The Hidden Art of Customer Care: 6 Strategies You Haven’t Tried Yet
Table of contents
You’re juggling multiple client accounts, each with unique needs and high expectations. One client emails about a delayed deliverable, another raises concerns during a review call, and suddenly, you’re putting out fires instead of driving value.
Sound familiar? You’re constantly challenged to balance high client expectations with limited resources. Often, the strategies you rely on are outdated and fall short.
The result of these outdated strategies? Strained relationships, missed opportunities, and an ever-present risk of churn.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. In this blog, we’ll explore customer care strategies that go beyond the basics—actionable, underrated techniques designed to help you take control, shifting from reactive problem-solving to proactive relationship building.
Table of Contents
- 6 Underrated Strategies for Exceptional Customer Care
- Measuring the Impact of Underrated Customer Care Strategies
- Take Customer Care to the Next Level
6 Underrated Strategies for Exceptional Customer Care
1. Empathy Mapping: Seeing Customers as Real People
Empathy mapping is a collaborative tool used to gain deeper insight into the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors of your customers. It’s a visual representation that helps teams understand their audience’s needs, challenges, and motivations. An empathy map typically divides the customer’s perspective into sections like:
- Says: What the customer explicitly communicates (e.g., feedback, complaints, or desires).
- Thinks: What the customer is thinking but may not say out loud (e.g., concerns or unspoken expectations).
- Does: The customer’s actions or behaviors (e.g., browsing patterns, purchases, or service usage).
- Feels: The emotions driving the customer’s experience (e.g., frustration, excitement, or confusion).
Some advanced empathy maps also include sections like:
- Hears: External influences affecting the customer (e.g., advice from peers or messaging from competitors).
- Pains: The challenges or obstacles the customer is facing.
- Gains: The desired outcomes or benefits the customer seeks.
By creating an empathy map, businesses can step into the customer’s shoes and design strategies that resonate on a deeper, emotional level.
While researching this topic, I came across Zappos, and it was impressive to see how they use empathy in their customer service. Zappos created a “voice of the customer” program, gathering over 800,000 comments. These insights revealed important emotions like trust, frustration, and ease. What stood out to me was how trust is key to customer loyalty. By understanding customer emotions, Zappos could improve their service and connect better with customers.
“No business can hope to create long-lasting customer loyalty if they don’t understand and treat their customers as human beings instead of just numbers.” – Alex Genov, Zappos
How can you do it too?
- To start, create empathy maps for your primary customer groups. Think about their needs, frustrations, and what they want at each step of their journey. For example, when customers shop online, what do they care most about—speed, convenience, or personalization?
- Use these maps as a guide for every interaction. This way, each time you engage with a customer, it feels personal and thoughtful.
- Keep updating your customer journey maps based on feedback to improve the customer experience and build stronger relationships.
2. Proactive Micro-Moment Management
Every moment a customer interacts with your brand is an opportunity—especially the small, seemingly insignificant ones. Proactive micro-moment management involves identifying and optimizing these crucial touchpoints to create a seamless experience.
By the way, did you check your Spotify Wrapped of 2024? Who was your ‘Artist of the Year’?
This is a perfect example of micro-moment marketing. Every December, users eagerly wait to see their “Artist of the Year” or “Top Songs,” and Spotify taps into this excitement by sending personalized “Year in Review” emails.
Spotify isn’t just sending a generic email; they share a personal summary of each user’s year in music. The email creates a connection by reflecting on their musical journey, which is both surprising and fun for users.
How can you do it too?
- Start by identifying moments in your customer journey where you can go above and beyond expectations. These don’t have to be huge gestures—just thoughtful, timely touches.
- Think about your own customer interactions. Are there moments where you can add something extra to surprise or delight them? It might be a simple follow-up, a quick check-in, or a reminder.
- Use these small moments to create a more personalized experience that keeps customers engaged and loyal.
3. Making Customers Feel Remembered
Customers love feeling valued and remembered. You can create a “memory bank” that helps your team offer more personalized service by tracking past interactions, preferences, and concerns. This approach not only makes customers feel special but also strengthens long-term relationships.
Starbucks does an excellent job of leveraging memory banking to personalize customer experiences. Through its mobile app and rewards program, Starbucks tracks every order and preference, allowing its baristas to recall a customer’s usual order and even offer personalized suggestions based on past purchases.
How can you do it too?
- Start by using a CRM system or a customer database that tracks key interactions, such as purchases, service inquiries, or product preferences.
- This way, you can recall important details about each customer during future interactions.
- For instance, if a customer has previously mentioned a preference for a specific product or had a resolved issue, you can proactively bring it up during their next visit or interaction.
4. Building Trust Through Openness
Sharing your processes with customers creates a stronger sense of partnership.
Reciprocal transparency means not just explaining what you do but also showing customers the behind-the-scenes aspects that shape their experience.
Everlane, an online clothing retailer, is an excellent example of reciprocal transparency. They’ve built their brand around “radical transparency,” openly sharing the true cost of their products, including production and materials.
They show customers exactly how much each piece costs to make and break down their pricing, from factory labor to shipping. This transparency has earned them significant customer trust and loyalty, as shoppers appreciate knowing exactly where their money is going.
How you can do it too:
- Start by sharing your decision-making processes with customers. For example, if there’s a delay in product shipping, explain why it’s happening and how you’re working to resolve it.
- If you’re making changes to your services or introducing new products, let customers in on the process.
This openness will not only keep customers informed but also show them that you value their trust and that you’re working together to improve their experience.
5. Emotional Intelligence Automation
As AI and chatbots become more prevalent, integrating emotional intelligence (EQ) into these interactions is a growing challenge. The goal is to ensure that customers feel understood, even when they’re engaging with automated systems.
Lemonade, an AI-powered insurance company, is a prime example of emotional intelligence automation. Their chatbot, Maya, is designed not only to assist with insurance claims, but also to detect the emotional state of users through language cues.
If a customer expresses frustration or distress, Maya responds with comforting and reassuring messages, creating a more personalized experience. This approach has improved customer satisfaction and reduced the number of escalated cases to human agents.
How you can do it too:
- Start by teaching your AI or chatbot interactions to recognize when customers express frustration or confusion.
- Set up triggers for common emotional cues, such as words or phrases indicating distress (e.g., “I’m upset,” “This is annoying,” “I don’t understand,” etc.).
- Train your chatbot to respond empathetically, using reassuring language and offering clear next steps to resolve the issue. For example, instead of a generic “Please wait,” your chatbot could say, “I understand this must be frustrating. Let me find the solution for you right now.”
6. Engaging the Entire Team in Service
Customer care shouldn’t be limited to the support team. The entire company can help deliver a better customer experience when every department is involved.
Salesforce has a successful cross-functional customer advocacy program. It involves teams across the organization in customer service activities such as live chats, webinars, and feedback sessions. This approach has resulted in better products and a stronger customer experience.
How you can do it too:
- Create regular touchpoints where non-customer-facing teams, such as marketing, HR, and product development, can directly interact with customers.
- Host monthly “customer insight” meetings, during which different departments review feedback and suggest improvements based on their areas of expertise.
- Encourage employees to participate in customer-facing activities such as surveys, live chats, or social media responses.
This helps teams develop a deeper understanding of customer pain points, resulting in more innovative solutions and improved service.
Measuring the Impact of Underrated Customer Care Strategies
A. Beyond NPS: The Customer Effort Score (CES)
While the Net Promoter Score (NPS) gauges overall loyalty, it doesn’t tell the full story of customer satisfaction.
Customer service metrics like the Customer Effort Score (CES) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) provide deeper insights into specific aspects of the customer experience, helping you identify pain points and areas for improvement.
- CES: To measure the ease of resolving issues, ask customers, “How easy was it to handle your request today?” Use this data to identify friction points and streamline processes.
- CSAT: To gauge immediate satisfaction, ask targeted questions like, “How satisfied were you with your recent interaction?” Use a 1-5 or 1-10 scale to quantify satisfaction and highlight areas for quick wins.
You can also use tools like Hiver to gather and measure customer feedback easily. With Hiver’s customer surveys, teams can collect accurate feedback, track customer satisfaction, assess service quality, and pinpoint areas for improvement.
Both metrics complement each other: CES helps improve process efficiency, while CSAT directly gives customer sentiment feedback. Together, they provide a more holistic view of customer experience.
Amazon leverages both CES and CSAT. CES helps them optimize checkout flows and reduce barriers in returns, while CSAT captures customer reactions to interactions with support agents.
B. Qualitative Feedback Loop Analysis
Quantitative metrics like ratings are helpful, but qualitative feedback (open-ended customer responses) offers a deeper understanding of their experiences.
This narrative data can reveal pain points and opportunities that numbers alone can’t.
Ask open-ended questions in surveys, such as “What could we have done better?” or “What do you like most about our product or service?”
Review these responses carefully to spot recurring themes or specific suggestions. Use this information to improve products, services, or customer processes.
For example, if multiple customers mention difficulty with a certain feature, prioritize making it more intuitive. Qualitative feedback gives you the “why” behind satisfaction or dissatisfaction, making your improvements more targeted and impactful.
Slack uses qualitative feedback from customer interviews and open-ended survey questions to fine-tune its platform. When users expressed challenges in managing notifications, Slack introduced features like customizable notifications and the “Do Not Disturb” mode.
These updates directly addressed user pain points, enhancing the overall experience and strengthening customer loyalty.
Take Customer Care to the Next Level
To wrap it up, great customer care is key to any business’s success. We’ve covered six strategies that can truly make a difference and help you deliver exceptional service, all while measuring their impact.
If you’re looking to take your customer care to the next level, Hiver could be the perfect tool. With Hiver, you can easily manage customer inquiries with shared inboxes, making sure everyone on your team is aligned and no message gets lost.
You can also collect customer feedback through surveys, helping you understand satisfaction levels and areas that need improvement. Plus, the automation features save your team time by handling repetitive tasks, so they can focus more on what matters—delivering great service.
