One of the distinct pleasures in my job is receiving emails from ecstatic customers who can’t wait to tell me about amazing customer service they just experienced. I am always grateful to these customers for taking time out of their busy schedules to share this with me and I’m not sure they realize that this always works to brighten my day as well as that of our staff. 

At CommunicateBetterBlog.com we have been celebrating “Feedback Week” where all of our blog posts are about customer feedback both good and bad.  Earlier this week I received this terrific note about one of our customer service representatives from a new customer, Natalie Dustman (@proformRE):

“I just wanted to let you know that Dorian has been extremely helpful in getting me set up on my  new Phone.com account.  I was intending on trying the service for a month before I ported our three office numbers over to our account.  Dorian’s accurate, friendly, timely and helpful support gave me enough confidence in your system and customer service that I went ahead and ported all of our numbers.  We are committing as a company to use your service, largely due to Dorian’s effort.  As the president and owner of a small business, I truly value my employees and appreciate it when people give me feedback about my staff.  I wanted to do the same.”

I gained a new insight from this bit of customer feedback this week.  Every interaction with customer service is a make or break encounter.  Dorian, by simply doing his job well managed to take huge strides in building trust with Ms. Dustman and turning her into a loyal customer of Phone.com.  There are so many elements to the customer experience that, if done wrong, could cause the exact opposite result.

At Phone.com, we understand a few things about our customers.  First of all, we understand that their time is valuable.  Secondly, we understand that every encounter with our product, website and even support is an opportunity to gain or lose your trust and your business.  What a powerful responsibility this is and I hope that you know that while we don’t claim perfection, we are striving toward it. 

I invite you to read about “Feedback Week” on our blog and if you learn nothing else, you should know that we delight in receiving your feedback both good and bad.  Every piece of feedback is an opportunity to improve our service.

As the Director of Customer Service for Phone.com I am very much accustomed to receiving both positive and negative feedback from a variety of customers in a variety of ways about a variety of employees.  One of the most common ways we collect feedback is through the customer satisfaction survey we send out after a customer contacts support.

On one particular day I was going through the comments and came across one from a customer that said “Joel Maloff is wonderful to work with. He’s responsive and easy to communicate with.”  Normally I wouldn’t think much of this except for the fact that Joel is Phone.com’s Vice President for Channel Development and he doesn’t typically spend a lot of time interacting with customers.

I use this story to illustrate a key point.  A company does not become a customer centered company by chance.  From top to bottom of any organization it is critical that all employees care deeply for customers and understand that the customers are the life blood of the organization.  While some employees never interact directly with customers, they can provide excellent service to the people interacting with the customers.  They can also understand the way their work touches customers and do it to the best of their ability.

I am here to tell you that Phone.com is such an organization.  This example of great feedback about Joel is one of many from the leadership at Phone.com.  I can name countless times when I have asked upper management to interact with a customer and in all cases I’m met with extreme willingness.  They understand that if Phone.com is going to be successful, it starts with amazing customer service.