As presented in Fast Company, here are some tips on building loyalty via exceptional customer service. They’re offered by Micah Solomon, co-author of Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit.
Do nonprofits have "customers" and do they deliver "customer service"? You better believe it!
I think every one of Solomon’s seven tips applies … especially when you roll in the cultivation of major gift donors. Here they are (but read Solomon’s concrete examples too):
1. Are your doorknobs sparkling brightly? Research proves that customers remember the first and last moments of a service encounter much more vividly–and for longer–than the rest of it. Make sure that the first and final elements of your customer interactions are particularly well engineered, because they are going to stick in the customer’s memory.
[Ed: Makes me think about welcome packages.
2. Set your clocks forward. Modern customers expect speedier service than did any generation before them. In this age of Blackberrys and iPhones, Twitter and Zappos, you might as well not be there if you're going to be late.
[Ed: And nonprofits can be slow, slow, slow!]
3. Allow your customers to connect with a real person–online or off. Online customers are literally invisible to you (and you to them), so it’s easy to shortchange them emotionally.
[Ed: For starters, can be as easy as including a relevant staffer's photo in an email.]
4. Remember each customer’s roles, goals, and preferences. No matter how large your company is–or is hoping to be–strive companywide for the emotional impact of the beloved neighborhood bartender, doorman, or hairstylist–the kind of person who would remember Bob’s special preferences, his schedule, the quirks of his lifestyle.
[Ed: Certainly major gifts staff should be on top of this. But have they fed this info, often randomly surfaced in casual conversations with donors, into a database?]
5. Anticipate a customer’s wishes. When a customer’s wish is met before the wish has been expressed, it conveys the message that you are paying attention; that you care about the customer as an individual. That cared-for feeling is where you generate the fiercest loyalty.
[Ed: Perhaps his most important point. If you know your donors this well, you're golden. One more appeal to put yourself in your donor's shoes.]
6. Don’t leave the language your team uses up to chance. Develop and rehearse a list of vocabulary words and expressions that fit your business brand perfectly.
[Ed: If you organization has systematically thought about its identity and collected its stories, you're probably covering this one.]
7. Be patient when filling positions. Finding and keeping suitable employees for all customer-facing positions is a key to customer excellence.
[Ed: Important, of course, for any staff interacting with donors, whatever their giving level. Have you placed a call to your 800# lately ... you might be in for a surprise.]
Make sense to you in the nonprofit context?
Tom
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Train the people who answer phones in sales as well as customer service skills. It pays great dividends to your nonprofit. Their mindset during these calls is critical.
They must recognize the value of the caller/donor (tell your employee that each donor represents a life-time value of $x to the nonprofit). These employees also must have great LISTENING skills; and be ready to gently suggest an upgrade or some other need the nonprofit has.
These upgrades and upsells can generate a lot of revenue and other benefits for the nonprofit over time. That receptionist; or call-center employee is as critical to the success of the nonprofit and its fundraising as the director of development.
All seven of these tips are “spot on” for nonprofits.
Tom,
Make sense in the nonprofit context? You betcha! Absolutely!
As Karen mentioned (above), these seven tips are “spot-on” for nonprofits. But, they are nothing new, and this whole concept of customer-service sensitivity being applicable to and important for nonprofit organizations, while worthy of constant and ongoing emphasis, certainly is not a new revelation either!
Back in the late 70s, when I began a period of about 18 years as a development/PR director in the nonprofit hospital/healthcare environment, customer-service sensitivity and initiatives were going through a kind of new “epiphany” for staff at all levels, particularly those interested in converting patients (“customers”) into longtime, loyal donors. Again, this was nothing necessarily new, but it deserved and needed a renewed focus, given the emerging forces affecting health-care delivery. The same applied to all other types of nonprofits at that time.
That renewed focus worked then, and it can continue to work now. Any hospital, and especially the nonprofit ones, should want to build and maintain a culture and atmosphere of customer friendliness and sensitivity. After all, this is an industry unlike any other — one that deals with very intimate, life-altering and potentially scary issues, needs and applicable services. Many hospital/healthcare institutions have come an even longer way in these regards since those “pioneer” days in the 70s and continue to do a wonderful job on these concerns today. Many have succeeded in building impressive donor files by being totally focused on customer/patient service.
From a philanthropic standpoint, the problem is that today’s nonprofit hospitals, particularly the large academic and research-dominated institutions, are becoming more and more like big businesses operationally and, in many cases, are actually perceived as such. It has become more and more challenging to make the case for philanthropic support, because they are not clearly seen as nonprofit institutions — even if they do a superlative job in customer-service sensitivity.
As an interesting illustration, take the case of Caritas Christi Health Care, the nonprofit chain of six hospitals operated for many years by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Caritas Christi is in the process of being sold to a capital management (profit-making) company, and we are told in news reports that a condition of the sale is that all six of the hospitals will continue to be operated as “Catholic healthcare providers” and “respect the commitments …. made to charitable donors to the system.”
These are challenging prospects for the Caritas Christi institutions and their new parent/owner. They all are and always have been customer/patient service-sensitive institutions; it can be expected that they will continue to be so. Whether they can continue to make the case to past, current and prospective donors that they are “nonprofit,” “Catholic” and “philanthropically friendly” organizations remains to be seen.
The bottom line might be that customer-service sensitivity is still critical and always will be for nonprofit organizations, just as for profit-making businesses, but it might not always easily translate into donor support for nonprofits.
Thanks for the great reminder of the keys to solid, customer service – as Karen says, they are “spot on” for non-profits.
After reading the Fast Company article – it is prompting my Donor Relations team here at Operation Smile to do a full scale review of our committment to “Donor First.” Are we effectively delivering an exceptional experience to our constituents who financially support, volunteer and advocate for Operation Smile?
An internal audit will be the starting point and I have challenged the team to define 10 key points of “Donor First” service that will be owned and practiced by all team members. Should be an exciting time as we upgrade our definition of exception service!
I am exceedingly pleased that you found my pointers this useful in the philanthropic world. I think Tom has done a great job of showing how and where they apply.
If I can be of any additional service I have a site with more customer service related examples: http://micahsolomon.com and the just-released book which explores these issues in greater detail, co-written with Leonardo Inghilleri of Capella and Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company fame, Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit: The Secrets of Building A Five-Star Customer Service Organization, available at this link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0814415385
(just think “exceptional NON-profit”…)