What Is White Glove Service?
If a company’s customer service isn’t up to par, customers have plenty of alternatives. What’s more, most businesses are becoming aware of these changes in the market.
In fact, in a survey conducted by the CX Network on the global state of customer experience, 51% of cx practitioners agreed that consumers who were not happy were more likely to transfer brands. Hence, offering a great customer experience to your customers is crucial.
Due to this, there is an evident growth in the popularity of white-glove services. Most customers today want and expect white-glove service from companies. But what exactly is white-glove service?
What Is The Definition Of White Glove Services?
White glove service began with a more literal interpretation referred to as white glove delivery services — when movers or shippers put on white gloves to protect fragile items and high-value items during the shipping process to customers’ homes. Most commonly, the expression refers to a product or service that has been created with an exceptional level of care and extra attention.
The inspiration behind the name for this service is often attributed to the gloves worn by English butlers, as they are known for providing the best type of personal service.
The 'white glove' method has always been linked with high-value consumers, and it involves providing premium services to customers with acute attention to detail — quick and tailored. Over ninety-five percent of customers believe they will stick with a brand if they receive high-end, excellent customer service from that company.
Moreover, even though customers have become digitally savvy, they expect the same level of personalized attention from online retailers as they'd get with in-person interactions.
White glove service expansion will be a huge opportunity for those who don't feel it is labor and cost-intensive to include additional services. Here, the idea is to shift your focus to technology to provide better customer satisfaction.
White-glove service isn't about giving special care to your most profitable and important customers.
It's all about giving your customers a first-rate experienceand peace of mind so they'll come back for more, stay loyal to your brand, and tell their friends and family about how great your business is.
The Benefits Of White Glove Service
Customers nowadays have come to demand a high level of personalization from businesses. Hence, by offering white glove services, companies can benefit from multiple advantages, including:
You'll Beat Your Competitors
Buyers will go elsewhere if you don't provide excellent service and aren't willing to assist. This is bad news for those who aren't ready to go the additional mile and provide extra care for their clients and prospects. But for those who are, this is excellent news.
Buyers no longer have to settle for anything less than the finest in numerous sectors and geographical locations due to the intense competition in these industries. They are prepared to try a variety of firms until they discover the ideal balance of service and pricing.
Prevents Negative Reviews
Modern consumers don't simply test out your items or services; they read, discuss, and evaluate evaluations in great detail. Especially true on social media, where the word spreads quickly about a company's good service (and even faster about a bad one.)
You should expect some bad criticism if you don't provide your customers with the white glove service. It doesn't matter whether you believe it's unfair or if people are expecting something unreasonable unless you do something nice about it, like getting more favorable reviews.
Increases Your Revenue
Individual customer profiles also allow businesses to adopt a needs-based strategy for marketing, substituting the usual one-size-fits-all approach—such as traveling down the aisle of an airline with a credit-card offer—with targeted outreach with greater acceptance rates.
In our experience, adopting a needs-based strategy and proactively reaching out to clients at the right time with the right product has resulted in a revenue boost of 30% or more for several businesses.
These advantages can easily outweigh the monetary expenditure. Execution is much simpler, and the service is ultimately cheaper to supply if a corporation has built a system to identify demands. As more and more people access digital technology, this is becoming largely relevant.
How To Offer White Glove Service To Customers?
White-glove care may be provided across various touchpoints if you can track these complex client journeys with the right technology.
It is difficult for customers to find your brand unless they have heard of it. To obtain a sense of how a thing will appear and feel before they buy it, people use a variety of digital touchpoints and even go to brick-and-mortar locations.
As with consumer complaints and inquiries, mobile and social media are increasingly used to resolve issues. Here are a few ideas for providing white glove service:
Empower Your Systems And Team Members
Customer service representatives and technical support staff cannot handle all of the responsibilities of white glove service. Every employee in the company who interacts with consumers should demonstrate this.
According to a recent study on how Covid-19 is transforming e-commerce, e-commerce business has had an enormous influence on retail reactions, accounting for more than 10% of all purchases.
Most sectors are now migrating to internet platforms and changing client expectations, and their digital procedures are implemented in all of them.
As a result, aligning all contact points is critical if you want to give top-notch service to your consumers.
Create Robust Business Processes
Consider the following scenario: you're having a good conversation with your customer until there's a hiccup at the payment counter. It was too late to realize that your shop does not accept credit cards. That's the end of your transaction, as well as all of your flawless white glove service.
There may be more lost business possibilities due to your restricted capacity and solutions, such as payment ways, back-office support, and others. As a result, your white glove service falls short, negatively impacting your customer.
Offering comprehensive white glove services to your customers means you must create better business processes and ensure your technology and other factors align with customer expectations.
Maintain White Glove Service After The Sale
Even after the last sale, the white glove service should still be available. What would you do if that client walks into your shop for a brief conversation and tells you that they misplaced their phone only a few minutes ago?
Will you go above and beyond the call of duty and aid others by exploring your area of influence?
It doesn't have to be all about generating a sale whenever it comes to customer service. On the contrary, white-glove service entails being nice to a customer, no matter what stage of the buying journey.
Give The Customer Something Unexpected
With digital solutions in place, you may gain an advantage over your consumers and competitors by acquiring valuable information. Provide them with a variety of alternatives to test your sales abilities. If you're able to get a person interested in a product, they may come to understand that they need it after all.
The key to providing white glove service is avoiding reacting and taking an active role in the customer's experience. When you sell a product, you don't simply sell it. You help people take care of it so that they may get the most out of it. So, even before an issue arises, you've already provided your consumers with a solution.
Simplify Your Processes And Protocols
Companies must be aware of the effectiveness of their service to maintain a positive brand image. For example, how easy is it to schedule an appointment with you?
Make this procedure as simple as possible for your consumers by not restricting it to phone conversations. Use texting and social media tools, which allow you to reply to a request or concern more quickly.
The online monitoring system given by courier firms is a perfect example of an efficient service feature and may free up your contact center for easy follow-up inquiries. As a result of keeping track of their parcels on their own, consumers no longer need to contact you for updates.
Maintain Personalized Communications
It doesn't matter how automated your workflow is; you should still send a personalized message or make a brief phone call to keep in touch with your customers.
This is because automatic answers may miss subtleties, resulting in a dissatisfied consumer and a waning relationship.
The ultimate goal of your business services is to develop a unified management system for your customers across their whole experience with your brand.
Provide Fast Solutions
A team of experts often handles complaints that are too complex for a single employee to handle. Delegating some of these tasks may be an option, especially if they occur regularly. Customers won't have to wait for extended periods or be transferred to a separate company unit when they come to one of your shop reps.
As a result, you provide a solution to their problem immediately away.
Offer Omnichannel Support
You'll attract the most attention from customers if you respond quickly to your product or service complaints. But if they can't contact you, this initial disappointment might soon grow into an angry feeling. You're already being slammed in internet reviews before you even get a chance to fix the issue.
Companies of all sizes should be aware that consumers are eager to work with them on problems if they receive timely replies. As part of white glove customer service, a central contact center supports various kinds of communication, including email and phone calls.
The customer's trust in your brand is reinforced by knowing that special attention and assistance is only a conversation away.
Remove Pain Points
To enhance your product or service, you need to know what your customers think about it. By relaxing minor criteria that create delays resulting from customer complaints, an insurance firm, for example, can expedite the claim-processing procedure.
You'll see an increase in sales if you work to remove these roadblocks that allow you to address customer needs more quickly.
Challenges Of Offering White Glove Service
Attention to detail, convenience, speed, and emotional satisfaction for each client's individual and unique requirements characterize white-glove service solutions. A customer-first attitude that features the utmost care can be achieved, which is made feasible by the abundance of information available today.
However, this degree of service is currently provided by only a few companies. For the most part, this is due to two basic factors. In the first place, many people feel the expense is excessive.
It is necessary to have cross-departmental visibility to develop a full client profile, which calls for organizational structure modifications and IT expenditures. Every business unit that interacts with the consumer, including sales, marketing, product design, collections, and the front-line, must be connected to customer service to provide high-touch support to all of its customers.
The good news is that investing in the additional costs of white-glove services pays off tremendously. There are considerable cost benefits since they speed up the resolution of contact center issues (or prevent them completely) and strengthen customer loyalty, allowing for more personalized cross-selling and better service.
Although these services entail significant expenditures in technology and organizational changes, they will soon be required as organizations fight to satisfy client expectations in real time. Enterprise-wide visibility is necessary to construct complete client profiles, and all functions will benefit.
While offering the service might feel like a daunting task, partnering with a glove service provider can help you reap the benefits without taking on any hassles.
Choose An Experienced White Glove Service Partner
The conventional customer service ploys are no longer effective. To please consumers and enhance retention, you must provide white-glove customer care. You will exceed expectations and create great experiences that will keep your clients coming back for more.
We at Awesome CX offer VIP white glove service to each of our clients through specialized customer support teams. Our devoted employees become product specialists and create connections with customers, regardless of how large or small a client is or what sector they operate in.
Consequently, our associates provide important services that go above and beyond the industry norm. Finally, our VIP white glove treatment of each customer fosters brand loyalty and retention. Contact our team for more information!
Sources:
The Global State of Customer Experience in 2021 | CX Network