Nominate service champs

Bloomberg Business Week’s annual customer service awards rank the best providers in the U.S.

The ­accolades examine the techniques, strategies and tools they use to keep clients happy.

Last year, L.L. Bean, a retailer of outdoor gear, leapt from the 24th spot to the very top of the list. 

How did it do this? By adapting to the way customers shop now. L.L. Bean has traditionally been a ­catalogue company but switched their focus to the Internet.

Their website is designed so that placing an order is intuitive and package tracking is simple.

The firm also switched to a bank that splits the cost of free return shipping to holders of the L.L. Bean credit card.

Customers can visit the website to review products and both positive and negative comments are posted so people can get first-hand information about merchandise before they buy.

Lenient

If that isn’t enough to garner favour from today’s savvy Internet shoppers, they can also chat with agents through ­instant messaging and e-mail.

Later this year their site will have a ‘click and call’ feature that will prompt a help call within two ­minutes to any ­shopper.

L.L. Bean, knowing that today’s customers would rather be online than in line, took the bull by the horns and jazzed up their website, adapted forward thinking online shopping techniques and including a lenient return policy.

Their strategy worked. They went from being ­almost at the bottom of the customer service list to ­becoming the best of the best. Bermuda residents regularly use the Internet to purchase goods and ­services and, like our U.S. counterparts, we will ­support businesses that ­understand how we shop, which is now ­differently to in previous years.

Whether it is online, in person, or on the phone, the expectation is the same — customers want a positive experience before, during and after the point of sale.

We want businesses to make it easy to trade with.

We at the Department of Consumer Affairs get a lot of complaints from the ­public about businesses in Bermuda that do not create a positive customer experience and are difficult to do business with.

But there are a few local firms that get it right and have changed the way they do business to meet the needs of consumers today.

They understand that the customer’s experience and good customer service is their lifeblood.

These local companies ­focus on customer satisfaction and deserve to be called champs because they are doing a great job.

If you know a local ­customer service champion that deserves recognition, e-mail us at [email protected].