Below is an Autogenerated Transcript

How does an e-commerce company deliver an uplifting service and how do they combine these two main factors that you’re talking about? Right. And that’s the right way to think about it. These two main thrusts where you’ve got improving service performance internally and externally, building an outstanding or uplifting service culture that’s continuously improving. So, you’re choosing e-commerce as an industry. The first is to recognize, remember we said to create value for someone else. And one of the fundamental analytic frameworks in the book and in our online courses and in all the consulting and the training work that we do, is called the Four Categories of Value. Okay. So, the first category is Primary, and I literally call it Primary Product. So, in an e-commerce company, what are you selling? But it’s not just “What are you selling?”, it’s “What range do you have?” and “What sizes do you have?” and “What colors do you have?” “What price points do you have?” and “What packages do you offer and what’s your pricing?” And all of that is part of your Primary Product. Okay. That’s one category. Now, “Oh, you’ve got what I want.” or “You’ve got the selection that I’m looking for.” Then the second category is called Delivery Systems. “Is your website user friendly?”, “Is it easy to navigate?”, “Is it easy to understand?”, “Can I get all the product information that I want?”, “If I have a question, can I get it answered easily?”, “When I place an order, is it convenient and easy and user friendly and intuitive for me to place that order?” “If I have a question later on about my order”, “Where is my order?” “Have you shipped my order?” “What are my options for paying for my order?” “Oh, I’ve got it. I need to do a return.” All of those things are not the product. Right. This is the Product, that’s the Delivery System. And you know what? You can create value with having a convenient, flexible, user-friendly system and you can also destroy value by having any aspect of that that doesn’t work. Just like on the Primary Product, you can create value by having the variety and the selection and the prices, etc. You can also damage value by not having what it is that somebody would be naturally looking for. So those are our top two category- Primary Product, Delivery System, and these tend to constitute what we refer to as the hardware of any company. E-commerce for sure. Yeah. Yeah, but then there’s two more categories at the bottom of this framework. And the one on the one side is called Service Mindset. And that’s the traditional thing that most people think about when they hear the word service, like a waiter in a restaurant with a smile. So, service mindset in e-commerce is literally in the words that are used on the page. For example, do you remember a few years back there were some online platforms where if you inadvertently typed in the wrong password, the message you got was “User Error”. Yeah. Okay. At the same time, other companies in really the 2.0 world were emerging, where if you typed in the wrong password, It said, “Oops, we’re sorry. Try again, please.” Yeah. Exact same technical situation. But why were these so different? Because a human being actually thought, “Who am I reading this to?” In the second case. In the first case, it was some data person who technically wasn’t wrong by saying “User Error”. I don’t want to know it’s my error in using my wrong password. So then in an e-commerce environment, the place that the Service Mindset would show up is in terms of the way they invite you, the way they thank you, the way when they write to you, It’s the tone of language, it’s the voice, etc. And if you ever do need customer support, when you reach out in today’s world, either through a chat or by sending an email or by going online, what is the tone of voice? Are they listening to you? Like, “Okay, what’s the problem?” “What’s your order number?”, or is it, “Hi, thank you so much for calling. My name is so-and-so and I’m delighted to help you.” Whoa. That’s creating value, or even potentially destroying value. And the fourth and the final category is called Ongoing Relationship. And this is the category that might have the most to do with your preferred topic of customer retention, because here is where you’re not just serving the customer to create value now, but because of your interest in their well-being, which is a verb, then you’re thinking about what comes next for that customer. You’re being proactive and you’re anticipating on behalf of that customer. You may be inviting them to understand certain things that they didn’t even know they should be asking about, and thereby creating value by cultivating an ongoing relationship, which is a whole another category. And it’s a huge one today for so many industries.