There’s no greater gift to give your competitors this holiday season than a spurned member. And sadly … it’s not a hard gift to give. As Warren Buffet says, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”
Once you tarnish your relationship with a member—once you breach his or her trust—it’s incredibly challenging to recover. That means you can’t be reactionary when it comes to member trust. You must know how organizations violate trust and act proactively to stop those violations. No sideline-sitters allowed.
Let’s start with a couple anecdotes showing how bad service often dismantles trust and (by proxy) destroys consumer relationships.
Can you hear me now? (answer: no)
Being a Verizon customer was almost a tradition in my family. My parents always used Verizon and swore by it. So when the time came to get married and consolidate phone plans, I brought my wife-to-be into the Verizon store.
A seemingly nice representative met us and began talking about all the bells and whistles Verizon offered. I said we didn’t want anything fancy…but the representative continued. And when I opened my phone and started comparing prices with AT&T online, the nice veneer dropped.
He was angry about the comparison to their main competitor, accused us of being stupid and challenged us to go to AT&T, claiming “you’ll be back.” Spoiler alert: we never went back.
The lesson: Obviously, don’t be rude to members or claim they’re dumb. Listen to them. But the deeper lesson is to be comfortable with competition. Prove to your members why you’re the best choice without getting upset. Insecurity can cause more harm than the existence of competitors.
Just plain bad (all across the spectrum)
You don’t need to be rude to lose someone’s trust. Sometimes inconsistency is enough.
I grew frustrated with my ever-increasing Spectrum bill, a cost heightened by the Spectrum TV service we didn’t use. When I called to cancel Spectrum TV in hopes of lowering the bill, the representative told me canceling Spectrum TV would cause a bill increase. How? Apparently, it was promotion related.
But their tune changed when I decided to cancel all services with Spectrum. Suddenly, canceling the TV service would lower my bill. The inconsistent claims about Spectrum TV’s impact on my bill made me feel like they were lying to achieve the best outcome for them.
Again, they said “you’ll be back.” Again, they were wrong.
The lesson: Inconsistency and dishonesty are hard to distinguish from the member’s perspective. Giving a member two different answers about a financial product may be a goofy “oopsie” to a staff member … but it could feel like a lie to a member. Master consistent service and avoid any unfortunate misinterpretations.
Train to trust
Excellent member experience training has never been more important. You can’t afford to lose members in this already attrition-heavy environment, especially when distrust spreads like a wildfire these days. The average person with a bad experience tells 9 to 15 other people.
With the right training program, you can stop these horrible situations before they happen. You can stop the chain reaction of negative sentiment.
Focus on these three things to cut distrust out of your service:
- Mystery shops: Do you really know what’s going on? Conduct mystery shops to see if your service breaches trust. Check how your staff talks to members or answers questions. This may explain a mysterious, atrophying member base. Plus, it gives you the information necessary to target solutions to specific problem zones.
- Consistency: It’s a frequent complaint: a member gets one answer from one representative, then talks to a different person to get a different answer. This practice undermines your legitimacy and makes you look confused at best or dishonest at worst. Do you have a journey map? Create guidelines everyone must follow. Script answers every employee must give.
- Mindset: Lacking confidence leads to insecurity. Insecurity leads to anger. Anger leads to defensiveness. And defensiveness? It leads to broken member relationships. (Just call me member experience Yoda.) But seriously … regular training instills confidence in your employees. And confident employees make wise decisions that don’t endanger member relationships.
Make trust your differentiator
In a market where 61% of consumers consider accurate information to be more important than speed or convenience, trust is your differentiator. Clarity is what makes you special. Market how you’re more honest than the rest and have the service chops to back it up.
Many of your competitors are sowing distrust among their consumers. Those people are looking for a better home (even if they take a while to get there). Don’t leave this gift unclaimed. Plan out your service journey. Train your staff. And make trust your differentiator.