BAM!

BAM! debunks the twenty common myths of customer service—from “The customer is always right” to “Customer service means the same thing to everyone” to “Companies achieve customer service by under-promising and over-delivering.” Customer service myths run the customer policies of many companies without anyone even questioning them. Unfortunately, this ensures that customer service will only be a “bolt-on” and not a part of the DNA of that company. Inside the DNA of most companies is where customer service needs to be in order to retain profitability. BAM! replaces myths with a tactical approach that shows companies how to make more money through attitudes and actions that will help their customers feel satisfied in good times or bad. We are two businesspeople who have spent most of our lives selling products, services, and ideas. We have both worked for large corporations, which we then left to start our own sometimes-successful companies. We write about business extensively. We closely examine the cost of everything we do. After spending significant portions of our careers in high-technology-products business, we are both in the business of providing professional services. In our companies, delivering BAM!-good customer service measurably increases revenue, reduces cost, and makes doing business much more enjoyable for us and for our customers. In our book, we talk about what that means and how to deliver it. Then we started thinking about what to call “bad” customer service, and it hit us that there is no such thing. Companies treat customers badly all the time, but this isn’t customer service by any degree. It is bad, sometimes even abusive treatment and we ought to call it that. Let’s stop sugarcoating it. Why do we as consumers put up with bad customer service? Assuming there is a choice to get the product or service somewhere else, are we too lazy to make a change? Is the barrier to exit too high? Or have we been lulled into expecting and accepting less and lowered our standards accordingly? Why another book about customer service? First, we like customers. We like them a lot. In fact, you could say that we love customers. We want them to succeed, and we want our services to contribute to that success. Second, we are in business to make money. It is impossible to give BAM!-good customer service without your business ultimately making money. This is not another book just about customer service platitudes, such as “The customer should come first” and “The customer is always right.” This isn’t a book about great customer service stories or even horror stories. There are already too many of those stories out there. This is a book about businesses doing the right things to make money in a world that seems to be increasingly about self-service. The move to self-service started many years ago with gas stations trying to save money (and lower prices) by having customers pump their own gas. It now extends to checking in at airports and checking out at grocery stores. Internet shopping has taught us to be extremely self-reliant consumers. But a big part of the reason we are self-sufficient is that Web sites (at least the really good ones) are designed to make it easy and intuitive for us to shop for ourselves and by ourselves. Consumers aren’t looking for handholding; they are looking for ease and efficiency. Mary Jane recently went through a TSA checkpoint at O’Hare airport. When she commented to the TSA officer that the bins were in the wrong place and thus holding up the line, the TSA officer responded, "We just do the screenings; if you want to get through the checkpoint, you have to HUSTLE yourself.” She was stunned and went to the plane thinking that interacting with machines (the Internet, kiosks, gas pumps) really is often preferable to interacting with many people who represent companies. Why BAM!? There are plenty of myths and platitudes about customer service that every business gets caught up in with posters around their offices. “Take care of the customer and they’ll take care of you.” “Good customer service is free.” “Good customer service is common sense.” We don’t subscribe to these. Our customers aren’t always right. If common sense produced good customer service, we would see more of it, and good customer service is never free. But it can be worth every dollar a company spends—if the company spends it right. We are a practical pair, and this book expresses our combined experience with our own companies and in the companies we have worked for and with. It is about attitudes and actions that produce a level of customer service that will keep your customers coming back and cause them to tell your friends that your business is a good one to do business with. Most companies say they want to deliver good customer service, but too many companies don’t deliver the quality of customer service they say they want to deliver and that their customers want and expect. In BAM!, we talk about those things that prevent companies from carrying this out–people, systems, and attitudes. We will help companies and customers see that good customer service is a two-way relationship. We present a dollars-and-cents case for why caring about customer service is essential for both companies and their customers, and we help readers understand how company and customer expectations get so confused and mismatched. This book helps readers figure out what they really believe about customer service. It offers ways to understand what the customer wants and needs. It teaches business owners and employees how to line up their beliefs with what their customers want, and provides specific actions they can take to deliver what their companies need. We will recommend a customer service manifesto—a two-way agreement between companies and their customers. We will identify the barriers to both delivering and receiving good customer service and offer a tactical approach for both companies and cons