Now Is Your Opportunity To Rediscover Your Love Of Serving Others
The following is an excerpt from the epilogue of our acclaimed book, Digital Customer Service: Transforming Customer Experience for an On-Screen World, available now in print and audiobook format.
Why did you get into this business?
Whatever your exact title—if your job has anything to do with the experience of your customers—you do this for a reason. You probably could have chosen to do something else with your career. But here’s a thought: When you use your skills and expertise to create a great experience for your customers, how does that make you feel?
Yes, this profession is harder than others. There are always a million issues to deal with and brush fires to extinguish. It can be an all-consuming 24/7/365 lifestyle. So perhaps you don’t spend enough time reflecting on why you do this.
Our hope is that you can start to see what we’ve been seeing in our research: Whatever it is you love about serving customers can now be experienced at a whole new level thanks to Digital Customer Service (DCS).
The world has transformed. And now…it’s our turn. The digital transformation of Customer Service is no longer a thing of the future. And even if you’re not a massive global organization, the benefits are equally available to just about every company.
Every company needs to make a choice about whether they’re going to lean into “the way the world is going”—or hang in there a few more years trying to milk the last drops out of a service model that is starting to look as out-of-touch as showing up for a first date wearing a pair of Hammer pants or a tube top.
Transformation can be scary. We hear you. The easiest decision is to not decide, and just keep doing things the way you’ve been doing.
But here’s one final thing to think about:
Do you remember the first time you saw Toy Story? It was released on November 22, 1995 and you may recall that date as the “coming out party” for the digital transformation of animated features. It was the first time we ever saw a full-length movie come spitting out of a hard drive.
Pixar was founded with one core mission: Tell great stories. And what they learned is that digital transformation enabled them to accomplish that goal in ways that had always been limited by the confines of ink-and-pen on celluloid.
The job of telling great stories never changed. But technology made it possible to tell stories that could never be told before. Like what happens inside the toy box when no one’s home.
Can you now see that the digital transformation of Customer Service is the opportunity for you to tell the story you’ve wanted to tell for years? The story about how your company really cares about its customers, and that you value them. That you are willing to evolve as quickly as they have, and to create a digital experience that is seamless and effortless so they will always remain loyal.
The advent of DCS and the adoption of a “digital-first” mindset creates an opportunity for you to re-focus on the things you love about serving customers:
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- Creating a great experience
- Helping people solve problems
- Making others feel smarter about themselves
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But now it’s possible to do these things in an even more profound and “magical” way—by meeting your customers where they are:
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- In their entry point of choice
- In the midst of the interaction they already started online
- And, in the midst of their own transition to becoming digital-first people
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Don’t let yourself and your company be held back by the peaks and valleys of the past. Digital transformation enables you to fall in love all over again with the feeling of creating a great experience for others. To do what you do best–only now, in ways that will be even better–for your customers, for your company, for your team and for yourself.
By the way: Six days after the release of Toy Story–on November 28, 1995—Pixar went public. It would end up as the largest IPO of that year. Just sayin’.
The book goes into more detail with strategies and roadmaps to help your company digitally transform and meet your customers where they are—in a Digital-First world. In case you missed it, read other book excerpts here.
