Chip Bell

05/15/24| Customer Experience

Take Out Your Customers’ Trash

“Take out the papers and the trash.” That was the opening line of the song “Yakety Yak” by The Coasters. It spent weeks as the number-one hit song in 1958. Teenagers everywhere wore out their shoes dancing to the hot song. The lyrics hold a strong message about how to deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Most customer experiences have a certain amount of garbage. It looks like excess wait time, mind-numbing paperwork, too much delay, frontline indifference, and missed deadlines. And in today’s highly competitive world, where customers demand more and more value for their ever-diminishing dollar, if you do not “take out the papers and the trash,” as the lyrics of the song go, “You don’t get no spending cash!”

Customers today have higher expectations and shorter patience with a much greater propensity to go elsewhere with their cash if hassled. That should be a wake-up call to ramp up close attention to service garbage—whatever agitates your customers. It means user-friendly websites, customer-centric processes, time-sensitive expedience, and customer-facing employees who care about creating a great experience, not just delivering the expected product or outcome. No matter if the contact center is staffed in Mumbai, India or McRae, Georgia, the operator should be graded on how well they make the customer call comfortable…not more rushed or more robotic. Here are three ways to “take out customer trash.”