Just when you thought you'd seen it all in the instant gratification department, customer service at Amazon, Google, and Netflix keeps raising the bar on customer service expectations.
Ever since the mainstream adoption of mobile devices and social media, the way that people research and make purchase decisions has changed drastically.
On the B2B side, it's very common to find that buyers will flat-out refuse to speak with someone in a sales role until they're at least 60% of the way through their research and purchase decision. Many business leaders don't realize how often their company is eliminated from the consideration set because their digital approach is stuck in the past.
The pandemic, however, has dramatically accelerated digital transformation in ways that very few would have envisioned. Companies like Amazon, Google, and Netflix have flourished in their environment. Other companies without these massive resources, moats, or visions have struggled.
The pandemic profoundly changed people's purchase habits, both personally and professionally. Although I consider myself pretty digitally savvy, my family had never ordered perishable groceries online before that. It would be well over a year before we'd again step foot in a grocery store or warehouse club.
But in much the same way that Zappos's revolutionary free roundtrip shipping policy got people confident buying shoes online, companies like Instacart make it easy to make whole on crappy purchases.
Living about 20 minutes away from the warehouse club, pre-pandemic, if we bought produce -- like $7 worth of English cucumbers that ended up being spoiled (mushy on the inside), we'd more than likely toss the yucky cucumbers in the trash and figuratively -- but not literally -- "eat" the $7. it certainly wouldn't be worth another 40+ minutes of roundtrip driving, gas, and waiting in line in the customer service returns line.
However, if we get our grocery order delivered and find that the cucumbers taste lousy, my wife clicks a button in the app to report the problem and answers a question or two. The amount of the purchase is refunded back to our credit card.
And I'd like to idealistically hope that if the produce purchasing agent for the warehouse club sees enough cucumber refunds, the purchasing agent will reach out to the produce grower and find out what's going on.
So, of course, that digital customer experience is a game-changer for expectations from now on.
Do you work in customer success for a SaaS company? If so, what changes have you made to adapt to an Amazonified world? Let me know in the comments section below.
And if you need to level up on customer success for your SaaS company, so you can grow better and faster, enroll now in our free 7-day eCourse: Go-to-Market Strategy 101 for B2B SaaS Startups and Scaleups.