GOOD CUSTOMER SERVICE FOLLOWS YOU EVERYWHERE; EVEN INTO THE BATHROOM

Today’s organizations might be perpetually connected to their customers, but a good business knows when to respect boundaries.  That interactions must add value to the customer’s experience, a good business knows that attempting to communicate with a guarded, disinterested customer is not only inappropriate but counterproductive.

Pivotal to recognizing such boundaries is understanding how—and why—they come to exist.  Standard business practice and societal conventions might provide good guidance, but they can never trump the will of the customer.  If a customer is particularly private and particularly disinterested in an open communication link, a customer-centric business recognizes, accepts and adheres to his stricter set of boundaries.

Similarly, if a customer demonstrates an unusual aversion to boundaries and conversational restrictions, the business should feel free to engage with a corresponding absence of inhibition.  In fact, its ability to call itself customer-centric might hinge on its ability to interact on the customer’s weird, unconventional terms. Even if those terms involve a bathroom encounter.

Other businesses must take note. Customers will use Twitter for urgent, conversational matters.  When doing so, they will expect the business to take urgent action.  To successfully satisfy today’s omni-channel customer, a business must be capable of meeting the demands of that urgency.

The customer needed action; he did not simply need to be heard.  If the business operated in accordance with standard boundaries – rather than the unique ones of a customer in a unique situation – it potentially would have shied away from the action that needed to be taken.

While few businesses will find themselves in this particular predicament, virtually all businesses will encounter scenarios in which standard norms, expectations and policies will prove insufficient.  The mark of a customer-centric business comes from its ability to adapt to the specific needs of its customers.

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