When Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, appeared on television for a recent PBS interview with Charlie Rose to unveil Amazon’s revolutionary Kindle book-reading device, he made what some consider a startling admission: Amazon still does not advertise on television; it relies instead on online word-of-mouth marketing. And the money the company saves on advertising is applied directly to enhancing customer service standards.

Today, a lot of talk in the business world centers on how to build a better customer service mousetrap. But in an interview with nationally renowned expert Peter Leppik, founder and CEO of Vocal Laboratories (vocalabs.com), FuelNet sought to learn how companies can move customer service out of the realm of mere gimmick to make it a core element of daily operations.

Leppik has spent his career in the trenches of modern customer service, helping successful companies enhance their telephone service centers. One thing he’s keenly aware of is that many customers are fed up with the kind of service they receive when a problem arises — be it a crashing computer hard drive, a missed airline flight, or a poor meal in a restaurant.

Leppik says companies need to make the customer service experience tangible. “Customer service is an inherent part of every product or service sold today, but it’s also the hardest for a consumer to evaluate in advance,” he says. “Unlike being able to measure size, color, or performance, you can’t see customer service printed on the box or brochure.”

He agrees wholeheartedly with Amazon’s Bezos about the power of a personal recommendation. “What’s different today is that the Internet has dramatically improved customers’ ability to find and share information about their customer service experiences,” he says. “The old saw used to be that an unhappy customer would tell 10 friends. Today, an unhappy customer writes a blog entry read by a thousand strangers, or posts a viral video to YouTube, which then gets viewed by a hundred thousand people.”

It’s Serious Business
Leppik says the enduring impact of quality customer service emanates from positive interaction with a client. “I’ve seen a lot of companies with poor service, and a common thread is not taking customers’ needs seriously enough,” he explains. Four other areas often need improvement:

1. Executives may be expected to meet strict financial targets, but targets for delivering quality are fuzzy or nonexistent.
2. Customer satisfaction research may exist, but too often it can be easily manipulated, is highly subjective, or simply is not taken seriously by management.
3. Customer service is viewed as a “cost center” instead of being an inherent part of the total customer experience.
4. Customer service is a backwater priority on the career ladder, rather than treated as a vital stepping-stone that must be explored by ambitious executives.

“One suggestion I have for companies trying to be serious about improving service levels is to have the CEO spend a full day in the call center fielding calls from customers,” Leppik says. “More than any ‘quality initiative,’ this will demonstrate that the top leadership takes service quality seriously, and the rest of the organization will respond.”

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