All hail the king

Online shoe retailer Zappos is globally known for delivering a ‘wow experience’ to its customers.

The importance it attaches to customer service can be gauged from the stringent hiring procedure it has put in place for prospective employees. Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon, is equally known to be obsessed with customer service. It is widely known that he leaves one seat empty at the company’s most important meetings. All employees should consider that the ‘empty chair’ is occupied by the customer, ‘the most important person in the room’.

It is impossible to be in a business without knowing the customer or orienting the business to deliver customer services. After all, the key survival ingredient for any business is a happy customer. There is no doubt that you need to set excellent customer service standards. It is no surprise that Velvetcase.com, a home-grown online platform for bespoke and international designer jewellery, has built its business on customer centricity.

That jewellery is very close to a woman’s heart needs no explaining, and being in the business of selling big-ticket jewellery items online means that they have to provide a unique experience to their customer, something that equals or even betters the experience of an offline purchase. They have a team of experienced jewellery designers who answer questions put by customers who come to the site and give them advice on the style of jewellery, what suits them, what they are going to wear it with, and so on.

Says Kapil Hetamsaria, co-founder, Velvetcase.com: "The customer is more important than the product. Our focus has always been on what they want instead of what we have."

So, once a customer has selected a product, they send a 3D printed prototype within two days, so that she gets an idea of how the product will actually look when finished. A customer can also share the design with her friends on Facebook for a second opinion before finalising the purchase, something women prefer to do before buying jewellery.

Says Lalit Pai, co-founder, Medwell Ventures, a home healthcare service company: "Customer service is crucial and at all points we have to make sure that we are listening to the customer and solving his problem. Ours is not a transaction business, but a continuous service. It means we have to reach out to our customers and interact with them face-to-face on a one-to-one basis."

Likewise, Velvetcase.com allows its customers to choose a design and order something that fits into their style or budget whether it is made of gold or silver. Policies like a 30-day no-questions-asked refund and lifetime exchange also help customers gain confidence.

Ensuring the wow experience

Velvetcase.com has a dedicated customer service team that provides round-the-clock support over the phone, chat, email and across all social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and others. "We give the customers a 2-day commitment to get back with a resolution. We mostly do it within 12 hours, but 48 hours is the maximum we take."

For Medwell, the customer care component is actually divided between two teams. Strategic location of the branches in Bangalore and Hyderabad—the cities they are in—ensures that timelines are met as far as providing services are concerned. On one hand are the team of specialists—doctors, nurses and therapists—who provide the actual service and on the other, there are a team of trained customer care personnel who handle communication and interaction with customers and co-ordinate service delivery through a 24-hour call centre and other social media channels.

Building a strong customer service culture can happen through intensive training. Medwell Ventures conducts regular training modules for its entire staff. Apart from learning the functional skills, training sessions also concentrate on the non-functional or soft skills, such as behaviour, grooming or how to handle certain situations like when the customer is angry. Specific training modules and scripts ensure that the service standards are consistent.

Feedback matters

For Velvetcase.com, the customer service head holds a weekly meeting where all the key highlights of customer interaction are discussed, such as what they have been doing right, where they can improve, or whether it is about the product, the shipping, or, the shopping experience. Then the respective department heads are reached, sometimes on a case-to-case basis, and they decide how a particular feedback can be incorporated.

Says Hitendra Chaturvedi, CEO, GreenDust, a company that offers branded refurbished factory seconds electronic products: "Customer care is a process of continuous improvement." He says getting the trust of customers is of utmost importance in building their brand. Products come with a 15-day return policy and a 1-year warranty. The customer care department is headed by a very senior person who has over 30 years of work experience in Canada, and brings with her very high standards in customer service, he adds.

There are also customer loyalty metrics that help a company measure customer satisfaction and work towards improving it. A widely used one is Net Promoter Score (NPS) wherein customers are asked a single question, "How likely is it that you would recommend (your company) to a friend or colleague?" Subtracting the number of detractors from the number of promoters helps arrive at the NPS. At present, Velvetcase.com has an NPS of plus 60, which is on the higher side.

The in-house versus outsourcing dilemma

Given the option to outsource customer service, most businesses have a dilemma on what to do. Initially, it is important to keep customer service in-house and the founders need to take special interest in it. There is nothing like a call from the founder to let the customer know that he is important.

Adds Pai: To understand the complexity of the business and challenges, customer interaction is crucial. In the initial stages, outsourcing customer service is a risk." In the case of GreenDust, a centralised customer service team attends to customers’ calls, emails and also responds to queries. In addition to that, there is also a dedicated social media team that works closely with the customer service team to address queries and concerns over various social media channels.

Velvetcase.com ships internationally and Hetamsaria remembers an incident when he spoke for more than two hours on the phone with a woman based in US late at night before she confirmed an order of Rs 2.75 lakh. "Even now I spend up to 30 per cent of my entire time focusing on the customer service aspect of the business," he says.

It is not just the sale which matters for customer service. Businesses have started to understand the importance of "Happy Calling" where each customer is given a call so that they can share their experience about a particular product they have purchased.

Smart start-ups go very far to maintain product and customer history database. So, it is very common for them to wish customers on their birthdays. In return, this has ensured happy customers and a higher repeat purchase rate. After all, a happy and satisfied customer is likely to tell others about the good experience he had over the product purchase. After all, who can deny that word-of-mouth can be a very powerful marketing tool that helps in fetching more business.

anaghpal@outlookindia.com