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White Paper Explains How 'Customer Service is driven by the Customer Experience'

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TMCnews Featured Article


May 11, 2010

White Paper Explains How 'Customer Service is driven by the Customer Experience'

By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor


Shep Hyken's book "The Cult of the Customer" was released in April 2009 and within a week landed on the Wall Street Journal and USA Today's best seller lists.

It expounded on the idea that customer service is driven by the customer experience, and that "The two should not be confused. Service must be experienced, and that experience is provided by the people inside a company."

Customer support software provider Parature (News - Alert) has a recent white paper summarizing and excerpting the book, which presents what it calls the "five cults of the customer:"


1. The Cult of Uncertainty: Unfortunately, this is where most companies are working from. At best, service is inconsistent; sometimes good, sometimes great, sometimes average, etc. At worst, the service is terrible. The bottom line is that the customer doesn't know what to expect.

2. The Cult of Alignment: This is where the company has created a brand promise, or what the book refers to as a mantra, that lets employees and customers know what to expect. This is very important. And more than that, the company must make sure every employee understands this mantra and is working to deliver on the promise. This is done through training and reinforcement of the message - or mantra.

3. The Cult of Experience: Even with a great brand promise, the customer may not have confidence until that promise is experienced, sometimes numerous times. Maybe it will be a great experience - maybe not. If it is great, will it happen again the next time? This Cult, and the next one, The Cult of Ownership are closely tied together.

4. The Cult of Ownership: Once the customer experiences the promise, and it is predictable, the customer owns it. This is a powerful place to be. Someone goes from complete discomfort to something that is routine and a great convenience.

5. The Cult of Amazement: This is the ultimate Cult. When the experience is predictable, and if it is consistently better than average, the company has risen beyond satisfactory. People may think that "amazement" means a WOW experience. While WOW is wonderful, the great companies in the Cult of Amazement are simply operating at a level that is, at a minimum, above average.

"Most companies can be great some of the time, but very few if any are great all of the time," Hyken notes, adding that a lack of consistency "puts a company who just delivered a great service experience right back into the Cult of Uncertainty."

To download a free copy of this enlightening white paper, click here.


David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David's articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.

Edited by Patrick Barnard







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