By Felix C. Veroya
Currently, I am part of a cohort for a global Marketing program, and we do weekly Clubhouse discussions to calibrate with our peers and mentors. Last week, I was invited to be part of the panel to discuss about customer service. I shared about how customers and their satisfaction can help a business grow organically and turn customer complaints into opportunities rather than problems.
It was an engaging discussion, and everyone has gained key takeaways from the session. As always, I want to share one of the most striking pieces of advice I got from the session. This is how to improve your customer experience using the HEARD model by Disney.
HEARD model stands for Hear, Empathize, Apologize, Resolve and Diagnose.
- Hear: Let the customer tell their entire story without interruption. Sometimes, we just want someone to listen.
- Empathize: Convey that you deeply understand how the customer feels.
- Apologize: As long as it is sincere, you can’t apologize enough. Even if you did not do whatever made them upset, you can still genuinely be apologetic for the way your customer feels.
- Resolve: Resolve the issue quickly, or ensure employees are empowered to act. Do not be afraid to ask the customer: “What can I do to make this right?”
- Diagnose: Understand why the mistake occurred, blaming no one; focus on fixing the process so it does not happen again.
True enough, using this framework can help not only large enterprises to manage and improve their customer service and experience but as well as small and medium businesses. I am using the approach but am not aware that there is a framework that Disney introduced. Let us have an actual case when we received a complaint about one of our e-learning courses raised by a student.
Hear: Once we received the complaint via email, we are courteous enough to get his details and call him. We ask him to tell us what difficulty he is experiencing with the course.
Empathize: We acknowledged that the difficulty he is experiencing is brought by the unresolved issue in the platform and it is really a pain that most of the users will have to bear for the next couple of weeks.
Apologize: The team member in charge of this process does apologize and made sure to address the issue as fast as we can to improve his experience in the current and succeeding courses.
Resolve: We asked the student if how we can assist him and how we can help him through the issue while we are doing fixes in the system. We found a common ground to address part of the issue which made him comfortable in the meantime.
Diagnose: I ask the team to check on the possible other factors that might trigger customer complaints since the one raised is already being addressed by the technology team.
Customer experience is really a make-or-break for businesses. A great customer service is critical to ensure that a holistic value perspective is being provided to them thereby increasing their customer lifetime value. Following proven approaches like Disney’s HEARD facilitates the achievement of these states and enables growth for organizations from small to large enterprises.
Let’s continue to be #significantlybetter customer experience practitioners, together!
Do you want to talk? Get in touch with me thru fcveroya@asklexph.com.