R365 is excited to be included in this article by Built In LA in which three customer success leaders share their advice for handling the good and bad customer experiences. Melissa Vazquez, vice president of client engagement and AdoptionFirst at Restaurant365, knows that the customer should be at the heart of all decisions… and we are proud that she is part of our team!
"In a nutshell, the customer should be at the heart of all decisions."
Breathe in. Breathe out.
That’s what Melissa Vazquez does when her team receives a less-than-satisfactory customer satisfaction score.
After taking a breath, Vazquez can better put the CSAT into perspective.
“Remember that all hope is not lost due to a poor CSAT,” said Vazquez, vice president of client engagement and AdoptionFirst at Restaurant365. “View the interaction as an opportunity to build customer loyalty.”
Vazquez’s advice to see the follow up as a chance to emerge even stronger is backed up by the service recovery theory. The theory states that customers who have a poor experience that’s handled effectively are more likely to become “a raving fan,” as Vazquez puts it, than a customer that never experienced an issue to begin with.
“The customer experience reaches across the full organization and provides insight into long-term internal and client loyalty,” said Ben Valdez, vice president of global customer operations at Telesign. “Organizations that invest in customer satisfaction will see substantial growth in company revenue, employee culture and stability.”
To ensure strong overall CSAT scores, and that low ones are handled well, Valdez, Vazquez and Morganne Rudd, director of customer strategy and operations at Tebra, rely on research, training and communication to understand and resolve customer issues. They shared their advice for maximizing CSAT scores with Built In LA.
Ben Valdez Vice President, Global Customer Operations at Telesign
Imagine you’ve just received a poor CSAT score from a customer. What’s your first action to improve their customer experience?
Trust is the currency of today’s digital economy. Everything we do is about delivering continuous trust to our customers. First, we determine the internal factors that led to the poor CSAT score. With customer-provided details, we can fully understand the issue and research, confirm and improve. During the research phase, we investigate a range of possible issues such as product layout or functionality issues, technology and data issues, customer service and culture issues and processing issues.
How do you train customer success managers to handle situations where a customer may be less-than-satisfied?
We train CSMs how to avoid, handle and close the loop on issues when dealing with customers that may not be satisfied with the service we provide. Avoiding customer satisfaction is about earning customer loyalty. When CSMs approach customers and proactively share information, they display transparency and honesty. Our goal is to build trust by giving insights, being proactive, showing value with our product and showcasing our humanity and ability to care.
When handling tough customer calls, it’s essential for CSMs to prove to customers that they’ve heard their feedback and take them seriously. The strategy here is the FFFF Method: feel, felt, found, follow-up. Understand the client’s situation and making them feel heard. Convey to customers that other people have felt the way they do. Present a possible solution. Create a cadence to ensure customers are updated about the issue.
When we close the loop, we first communicate clear objectives and future steps. Next, we set natural follow-up points. Then, we establish mutual deadlines. We repeat these steps until the issue is fully resolved and the client receives acknowledgement of the resolution.
What are the key pillars of a successful customer satisfaction strategy?
We have three key pillars for customer satisfaction. The first pillar is the customer journey and retention, which is about understanding every touch point the customer will have with our employees and integration usage. From sales and onboarding to customer success, we want all of our clients to walk away with the same experience — one of automation and transparency.
The second pillar is employee culture and training. We empower our employees to deliver great customer service with the tool, guidance and training they need. If your company truly invests in its employees, they will truly invest in the company and its clients in return.
And the third pillar is being an engine for innovation. We focus on breaking down traditional models and thinking outside the box. That includes marketing strategies that promote our creative thinking.
Melissa Vazquez Vice President, Client Engagement and Adoption
Imagine you’ve just received a poor CSAT score from a customer. What’s your first action to improve their customer experience?
Do some homework on the customer and get perspective from the team. Then, pick up the phone and actually talk to the customer to understand the issue. In this post-pandemic age, it is easy to stand behind tech tools and processes and not have an actual conversation. Data shows that many times a poor CSAT ultimately ties back to a misalignment of the customer’s expectation with the actual experience that has been delivered. Realign the expectation to the experience, which can take many forms.
How do you train customer success managers to handle situations where a customer may be less-than-satisfied?
Training a world-class customer success team is not a one-and-done activity. It is an ongoing sequence of events that centers around a framework or desired customer lifecycle, and it is filled with hundreds of teachable moments, resources and adequate support. If done right, training should lead to CSMs with good professional judgment that can pivot based on the needs of the customer and business objectives.
Training plans should include well-built playbooks with hands-on modeling, role plays and escalation paths. When a customer is dissatisfied, there is typically a positive outcome if CSMs are trained to listen and empathize, disarm and diagnose, then take action. That is not as easy as it sounds, so that is where all the modeling and role-play comes in.
What are the key pillars of a successful customer satisfaction strategy?
In order for any customer satisfaction strategy to be successful, it must have a company-wide approach. Customer satisfaction cannot be just a CS initiative. It needs to start from the top and be a priority for every department.
Hire the right team members who are empowered to serve as trusted advisors to their clients. Create operational efficiencies with powerful tools that enable clients to spend more time on their business objectives and less time figuring out a product. Have a strong feedback loop that elevates the voice of the customer to ensure we’re working on the right initiatives.
In a nutshell, the customer should be at the heart of all decisions.
Morganne Rudd Director, Customer Strategy & Operations
Imagine you’ve just received a poor CSAT score from a customer. What’s your first action to improve their customer experience?
My first step is to listen. Listen to what that customer needs that they felt they didn’t receive. Have empathy, understand the impact to their business and validate your understanding. While the first step is important, the second step is the most important: take action. These two steps don’t work individually. Only together can they actually turn an unhappy customer into a happy one.
How do you train customer success managers to handle situations where a customer may be less-than-satisfied?
We teach our CSMs probing techniques to get the full picture and how to do a root cause analysis so they can truly understand the heart of the issue. We also give them sensitivity and de-escalation training to ensure they are confident in the techniques that can instill trust with the customer.
What are the key pillars of a successful customer satisfaction strategy?
Listen, analyze and respond. One or two are not enough. You have to do all three.
