Expert Advice: Adam Toporek, Customer Service Keynote Speaker

It’s not a failure, you’re finding a new way.”

-Adam Toporek

Every business face challenges and sometimes fails to deliver good customer service. It is not a big thing, but how you handle the situation and make things right really matters. 

You should always keep trying different approaches to make your business customer service process better. Also, you can take advice from industry experts so that you don’t fail to meet your customers’ expectations.

As you also know, competition is high. If you don’t pay attention to your customers or not deliver expected services to them then, someone else will do it.

You have to create different strategies to improve the customer journey. At each stage of customer interaction, collect relevant insights, and see areas of improvement that will be a good start in developing the customer journey.

Another saying of Adam Toporek states that, 

“If you don’t have a strategy for customers that are a problem…it makes it impossible to give proactive service.”

-Adam Toporek

Adam has extensive knowledge of the customer service domain and helping different organizations to improve their customer experience. He is an internationally recognized keynote speaker who is helping organizations of all sizes. 

Adam has written “Be Your Customer’s Hero: Real-World Tips and Techniques for the Service Front Lines,” which is a famous book describing customer service.

We had a short QnA session with Adam, read ahead to know more tips from him that will help you to improve customer service and customer experience for your business.

1. How did your journey start in the customer experience field?

I’m a third generation entrepreneur. I was taught from a very early age to be “customer centric,” even before that was a term. In later years, as I owned my own businesses, I soon began to realize how important customer experience was not only to my business but to almost every business.

Eventually, I began a blog, which led to a book, which eventually led me to where I am today.

2. In your opinion, how customers’ must be treated nowadays?

In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, I would say that the most important thing is to have an understanding. Our customers are really going to need a lot of empathy and understanding going forward.

Of course, empathy has always been a cornerstone of customer experience, and now it’s simply more important than ever.

3. What are the key factors that a business should ensure to deliver excellent customer service?

We teach a concept we call Hero-Class® customer service, which means meeting or exceeding expectations, delivering a frictionless, hassle-free experience, and doing both of those consistently. Consistency is an important differentiator, because it is so difficult to achieve, particularly at scale.

4. What change do you feel before and now in customer service?

Prior to COVID-19, my answer would have been around changing customer expectations around speed and immediacy. People had less tolerance for hassle and inconvenience.

Right now, the world is changing hour-by-hour, and it is a challenge to predict what consumer attitudes and preferences will be going forward.

5. A pro tip you would suggest for businesses on how to retain customers?

We define a customer hero as someone who is there for the customer when they need them. I can think of no better advice for how to retain customers in this environment than that.

6. Have you found yourself in a scenario where you have been the most well-treated customer?

I’ve been fortunate to have had some very good customer experiences in my life. One of the things that all of those experiences had in common was individual focus and personalization.

7. How technology has upgraded the customer service and how it influences the customer experience?

Technology has truly fueled so many aspects of customer experience. Two important ones are the fact that customers are more demanding of immediate responses than ever and that organizations now have the ability, using big data and AI, to use customer intelligence to deepen customer relationships at scale.

8. How will you differentiate a customer-driven business or non-customer driven business, also what makes a customer-driven organization more powerful?

In many industries, products and services have been commoditized; experience is what creates and sustains competitive advantage. Customer-centric or driven organizations put the customer at the center of all decision making and make experience a strategic priority.

9. Would you like to share some of your tips from your book, “Be Your Customer’s Hero?”

One of the concepts I teach from Be Your Customer’s Hero, which we explore in detail in the book, is particularly relevant right now: it is called assuring accountability. Often we have to disconnect with customers to get more information or to transfer them to another department. Customers often feel concerned at these moments.

One of the ways to ease this discomfort, the lack of certainty they feel, is to assure accountability, to let them know that you have their back. You assure them that you are going to be accountable to them, if not for the solution (which might not be in your control), then at minimum for communicating regularly and working on finding them a solution.

People will need assurance now more than ever that someone has their back; this is a great time to assure accountability with customers.

For more expert opinions, read The Real PBX’s blog and keep yourself updated with the industry developments, tips, and advice from industry experts.