[Published 5/25/2023 via Mind the Product industry blog ]
I have two great office mates that are good listeners for bouncing ideas off of, the only catch is that they are both really high maintenance. Beau is our standard poodle and Oliver, our 9 month old miniature poodle puppy. If you’re a pet parent, you know they require a lot- more than just food- also, beds, toys, treats, leashes, collars, shampoo….you get the point. There is an entire industry that supports their ecosystem, and outside of local pet stores, Chewy is our go-to household supplier, above Bark, Amazon, Wayfair, and Petco. Why?
Aside from nearly every dog parent we know recommending them, their “thing” (aka brand promise) is to be the most trusted and convenient destination for pet parents with happy customers as our first priority. That sounded good enough to get us to try them, and we became fiercely loyal because their customer service is actually great. For example, when Beau was a puppy I ordered way more puppy gates than we needed. “Not a problem, we’ll refund the cost and rather than return them, please consider donating them to a local shelter” (wow, well played).
We could shop a lot of places for the same things, but their customer service really differentiates them for us- it’s a natural extension of their brand promise. So much so in fact, Chewy made Forbes’s newest list, the Customer Experience All-Stars, which ranks the 300 brands that actual consumers said they view most positively for the company’s products, services and treatment of customers. Clearly our experience as customers is something they consistently deliver.
But this isn’t an article about Chewy. It’s an article about how customer support can amplify a brands value proposition and drive customer retention (or churn) in very real ways. In a Harvard Business Review article (some time back, but timeless as a subject), Milind Lele and Uday Karmarkar talk about product support as a marketable feature, and today, where technology, SaaS and many products quickly get commoditized, customer service and support can make a huge impact with consumers in terms of product differentiation.
Customer support can build positive relationships and trust with customers (aka loyalty and retention)
Today more than ever, we as customers are intentional about the brands with which we interact- we’re buying into the brand’s reputation as much as the product or service (for us, nothing but the best for our pups!), and when a brand follows through with its promises, customers become loyal. If a brand breaks its promises, it erodes our trust and possibly the relationship, something exponentially critical to churn and retention in the SaaS and eCommerce spaces.
So here’s the magic: Support is a rich opportunity to keep promises and strengthen customer relationships every day, week and month. Chewy didn’t have to refund my over-bought puppy nesting impulses, but the fact that they did was a big convenience and a tactile demonstration of their brand promise. Similarly, at athenahealth Customer Care, we worked tirelessly to make our customer support more proactive and responsive with less friction, in order to meet our brand vision for innovative healthcare technology and services with better outcomes.
And consider that support is often the highest volume of interactions that customers have (by far) with a product post-purchase, each of which are brand impression- brand relationship- opportunities. Whether your company has 100, 1,000, or 100,000 support interactions a month and if they are self-help, chats, online or other channels, every one is a chance to reinforce (or diminish) your product value proposition and customer experience in how (and how well) they are fielded, handled and addressed.
Support as a feature that differentiates your product requires intentional investment
If you bake support into the product strategy and execute it well, it can become a valuable differentiating feature, but good and impactful customer support doesn’t just happen. It’s the outcome of an intentional business strategy, highly functioning operational capabilities, and organizational leadership that can recruit, empower, engage and grow teams alongside customer facing tools and technologies in a cost effective mix to deliver the intended customer experiences. Each of these are deeper topics that I’ll touch on in future articles, because when they are aligned and work well together, they create enormous brand and customer chemistry. Chewy’s frictionless “not a problem” footing is possible because they began with that as a strategy, invested in the tools, processes and capabilities to operationalize it, and manage their organization around delivering it consistently.
Is your customer support part of the product strategy and delivering on the brand promise with all of your customer touchpoints? There may be valuable relationship and retention opportunities to uncover.
For now, I’m hoping I can get either Beau or Oliver a gig as a model for Chewy to help offset what we spend on their behalf every month as loyal customers. If you have a contact for auditions, please share.