The Not-So-Hidden Value of Excellent Customer Service

Pretty striking numbers, aren’t they? The reality of customer service is this: There’s a danger of falling into a trap where customer service representatives view each interaction as only a task that needs to be completed. At Distinguished, we believe in treating each customer interaction as a chance to strengthen our relationship. 

To drive this point home, we pulled our customer service team away from desks and dropped them into the “real world” to reflect on the importance of customer service—and to push ourselves to stay ahead of the changing market, expectations, and technology. From walking tours to view client-insured properties in New York, to designing empathy maps, to immersing ourselves in customer service experiences from other industries, we sought to reinforce the feeling of personalized experience that keep our customers coming back. We then turned the lens on ourselves to apply these new lessons to each of our three service-oriented teams: 

• Our dedicated customer care specialists are at hand throughout the day to help our customers in any way they can, including accounting issues, service requests, technical troubleshooting and more. We are consistently evaluating ways to strengthen and expand this team to provide exceptional service coast to coast.
  
• Our underwriting experts are trained to examine risks and empowered to work directly with our customers in order to provide exceptional customer service.  Currently the team is focused on enhancing their professional knowledge and improving their customer service delivery
  
• Our new customer experience team has been created to find new ways to delight our brokers and bolster our current procedures. Growing out of previous work evaluating our customer’s buying process and their needs, the customer experience team will continue to focus on resolving service gaps and providing a consistent, positive, and modern experience.

As we continue to assimilate the lessons from our retreat and optimize our processes, we want to hear more from our customers. We want to listen to their feedback after interacting with our systems and our people, which is why we’re currently developing a system to solicit, gather, and respond to feedback. Our partnership with the operations and technology department is indispensable in helping us improve our workflow and online systems—without these, we wouldn’t be able to focus as much as we can on our customers’ needs. 

We want to win because of our service. We have great products that make us a leader in our field. Now we’re trying to take it further by delivering our customers an easy and enjoyable experience. Want to share your experience? Send us a line.