4 Steps to Providing White Glove Service at Your Business

White glove service isn’t just for restaurants and high-end retailers. Here’s how your company can offer a premium customer service experience to all of your customers.

Is your brand providing “white glove” customer service? While good customer service makes your company stand out from competitors, offering concierge-level white glove service takes customer service to the next level, resulting in customer satisfaction and loyalty.

More than half (51 percent) of customers say they will leave a brand if they receive service that doesn’t live up to their expectations, according to “The Global State of Customer Experience,” a report from customer service insight resource CX Network.

White glove service can be the key to retaining those customers.

The term white-glove service once referred primarily to a premium customer experience typically offered to clients with a “high lifetime value,” according to inbound marketing platform HubSpot.

“In a traditional setting, you would welcome these customers into the store or restaurants literally wearing white gloves, then cater to their every need and request,” says HubSpot. “These customers were typically affluent and/or provided the company enough revenue to warrant white-glove service.

“In other contexts, white-glove service refers to delivering expensive items to the home, assembling it and setting it up in the right space.”

White glove service today encompasses a much broader range of industries that provide all of their customers the same level of premium customer experience, says HubSpot.

4 tips for providing white glove customer service

“The old customer service tricks won’t cut it anymore,” says HubSpot. “If you want to delight customers and increase your retention rate, then providing white-glove customer service is a must. “By doing so, you’ll surpass expectations and create delightful experiences that keep your clients coming back for more.”

Providing white-glove service is one of the best ways your brand can start building a customer-centric company culture, says HubSpot, which  recommends the following steps to put your white glove plan in place.

1. Create a white glove customer service strategy

“For your company to start providing white-glove service, you need to create a customer service strategy that guides every single one of your interactions. Your strategy will inform how you serve your clients and train your service reps moving forward,” says HubSpot.

A strong customer service strategy includes the following, according to HubSpot:

• Mission statement
• A vision for customer support
• Team structure
• Support process
• Tools and software
• Goals and Metric
• A budget

2. Use customer feedback to improve service

Collect customer feedback to gain an understanding of how well your company is currently serving your customers and find areas where your brand can improve.

3. Implement personalization strategies

“As you begin to collect feedback, start implementing personalization strategies — especially in your website and emails — that make your customer feel like you know them personally and want to serve them specifically,” says HubSpot.

“While personalization is often correlated with marketing, it’s powerful in a service context, too. In fact, one of the hallmarks of a white-glove service experience is its personalization.”

4. Offer a seamless experience to meet customer needs

Taking a long time to resolve customer issues leads to a poor customer experience. To provide a white glove customer experience, your company must offer a customer experience based on “exactitude and expediency,” says HubSpot:

“When you think of white-glove service, you think of a premium, painless experience that leaves the customer delighted and eager to return to your business. Taking a long time to solve their problems is a sure way to provide a poor experience. Providing a sloppy, cobbled-together solution is another.”

For example, your company might focus on resolving customer issues and questions on the first call or contact by offering an omnichannel experience, automated communication options such as chatbots and live chat and training customer service reps to faster, personalized service.

“Some tools you might leverage at this stage include customer service software, customer service training templates, and script templates for your service reps,” says HubSpot. “That way, you can resolve issues much more quickly without decreasing the quality of the interaction.

“By far, the most important thing you can do to provide white-glove customer service is training your reps. They’re the ones who’ll be interfacing your clients and providing the service itself.”