There are various triggers for the sea-change in customer expectations, but in my opinion a large part of it has been because of the move to the cloud.

Earlier customers would buy an application or a piece of hardware, and when they had a problem, they would raise a ticket. Then we, the customer support team would respond. But now the hardware, software, and data - Everything is integrated into our data center. It's our own product, and it's typically on a SaaS platform, so the expectation is that it will work 24/7.

With the cloud, customers also have a lot more options. That means, they are no longer obligated to stay with you and your product offering for life. This also means that customer support has to deliver on every single transaction, or else they face the very real challenge of customers exiting indiscriminately.

This might seem merely like a paradigm shift in technology, however, what is unseen is that it needs to be accompanied by a paradigm shift in perspective. How customer-support teams can truly leverage such large-scale tech developments, is to train people to keep up with the changes. This does not just involve L&D programs centered around tools and techniques. This also requires leaders and their teams to be more sensitive and empathetic to customer needs and sensibilities. If everyone has the requisite technology, then how can you as an organization achieve an edge? The answer is simple – By having more than the requisite humane capabilities.

Here are three practical steps to successfully address rising customer expectations. While these form the fundamentals, it is advisable to get a coach or consultant on board to truly instill these aspects into an organization’s culture. And what better way to do this than top-down, starting with the leadership?

Step 1: Reduce Overdependency on Metrics

Metrics can only measure so much. They cannot measure the tone of your reply, your sense of ownership, your team’s service orientation, or anything that may be important from a customer’s perspective. To put it simply, metrics do not always ensure customer delight.

One important reason why this perspective change requires true culture building and leadership coaching is that some common methods are so deeply ingrained, that an external voice is needed to guide the change.

For example, I think the word “average” is one of the most counter-productive terms in the context of customer support. People say, “My average response time is great,” while their 7-day backlog is at 5%. Isn’t there a clear contradiction in these metrics? Ultimately, the customer is not concerned with what your company’s average resolution time is across hundreds of service requests. They are more interested in what you and your customer support team deliver for them individually, every single time they have an issue. Every interaction counts. Every customer counts.

Step 2: Understand Your Customer’s Business

I remember a situation when a Telecom Operator’s Network was down due to an issues with a suppliers Hardware & Software solution. We need to understand that for a Telecome operator, each second of downtime means lost revenue opportunity, which can never be recovered. Because of this they were applying tremendous pressure on their suppliers. A short-term Network outage in a normal office may cause delays in working, but not actual loss of 1000’s of dollars every second. Unless the support professional have the business context of their customer, they would not realize the urgency. This is an issue across all backend support functions. Without understanding customer’s business, customer-service-prioritization would be faulty. After all, if you do not understand your customer’s business, then how will you effectively service them? How will you improve Service orientation in the organization.

Step 3: Improve Teams Knowledge About Product Functionality

What does this mean? Simply put, this involves the creation of empathy towards a customer’s needs. Once you have understood the product, learn to understand what the customer wants from the product. Most teams will spend a large portion of their time learning the underlying technology of the Product. But how many leaders understand what their core target group is looking for? This would involve actually simulating problem scenarios, testing the product functionality, and reading up about how the customer uses the product. Until this is achieved, the ability to think from the customer’s angle will not develop.

These steps are the prerogative of leaders and decision-makers. You can make a change in your company, with your customer support team, only if you initiate the process of designing training modules that mirror real-world situations. It would be unreasonable for the customer-facing teams to divert time from firefighting and learn such methods individually. Coach your leadership to think like their junior-most customer service executive, and in turn like their end customer. A true leader learns from the challenges of their customers before she/he can even begin to teach the people.