Times Have Changed: 3 Customer Expectations of Service In 2023
by Hannah Jones
Personal Assistant & Marketing Coordinator
The Customer Experience Advantage
In my work with David Avrin, CSP, and the Customer Experience Advantage team, we identify emerging customer expectation trends in order to stay on top of a changing marketplace. Now that it's the turn of the year, you and your team should be evaluating whether your business is ready for 2023 and all of the new challenges that your customers will pose for you.
We've identified 3 new customer expectations of service for 2023. But first, let's start by discussing:
Why are customer expectations important?
It’s not that quality is unimportant. To the contrary, quality is more important than ever, but it is also assumed. Today, if you didn’t offer high quality, the world would find out about it quickly through the myriad of social proof resources such as: Yelp, Trip Advisor, Rotten Tomatoes, Health Grades, Glass Door and more.
But in an age of vast choices and pervasive quality, the key to winning customers in 2022 and beyond is becoming ridiculously easy to do business with. Here’s the point; if we all know (and we do) that we can purchase anything we can afford, or learn about services we need on our mobile device and have them delivered to our door, how does one player gain a competitive advantage over all those who provide what we do, or some variation?
David Avrin - Winning Customers In 2022: The Complete Guide
Bottom line, your customers have changed. To keep up with them, you will need to understand their new expectations for service, responsiveness, ease-of-use and more so that you can establish not only your quality, but your differentiators, as well.
Understanding customer expectations of service
To be clear, we aren't talking about customer service strategies. As David always says, "We’ve been talking about providing good customer service for nearly 100 years. If you don’t know how to be nice to people by now…"
We are talking about the customer expectations that craft the experience we create for them. There are 3 new customer expectations that we've identified that should be a cornerstone of your customer experience strategy in 2023:
1. Eliminating friction
Winning customers back is about first fixing what drove them away in the first place. Allow your customers to skip your complicated process and jump to exactly what they need. Make a real person available if they have a question that is not a “frequently asked question.” Offer self-checkout, but also the option of a trained person to staff the register or phone support.
Most customers, clients, patients and more want a process that is simple. They want a customer journey that is easy to navigate and prices that are easy to find. They want the option to do it themselves unless they don’t. They want to know you are listening to them and willing to accommodate a product or process that is unique to their situation. They don’t want to feel like they are talking to a brick wall and want to deal with someone authorized to solve their issue. Oh, and they want it fast. Today, if possible.
2. Stop shoving A.I. down our throats
It was announced this week that Frontier Airlines would discontinue its customer support helpline, opting instead to only offer only digital options i.e: No option for a conversation with a real person over the phone. None. The bean-counters at Frontier might be feeling good, but leadership made the inexcusable error of not understanding the business they are in.
Frontier thinks they are selling seats, when in fact, they are selling outcomes. They are selling the reunion at the end of the flight, the crucial business meeting that will close an important sale, a long-delayed family vacation or even a funeral for a recently deceased loved one. When we buy a seat on a flight, we are trusting (betting) that we will make the personal or business we desire. Any uncertainty about successfully arriving makes that purchase very risky.
David Avrin - What Frontier Airlines Just Got Very, Very Wrong
3. Stop telling us "no"
For front line workers, the easiest thing when confronted with an unfamiliar situation is to just say “no” or “Sorry, I’m afraid we can’t,” and then move on. Big mistake. How about empowering your people to find a way to say yes? Or if they have to say no, offer an alternative that they can agree to. Not only do you save an important client or customer relationship, but you get to be the hero for solving a problem. Customers remember and they reward you with positive reviews and future business.
David Avrin - Why Customers Leave (And How to Win Them Back)