In this trusted customer service classic, the renowned business training and consulting services practice Performance Research Associates, Inc. lays bare the truth all companies have come to accept but few know what to do with: companies that emphasize customer service make more money and keep customers longer than those that don’t. For over two decades, Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service has combined this timeless wisdom with powerful tools, real-world examples, and the latest methods to provide customer service professionals an indispensable guide. With lighthearted examples and to-the-point solutions, the book provides readers with proven tips and strategies for exceeding customer needs and expectations, determining the right times to bend or break the rules, becoming fantastic fixers and powerful problem-solvers, using the RATER factors to wow your customers, understanding cultural and generational differences, and coping effectively with your most challenging customers. Plus, the revised fifth edition delivers new information on using social media for communication and service recovery, owning service encounters, responding positively to negative feedback, and more.What is quality customer service–and how do you consistently deliver it for your customers? Discover the answers in this go-to guide for helping customer service professionals deliver outstanding service that keeps customers coming back.

In Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service, Performance Research Associates – with some editorial help from Ron Zemke – highlight the main principles and techniques involved in providing great customer service and resolving customer problems. This lively book features many short chapters, cartoons, bulleted axioms and what-to-do examples. However, much of the information seems very familiar, like a juiced-up version of hints, tips and advice that have appeared in many other customer service books. Thus, it has a kind of déjà vu quality. While someone who is experienced in this field may find the information here too familiar, this accessible volume as a great introduction to customer service.

• To customers, you are the company.
• To provide great customer service, consider what your customers need and expect, and how to best provide it.
• The five essential factors in good customer service are: “reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy and responsiveness” – RATER for short.
• Keep the “Service Promise” by showing customers that you do what you say you will do.
• Respond to customers in a timely fashion, and reassure them by showing them that you care and that you know what you are doing.
• First impressions count toward credibility. You and your environment must look good.
• Make your customers feel heard, understood, liked, respected and appreciated.
• When there are problems and misunderstandings, first apologize, and then try to fix the problem while letting the customer know what you are doing.
• While the customer isn’t always right, make the customer feel right. Don’t try to place blame, rather work to make things right through service recovery.
• Treat each customer as unique; show empathy and support the customer’s feelings.

Basic Principles of Great Service

“Knock Your Socks Off Service” is excellent, top-of-the-line, best-of-the-bunch, take-your-breath-away customer service. At this level, you carefully give each customer a favorable and memorable experience while you satisfy every need and expectation. You show customers that you are a pleasure to work with as you seek more ways to make them not merely satisfied, but delighted. Essentially, go the extra mile, and as you go, look for even more unique ways to provide excellent service.

“Delivering Knock Your Socks Off Service means creating a positive, memorable experience for every customer. It means meeting expectations and satisfying needs.”

Any organization needs good customer service and every employee must practice it. This is essential because any employee serving a customer represents the company to that person. “You are the company,” so when you speak to a customer, say “I” rather than “We.” For instance, if a customer has encountered a problem, don’t say, “We’re sorry.” Instead, say, “I’m sorry you had that problem,” to show that you personally understand and take responsibility for the problem. Use these guidelines to shape your thinking about customer service:

• Consider what your customers need and expect from you and your company.
• Think about how the other departments in your company, such as billing and shipping, contribute to the customers’ experience and what you can do to help them improve.
• Deliberate about the small details that are important to satisfying your customers.

“It means looking for opportunities to wow and delight your customer in unique and unexpected ways.

Then, take the pledge that you are devoted to providing the best possible service you can, so your customers want to come back for more. Giving great service is more important now than ever, since customers have become more demanding. They want and expect more, they have more choices and they are busier than ever. Gaining new customers is five times more expensive than satisfying and retaining the customers you already have, so it benefits you to do more for your current customers.

The Five Key Elements of Great Customer Service

According to Texas A&M researchers led by Dr. Leonard Barry, customers use five factors to evaluate the quality of the service they receive:

1. Reliability – Provide what you promise, and do so with dependability and accuracy.
2. Assurance – Display courtesy and knowledge; convey, “trust, competence and confidence.”
3. Tangibles – Be sure your equipment and physical facilities are topnotch.
4. Empathy – Give care and attention to each customer.
5. Responsiveness – Demonstrate that you are willing to help your customers promptly.

Applying the RATER Model

Together the first letters of these five factors spell the word “RATER”. Use this word as a mnemonic to help you remember these five principles whenever you work with a customer.

“Customers don’t distinguish between you and the organization you work for. Nor should they. To your customer’s way of thinking, you are the company.”

To be reliable, keep the “Service Promise,” which means you keep your word and do what you say you will. The customer interprets this promise as having these three components: 1) the commitments of your organization, such as through advertising and marketing materials; 2) the customers’ common expectations, based on their past experiences with you or other service providers; and 3) the personal promises you make to your customer. In short, if your company or you make a promise or the customer comes with certain expectations, work to fulfill them. If a promise should be broken – or if the customer thinks one has been – apologize immediately. Don’t blame anyone. Simply admit there is a problem and find out what the customer needs from you now.

“To a customer, the company begins and ends with you.”

To be reassuring, provide not only caring, but also knowledge and skill. Show your customers you know what you are doing and you care about them. Seek the customer’s trust by showing product knowledge, knowledge of the company, an ability to listen and a skill in solving problems. Additionally, offer your service with a style, based on the way you dress, move and communicate. Look and act professionally, and communicate well with good eye contact.

“Customers are demanding. And they have every right to be. Today’s customers have more options and less time than ever before.”

To provide the tangibles, you should present a good appearance – and your company should, too. Make sure the materials you give customers are well executed and that the environment where you serve them is clean and safe. Remember, first impressions last the longest.

To be empathetic, regard and treat each customer as a unique individual. Don’t show sympathy, which means identifying with or taking on your customer’s emotions, such as getting angry when a customer is. Rather, show empathy. When you’re empathetic, you show you understand and you affirm the other person’s feelings, such as saying: “I can understand why you’re angry,” and then explaining why you do understand.

“Courtesy, good manners, and civility are important…but courtesy is not a substitute for competence and skill.”

To be responsive, act in a timely fashion. Today, people want a quick response. You don’t necessarily have to provide the service immediately, but you do need to address the issue quickly to find out what the customer needs and when, so you can establish realistic deadlines. Ideally, the best time to provide the service is when the customer wants it, though sometimes the customer must wait. In that case, tell the customer how long the wait will be, since customers are frustrated the most by uncertainty. For instance, if you are helping another customer, let the waiting customer know how long you are likely to be and suggest an alternative for the customer to do while waiting, such as: “This will take about 10 minutes. Feel free to look around some more and I’ll be with you then.”

Customers are Everywhere; Treat Them Right

The people who buy from you are just your external customers. You have internal customers, too, such as the people you work with and those who provide behind the scenes customer support. For instance, after you take an order, the people who process or ship it are your internal customers. Seek feedback from them to improve what you do – such as how you fill out an order form.

“The reassurance factor is about managing your customers’ feelings of trust. The customers’ decision to trust you is built on honesty, knowledge, and know-how.”

Avoid the biggest mistakes in dealing with customers. These include giving the impression that you don’t care, can’t be bothered or don’t like the customer as a person. Being a know-it-all is a turn-off, too, such as when you proffer a solution before the customer finishes explaining the problem. Don’t demean customers, even if they ask seemingly dumb questions. And don’t argue with a customer over who is right. Give each customer the benefit of the doubt.

“Combine substance and style – what you do and how you do it – to reassure your customers that you really do know, and care about, what you are doing.”

Make your customers feel heard, understood, liked, respected, helped and appreciated. You don’t have to act like the customer is always right. But when misunderstandings occur, make the customer feel right or justified. Assume the customer is innocent. Maybe the customer just isn’t explaining his or her needs very well or misunderstood some directions or didn’t get them. Maybe the customer is right to complain. Most customers are honest or honestly disagree with you about what is fair, such as when a product doesn’t work. A good way to distinguish between the honest customer and the one who isn’t is to use the three strikes rule. Say a customer claims he has returned a video on time. The first or second time, give the customer the benefit of the doubt. But the third time, question the customer’s credibility and impose the late charge.

Great Customer Service Techniques

How you act can show that you care about providing exemplary customer service. For example:

• Be honest, because if you lie or mislead the customer, eventually the misrepresentations will catch up with you. If there is a problem, don’t conceal it. Be up front.
• Break or bend the rules when it makes sense and is appropriate. Don’t feel you always have to go by the book. Sometimes the spirit of the rule is what’s more important, since rules are designed to make things work more efficiently. Don’t assume there is a rule if you don’t know the company policy. For instance, if a customer wants to cash a check for $20 more than a purchase, don’t automatically say you can’t. Find out if you can.
• Build trust, such as by doing what’s fair, being open, being truthful and communicating frequently. Show confidence. For example, if a customer calls with a last minute emergency request, explain that it may be difficult and expensive to fulfill, but you will do what you can. Then, keep the customer informed about what you are able to accomplish.
• Use your own good judgment to do the right thing. For instance, Nordstrom’s, a department store known for its great customer service, tells its employees to think for themselves. Say a customer comes to make a return but doesn’t have a receipt. If the customer seems truly honest, the salesperson will accept the return. Ask your manager if you are not sure.
• Be a good listener. This means listening actively, even aggressively, so you show your customers that you understand. For example, if the customer has a complex message to convey, repeat the main points to show the customer you really understand. Ask clarifying questions.
• Ask good questions to find out what your customer needs. Find out who the customer. Ask probing questions to learn what the customer is complaining about.
• Use “winning words and soothing phrases” and avoid negative words and phrases, such as saying: “We can’t do that” or “I don’t know.” Instead, try the let’s-find-an-alternate-solution approach or offer to find out something you don’t know.
• Pay attention to your non-verbal communication, so you use appropriate body language. For instance, stand at a distance that makes the customer comfortable. This varies with national background. You should stand further away when talking to people from the U.S. and closer when speaking to Europeans and South Americans.
• Show a warm friendly attitude with your tone on the telephone. If you must put someone on hold, ask permission. If the person says no, get a number and arrange to call back.
• Use a personal tone when you write a letter.

E-Mail Customers

Increasingly, salespeople work with e-mail customers. But be careful. While people commonly use a chatty, casual style to converse over the Internet, don’t treat your customers as you do your friends, unless they really are your friends. Rather, adopt a personal but not overly familiar tone, and check what you have written before you hit “send,” so you convey a proper message to your customers.

Customers from Hell

Learn to control your feelings and actions with very difficult customers. Stay calm. Learn what’s bothering the customer. As appropriate, transfer the customer to someone else who can help, such as a supervisor. Build “contractual trust” when a customer becomes threatening. State what you will do, if the person doesn’t stop acting aggressively: “I’m sorry, but unless we can have a more restrained conversation, I’ll have to call security.”

“Seeing – and treating – each customer as an individual helps you meet the needs of each on their own unique level.”

Generally, when sales or service problems occur, see yourself as a “fantastic fixer.” Do whatever you can to make things right. Use the art of service recovery to bring everything back to normal as soon as you can. As a first step, apologize, no matter who’s at fault. Then, listen and empathize to show you care. Next, fix the problem as quickly and fairly as you can. Where possible, offer atonement, such as by adding some value-added service to make it up to the customer. Finally, follow up to make sure the customer is satisfied with the way things were resolved.

Performance Research Associates is a consulting firm specializing in customer service. Individually and together, PRA’s principals have authored more than 40 books and thousands of articles. PRA has developed numerous seminars, training films and organizational assessment instruments. Founded in 1972, PRA consults with large and medium-size corporations and nonprofits. Its clients have included Glaxo SmithKline, American Express Financial Advisors, Prudential Insurance, Harley-Davidson, Dun & Bradstreet, Motorola, Universal Studios and many others.

Branding is an integral part of modern business strategy. But while there are dozens of books on branding products and marketing campaigns, nobody has applied the logic and techniques of branding to customer service — until now.

Branded Customer Service is a practical guide to moving service delivery to a new level so that brand reinforcement occurs every time customers interact with organizational representatives. Janelle Barlow and Paul Stewart show how to infuse an entire organization with brand values and create a recognizable style of service that reflects brand promises and brand images.

Delivering quality customer service with a constant, consistent brand message is a powerful way to extend a brand’s reach, say authors and consultants Janelle Barlow and Paul Stewart. When consumers have a positive experience, they buy more and become repeat customers. No doubt, it certainly would be great for morale if employees embodied their brands and if employers honored all their advertising claims and kept all their promises to staffers and consumers. The problem is that companies do many things that have nothing to do with branding. At least, that is true everywhere except inside this book, which suffers from brand myopia or, maybe, just tunnel vision. The book has many strong assets: it offers chapters of solid instruction, it makes a great case that good companies should deliver good service and it contains a helpful “toolbox” of branding-related exercises for managers. It just seems to posit that every non-manufacturing aspect of IBM, Apple or Coca-Cola is about branding – but it is not. Still, for the intrepid manager who wants to provoke more customer interaction and employee involvement around the brand totem, The book is instructive, particularly the interesting anecdotes and case studies. Of course, branding activities can be very effective – but, like other campaigns, they are best when executed with perspective.

• Integrated branding works best when all aspects of the brand are communicated through the corporate culture.
• Translating brand elements into customer service is the most powerful branding tool.
• A study of 90 global corporations found that 45% of the managers did not understand their own brand’s positioning.
• The same study found that 62% of senior managers did not support the brand.
• The origin of the word “brand” is Middle English and it means flame or torch.
• The father of advertising, Earnest Elmo Calkins (1868-1964), first conceived of associating products with people’s ideals and aspirations.
• About 18% of consumers’ decisions to buy are based on brand awareness.
• After consumers buy a branded product, they become more aware of its advertising. That, in turn, drives more repeat sales.
• Studies show customers will pay 19% more for a brand name than for a weaker label.
• Yet, the feelings people have about a brand are mostly subconscious.

Matching Words and Actions

While all brands are intended to generate specific customer reactions, “branded customer service” drives home even more powerful impressions. Done properly, it can increase a brand’s positive impressions, creating a ripple effect and adding to the brand’s overall strength.

“Branding can best be understood as a business strategy in great part to gain customer trust.”

Brands are a combination of values, beliefs and service expectations. A brand can propel a product and keep it fresh in customers’ minds, the harbor for the complex group of associations a brand name embodies. Branding is not just a concept bandied about by the marketing department. When a consumer has to choose between competing brands of anything from tissue paper to automobiles, the three elements of branding – authority, identification and social approval – play a role in the buying decision. These elements may help explain why Julia Roberts has been Hollywood’s highest paid actress for the past 20 years. She is a known quality; when people go to see her movies, they know they will feel good when they leave the theater.

“The key element in the chain, the actual service experience, is often overlooked because either advertising agencies and traditional marketers typically do not have core competencies in this area or they do not have the mandate to shape and influence it.”

Advertising addresses consumer wants and needs that can be satisfied consciously and unconsciously. Branding works at different levels to meet those needs, and becomes more powerful when it evokes positive memories, even if the consumer doesn’t make a conscious connection. Look at Morton Salt, a commodity product and category leader that still uses its old logo (a little girl under an umbrella). The brand has powerful associations for generations of mothers and daughters who cook together. When harried shoppers are making quick choices about buying this basic commodity, they often select the container they know well, the one with a positive connotation, even if it costs a few pennies more. Consumers are willing to pay that price for peace of mind and the feeling that they made the right decision.

Is the Brand Right for You? Are You Right for the Brand?

One useful exercise for understanding branding and the real relationship between consumers and a brand is to think of the brand from the product’s perspective. According to this approach, the brand has its own attitude. Would a high-end Gucci bag be happiest being carried by you?

“Today, brands are presented as groups of ideas, rather than merely logos.”

In this way, branding can discourage business by implying that a product doesn’t fit certain consumers. Be sure you are not inadvertently discouraging customers you would like to have. Suppose a small business wants to hire a large accounting firm. But the accounting firm only advertises that it caters to huge corporations. That message effectively eliminates the small business from even approaching the accountants. The accounting firm actually is also searching for new small business clients, but the client has no way of knowing that. In this case, the brand (the accounting firm) spoke and the marketplace (the small firms) received the message. As a result, no business was transacted.

“As actor and film producer Robert Redford says, ’If it’s not personal, then there won’t be any passion or commitment’.”

Today, brand consciousness is high, but so is brand warfare. High quality brand products compete intensely for profitability. Basically, customers will pay more for a brand they like. That translates into higher stock prices, which also boost the price of “intangible assets,” such as patent rights, intellectual property, trademarks and copyrights. This so-called brand equity accounted for up to 90% of Coca-Cola’s book value in the late-1990s, according to John Murphy, a branding expert in the United Kingdom. Companies with stronger brands also have more credibility with employees and, as a result, lower turnover, which also increases profitability. A well-recognized brand even helps pre-sell new clients, which increases the effectiveness of marketing and sales.

More than Service with a Smile: Service with a Brand

Strong brands can motivate customers to take specific actions. Fulfilling or beating customers’ expectations creates a powerful, long-lasting impression, as verified by studies of customers and advertising claims. Some 780 consumer interviews conducted from January through March, 2002, showed that ads that tell customers what to expect combined with actual service that meets or surpasses the ads’ claims creates the most positive brand links.

“It is possible to create a commodity product, and then create such a unique brand position that the average consumer visits a location 18 times a month – as Starbucks has done.”

The lesson from these studies was straightforward: the most powerful bond between brand and reputation is service, more specifically, “branded service.” In addition, pairing service and brand generates a competitive advantage. You can give customers personalized quality service that they can’t find replicated elsewhere. Competitively, this combination of quality and personalization is unbeatable.

“When well received and developed, a brand is a vibrant picture held in consumers’ minds.”

Each customer contact employee who practices brand message awareness magnifies your brand’s positive impact. A study by the American Society for Training and Development found that companies that trained their staff members to deliver branded customer service had several advantages over companies that did not provide employees with brand awareness training. These advantages included:

• 20% higher book values.

• 57% more sales per employee. • 37% higher gross profits.

Companies such as Nordstrom, Inc., The Walt Disney Company, Southwest Airlines Co., Pret a Manger (Europe), Limited Brands, Inc., and Vodafone Group PLC have adopted branded customer service and reaped some of these benefits. In contrast, generic service that is helpful, polite and ultimately undistinguishable will not produce memorable experiences for customers. To make branded service a company-wide effort, managers should:

• Get management and all employees to buy into delivering on those brand promises.

• Deliver on the brand’s promises consistently to all customers.

• Teach employees how the company’s marketing and mission statement defines your brand and what they must do to deliver on those promises. • Let employees deliver these promises in their own individual, characteristic ways with flair and personality. Do not force them to memorize canned scripts. • Once all employees understand the basics of the brand they should use the terms “on-brand” and “off-brand” to identify when other employees are acting in accordance with the brand’s promise (“on-brand”) and when they are not (“off-brand”).

An organization that delivers branded service should resonate with customers because it is different and because it emphasizes a key brand characteristic (i.e., freshness, knowledge or cleanliness), which it delivers naturally and consistently.

The first step toward delivering branded customer service is to distill your brand’s essence. In preparation, your company’s branding team should answer these questions:

• What is the brand’s mission and purpose?

• How are these brand values delivered to customers?

• What is our identity?

• What promise does the brand make to customers? • How is the brand seen in the actual market? • What stories of our successes and failures exist in the marketplace?

“Brand management is essentially about culture change.”

The answers will provide the basis for branded service and can produce some remarkable changes. Take Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS). In the early 1980s, SAS set out to become a business airline that delivered on-time travel. To get its new message across, the CEO ordered all employees – from pilots to reservation clerks and luggage handlers – to take part in a two-day program devoted to making this cultural change. In 1981, the idea of a major corporation holding meetings involving all employees and all departments was very rare. One year after the meetings, SAS was named the world’s top airline, and went from suffering losses to profitability. British Airways undertook similar training efforts with its 38,500 employees in the early 1980s, as part of then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s plan to increase the airline’s value before it was privatized. The following year, the world’s top airline was British Airways.

Focus on Employees

Your employees carry your brand’s message. They are the providers of your product or service. If you do not communicate to them about where the company is going and how they are making an important contribution, their motivation will suffer.

“Indeed in the current age of integrated branding, organizational culture is often referred to as the internal brand.”

One way to improve internal communication is to disclose the company’s financial information and future goals. Studies have shown there is a knowledge gap between what employees know about their employer and how much trust they feel. A U.S. Council of Communication Management study (1998) found that 64% of employees do not believe their senior managers. Another study found that 50% of employees do not know what their company is trying to accomplish. Information generates trust.

“When an organization is branded from the inside out, managers will have a context by which to filter their supervisory behaviors towards their staff.”

To correct these knowledge gaps, managers should treat employees like customers and undertake internal brand marketing as part of their employee communications program. The goal of this effort is to change behavior so employees will act in accord with the brand’s meaning. To accomplish this, relate your communication effort to employee issues about the brand and what it represents. Make your message emotional as well as practical. Staffers like to hear stories about their company that illustrate how it solved a problem or helped people. The solutions to the problems in your stories should illustrate some of the brand’s benefits.

“If a brand has a strength and excitement, it gives staff a sense of identity, a feeling of belonging, and makes them feel positive about going to work.”

Conduct your internal brand marketing program face-to-face. Don’t fall back on the easy way and run it all through your website. Instead, hold small and large meetings. Engage employees. Ask for feedback and ideas. Involve opinion leaders among your employees. Often, they are natural leaders who have great credibility with their co-workers. This effort may also produce a “brand champion,” someone passionately involved with the brand and its ideals. Finally, do not inundate employees with paper work, e-mails and numerous presentations. Fewer, but more effective, presentations work best.

“Today, many people, such as musicians, actors, entertainers, and even some businesspeople, view themselves as brands when just a few years ago they would have felt cheapened to think of themselves this way.”

These internal branding efforts will also revitalize your human resources department. To add a new dimension to the company, select employees according to a spectrum of abilities, including how well they can embody a brand. However, some companies carry this approach to an extreme. Abercrombie & Fitch, Co., an apparel company, hired salespeople who looked like its catalogue models. This practice raised issues about hiring discrimination, since the hiring qualifications were so narrow. To be successful, hiring must seek people with the skills and personality characteristics to deliver the brand benefits to customers.

“J. Robinson, a noted economist of the 1930s, emphasized the inherent value of widely recognized trademarks: ’Various brands of a certain article which in fact are almost exactly alike may be sold at different qualities under names and labels which will induce rich and snobbish buyers to divide themselves from the poor buyers’.”

To drive home the entire branded customer service message, your branding team should visit a company that they admire for its brand prowess and analyze its branding practices. This could include a field trip to a firm such as the Great Harvest Bread Company, where the mission statement is: “Be loose and have fun. Bake phenomenal bread. Run fast to help customers. Create strong and exiting bakeries. And give generously to others.”

After a visit to a company that uses excellent branding practices, your team should discuss whether the site was on- or off-brand and how it met their expectations about what the brand should deliver. Analyze which specific personnel behaviors made the experience memorable and what detracted from the experience. This experience should help generate an understanding of the customer’s perspective that your team can apply to your brand.

Janelle Barlow is president of TMI and a partner in TMI International, a consulting firm with offices in 36 countries. She is also the author of A Complaint Is A Gift and Emotional Value. She regularly appears on CNBC’s NPR Marketplace. Paul Stewart is director of TMI New Zealand and the former chief economist for the ANZ Banking Group.