highly adaptable to new situations.

Customers

Some level of customer participation is inevitable in service delivery, because services are actions or performances, typically produced and consumed simultaneously. In many situations, employees, customers, and others in the service environment interact to produce the ultimate service experience. As the customer receiving the service participates in the service delivery process, he or she can contribute to the possible gaps in the service through appropriate or inappropriate, effective or ineffective, productive or unproductive behaviors. When customers are uncertain of their needs, they can soak up the customer service representative’s time seeking advice. Similarly, shoppers who are not prepared with their payment details can “put the conversation on hold,” while they search for their cards in another room or even to their cars to get them. Meanwhile, other customers and calls are kept waiting, causing potential dissatisfaction.

Participation in Service Delivery

The level of customer participation—low, medium, high—varies across different services. In some cases, participation is low, requiring just the customer’s physical presence, with the service production work carried out by employees, as in case of a theater production or musical concert; the audience must be present to receive the entertainment service. In high-involvement cases, such as hairdressing, or education, consumer inputs are an essential component in creating the service ­delivery. ­Grönroos ­categorizes services as high tech, and high touch, and each ­category needs particular understanding and sensitivity to design an ­effective ­customer experience.

	High touch (People intensive)	High tech (IT and resource based)
Continuously rendered services	Lots of opportunities to develop good customer relationships	Few opportunities to recover mistakes made
Discrete service	Hard to create a relationship customers value	Tends to be transactional but benefits from the relationship approach

Table 1.1 Framework for classifying services (Urquhart adapted from Grönroos 2011)

Customer inputs may include information, effort, or physical possessions. Hairdressing requires information, such as customer preferences for ease of care, and lifestyle, and the commitment to spending time. Accounting services use all three to prepare a client’s income tax return effectively. Information in the form of income data, tax history, ­marital status, and number of dependents. Effort in putting the information together meaningfully. Physical possessions involve expenditure receipts and past tax returns. Longer term consulting engagements frequently involve ­customers as co-creators. Increasingly, as more ­disposable income is spent on experiences, rather than possessions, co-creation will feature highly in service delivery, and it needs to be managed effectively so that customers’ data is effectively protected, and they do not feel they are exposing themselves to potential reputational or financial risk.

True customer engagement works at multiple levels, engaging hearts and minds, and predicting environmental trends so that marketing ­interventions are wholly relevant to each target segment. This maps on to the wheel of consumer analysis proposed by Peter and Olsen, which identifies the interplay between cognition, affect, and consumer environment as determinants in consumer behavior, and sees marketing strategy interacting with all three in a reciprocal arrangement. This is shown on the following Figure 1.5.

Figure 1.5 The wheel of consumer analysis, adapted from Peter and Olsen

Customer’s Roles

Part of the Productive Process

Service customers may be seen as “partial employees” of the organization; a human resource playing a role in the organization’s productive capacity. If they contribute effort, time, or other resources to the service production process, they should be considered as part of the organization. In consultancy projects, they will often be given access to a shared platform for the project, promoting transparency and inviting involvement.

Poor quality or insufficient customer inputs can reduce the organization’s productivity. In the consultancy environment, customers who get better service can

• provide needed information in a timely manner;
• clearly articulate the problem they are experiencing;
• communicate openly;
• gain the commitment of key internal stakeholders; and
• raise the issues during the process before it is too late.

Customers as Quality Contributors to Service Delivery and Satisfaction

Another role customers play in service delivery is that of the contributors to their own satisfaction and the ultimate quality of the services they receive. Customers may care little that they have increased the productivity of the organization through their participation, but they likely care very much about whether their needs are fulfilled. Effective customer ­participation can increase the likelihood of success in meeting their needs, and that the benefits the customer seeks are attained. In delivery of services such as health care, education, personal fitness, and weight loss, the service outcome is highly dependent on the customers’ participation; unless the customers perform their roles effectively, the desired service outcomes cannot be achieved.

Research has shown that in education, active participation by students—as opposed to passive listening—increases learning the desired service output significantly, yet students who fail to attain their desired grades as a result of inability or lack of application often feel let down by the service provider. They feel that as customers, they are entitled to the qualification, rather than having to earn it. University staff have the ­additional responsibility of maintaining standards in their gatekeeper role for the organization, so need to manage student expectations.

Customers as Competitors

A final role played by service customers is that of a potential competitor. Self-service customers can be viewed as resources of the firm, or “partial employees.” They can partially perform the service or the entire service for themselves and may not need the provider at all.

Customers in a sense become competitors of the companies that supply the service. Whether to produce a service for themselves (internal exchange) or have someone else provide home services for them (external exchange) is a common dilemma for consumers in fields such as child care or home maintenance.

More commonly, similar internal versus external exchange decisions are made by organizations. Firms frequently choose to outsource service activities such as payroll, data processing, research, accounting, maintenance, and facilities management. They find it advantageous to focus on their core businesses and leave these essential support services to others with greater expertise. Alternatively, a firm may decide to stop purchasing services externally and bring the service production process in-house ­(Figure 1.6).

Figure 1.6 The action: Service scripts

Source: Co-creation of service outcomes adapted from Hubbert (1993).

Follow the Fish Principles

Visiting Seattle in 1997, John Christensen, owner of ChartHouse Learning, observed fish sellers at Pike Place Fish Market, tossing trout and salmon through the air and energizing passers-by. Staff gave their complete attention to each customer and ensured every visitor enjoyed the show.

Christensen saw that selling fish was repetitive, cold, and exhausting. He also saw that despite these negatives, the fishmongers chose to bring joy to how they approached their jobs and sold a lot of fish. He and his team made a film and wrote several books and identified four simple practices that work in any environment. The four concepts of choosing your attitude, play, make someone’s day, and be there have the power to kick-start a culture of positivity, creativity, and fun, and combine to make The Fish! Philosophy (Figure 1.7).

Figure 1.7 Fish! principles

Choose Your Attitude

We all choose our attitude but often without much thought. A positive choice to create a good impact by being an enthusiastic and reliable person who puts the individual in control. For each person, this may involve:

• Writing a reminder of your attitude
• Checking your attitude throughout the day
• Planning ahead for situations that test your attitude
• Listing what you’re grateful for
• Looking for examples of the best.

Play

We spend a great deal of time at work and making it fun adds to the reward we feel, as well as enhancing the customer experience. April Fools’ Day creates a fabulous opportunity for organizations to play with their staff and their customers. Bravissimo is a UK company that produces and retails (online and offline) lingerie for well-endowed women. In April 2018, its April fool joke featured a blow-up air bed with space for large breasts. This proved to be a great hit with customers, resulting in the e-mail below being sent out at the end of June 2018, just in time for summer holidays (Figure 1.8). Such was the success of this that the airbed has been featured in the 2019 catalogue as a product to purchase!

Figure 1.8 Excerpts from a customer e-mail sent by Bravissimo reproduced with kind permission from Bravissimo

Make Someone’s Day

This aspect of the Fish! principles is really about finding ways to go above and beyond a customers’ service expectations and takes them into the realms of delight. This is another way in which servant leadership and empowering frontline staff can truly create outstanding customer experiences that will live in peoples’ minds, and be related to friends and family. It is about transforming an everyday encounter into a pleasant and memorable experience for someone.

It can be as small as holding a door open for a customer struggling with a pushchair, or just smiling at someone who looks apprehensive. Often life presents opportunities to do something exceptional for a ­customer. On one occasion, a customer bought all of her baby’s layette from John Lewis, Cambridge, but upon arriving home was unable to find it in her car. She phoned the store, in the hope that it had been handed in, but it had not. The store managed to find duplicates of everything that she had bought and arranged to deliver it to her home later that week. This delivery coincided with a baby shower that the prospective mother was holding in her home. The mother was enchanted, and her friends (also all expecting mothe rs) all came in to the store to buy their own layettes. This story circulated for several years afterward as an example of John Lewis exercising its Goodwill budget, a fund designed especially for such opportunities. The cost was about £250—very small compared with the impact on a highly relevant audience, and the duration of the message!

The cosmetics organization, Lush, awards its employees one “random act of kindness” a day; this may be a very simple thing, or it may be something more dramatic, such as donating some of their products to women’s charities (Figure 1.9).

Figure 1.9 Posting from Lush Facebook page (accessed July 29, 2018) reproduced with kind permission from Lush

Be There

Most of us in our working day have multiple demands on our time, and in this situation, truly being present for a customer, or another staff ­member may fall in our list of priorities.

This principle means you are focused, listening, and even empathizing with someone. It means blocking out anything not relevant to the person you are speaking to, not typing or making coffee at the same time, but being fully available for the person in front of you. It requires mental presence, being focused on the present moment, and the task you’re doing, not daydreaming or thinking about other work tasks ­(Figure 1.10).

“It means getting out of your own ‘world’ so you can BE THERE for someone else. It means setting aside emotional baggage from the past and worries about the future in order to appreciate the opportunities you have available to you, right now.” —Fish Philosophy handout

Figure 1.10 Fish Philosophy handout adapted from Fish! Principles

Fish! encourages us to choose the positive attitude that’s so important in customer service. Customer-facing roles are hard work, over which the representative of the organization has little control of what is going to happen. One day you can come across rude customers, sometimes you will have very difficult cases to deal with.

The bottom line is to consciously choose the attitude that will make you happier. Try to find joy in your work, befriend your colleagues, laugh and try to have some fun—this is what Fish! is about. But you can also take your “Fish! Training” to a higher level: this philosophy inspires you to look for joy in daily events and can make you a happier person in the end.

The good thing about this philosophy is that it’s not only about ­engaging people and creating positive change in their workplaces, it also applies to our daily lives every time we have to deal with something we dislike.

The Role Played by New Technologies

Many forms of new technology have a key role in service delivery, from customer-operated devices that record purchases as they go into the shopping trolley, to holographic images capable of greeting customers by name as they enter the store.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the real newcomer in this arena increasingly reshaping service by performing various tasks, constituting a major source of innovation, yet threatening human jobs. Technology, when used imaginatively, creates an exciting environment for the customer and frees up staff members so that they can spend more time with customers, building up relationships. Service tasks can be divided into four areas: mechanical, analytical, intuitive, and empathetic. AI is developing in a predictable order, with mechanical mostly preceding analytical, ­analytical mostly preceding intuitive, and intuitive mostly preceding empathetic intelligence.

AI job replacement mostly occurs at the task level, rather than the job level, and mostly for “lower” (easier for AI) intelligence tasks first. By replacing some of a service job’s tasks, AI can augment human labor, replacing it entirely when it has the ability to take over all of a job’s tasks. As this shift occurs, it prompts predictable shifts in the relative ­importance and roles of service employees. Predictions are that human analytical skills will become less important, as AI takes over more ­analytical tasks, raising the importance of the “softer” intuitive and empathetic for service employees. Eventually, AI will be capable of performing even the intuitive and empathetic tasks, which enables innovative ways of human–machine integration for providing service but also threatens human employment.

We all use AI regularly when we interact with our smart phones and home computers; service organizations are rapidly embracing AI in a variety of capacities, often in a manner that is transparent to consumers. Just a few years back, a fully automatic car was a dream; however, now Tesla and other automotive companies have made so much progress that semiautomatic cars are already on the road. All the Tesla cars are connected and what one car learns is shared across all the cars. So, if a driver has to take an unanticipated hard-left on a cross-road, all the Tesla cars will know how to maneuver that turn after they are updated. There are already more than 50,000 Tesla cars running in the United States alone and that number is set to increase exponentially.

For social media users, most decisions are impacted by artificial intelligence. From the feeds that appear in timelines to the notifications from these apps, everything is curated by AI. AI takes past behavior, Web searches, interactions, and everything else done on these websites and ­tailors the experience for the user. AI makes the apps so addictive that users come back to them again and again.

Amazon and Walmart are heavily investing in drone delivery programs and these will soon become a reality. Any system using Google or Apple Maps for navigating, or calling an Uber, or booking a flight ticket uses AI. Both Google and Apple and other navigation services use AI to interpret multiple data points to give real-time traffic data. For Uber, both the pricing and the car that matches a ride request is decided by AI.

Online advertisements use AI to track user statistics and to serve us ads based on those statistics. Without AI, the online ad industry can only show random ads to users without personal tailoring. This tailoring is so successful that the global digital ad industry has exceeded $250 billion and is projected to pass the $300 billion mark in 2019.

AI and chat bots create personalized experiences and facilitate intelligent, accessible engagement with the customers. End users can achieve their objective or find solutions to their problems, driving satisfaction and improving the overall customer experience. Businesses can use it to gain insights into consumer behavior by analyzing big data to better understand, and enhance the sales or customers’ journey.

Comprehension of consumer behavior and traits through customer analytics can streamline the customer interaction process by making information available and accessible across several touchpoints. Businesses can personalize customer experience by leveraging interactive applications such as chat bots. These advanced computer programs can simulate an online conversation with humans. AI combines individual touchpoints and completes customer journeys to enhance and redesign customer experiences.

Does this mean humans will become redundant? Unlikely any time soon—but humans will be valued for different skills—instead of the manual skills of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the analytical skills valued in the baby boomer era, the 2020s will recognize the value of some of the softer skills such as creativity, empathy, and networking that are so fundamental to creating and securing long-term relationships. These skills will help businesses engage both customers and staff in a three way mutually beneficial relationship.

Quotations from Key Practitioners and Leaders of Excellence Businesses

Let’s take most of the money we would’ve spent on paid advertising and paid marketing and instead of spending it on that invest it in the customer experience / customer service and then let our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.

—Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos

Customer experience is the next competitive battleground.

—Jerry Gregoire, previously CIO at Dell

The single most important thing is to make people happy. If you are making people happy, as a side effect, they will be happy to open up their wallets and pay you.

—Derek Sivers, Founder CD Baby

End of Chapter Summary

This chapter has explored aspects of the relationship organizations establish with their customers that can transform the purchase experience from a mundane transaction, to one of the highlights in the customer’s day. This can be achieved through various means, including doing something extraordinary and memorable for the customer, but also includes doing things that create a sense of drama, and fun that benefits to the customer and staff members.

The roles of the servicescape, and customers and staff in the purchase process are discussed, with some supporting examples. The contribution these make to creating are fun and energetic environment is a key element in delivery service excellence.

New technologies, especially AI when used judicially, can both enhance the customer experience, and free up staff time to enable them to deliver the empathy that can forge long-lasting relationships.

End of Chapter Review Questions

Interfunctional coordination Yes No
Do you have interfunctional customer calls?
Is information shared among functions?
Do all functions contribute to customer value?
Are resources shared among business units?
Does the strategy cover functional ­responsibilities?
Is functional integration addressed in your ­corporate strategy?
How well do your key departments coordinate? (Functional integration)
Operations–marketing
Marketing–production
Marketing–HR and so on.
Are there points of friction in the organization?
Do all your team have a concept of how their role delivers customer service?
Do all functions have a set of objectives that flow from corporate objectives?

Based on Narver and Slater (1990, pp. 20–35).

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Grove, S.J., and R.P. Fisk. 1992. ”The Service Experience As Theatre.” In NA—Advances in Consumer Research, eds. J.F. Sherry Jr. and B. Sternthal, 455–61, 19 vols. Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research.

Huang, M.H., and R.T. Rust. February 5, 2018. “Artificial Intelligence in Service.” Journal of Service Research 21, no. 2, pp. 155–72.

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