Customer Service Lessons From Luxury Brands

Why luxury customer service is important

Luxury customer service is essential because it builds a strong emotional connection between a brand and its customers. This connection builds customer loyalty, encourages repeat business and enhances the overall customer experience. High-level service demonstrates a commitment to quality and customer satisfaction, which can distinguish your brand in a competitive market. Additionally, superior customer care often leads to positive word-of-mouth recommendations and referrals and a stellar reputation, further driving business growth.

Crown & Caliber — a company that consigns watches from brands such as Rolex, Breitling and Cartier — believes the luxury market is all about honesty and comfort.

“When dealing with expensive items, it is important to portray trust and professionalism,” said Hamilton Powell, former CEO of Crown & Caliber and current CEO of Power Support Partners. “Excellent customer service is the best way to put a customer at ease. Successful customer service representatives will portray empathy and will make the owner feel comfortable placing their beloved [luxury item] in safe hands.”

How to provide customer service like a luxury brand

We spoke with several small business owners to discover how they incorporate luxury-level customer service into their businesses. Here are some essential tips.

Collect regular feedback from customers.

Your perception of your customer service doesn’t matter. What’s essential is how your customers think you’re doing. Collecting regular feedback from customers is essential to discover how your support is perceived. For example, Crown & Caliber performs quarterly net promoter score surveys with its customers to understand how the team is doing and where it needs to improve.

“Ask, ask and ask,” advised Thalia Toha, CEO and founder of Good Grow Great. “Ask better questions, and don’t let [complaints] fall flat with no visible improvements afterward. The extra mile is not crowded for a reason.”

Track customer service metrics.

You can’t improve what you’re not tracking. Powell noted that Crown & Caliber’s customer service team receives precise metrics daily, such as the percentage of repeat customers and the amount of time spent on the phone.

Here are some other key customer service metrics to track:

• Customer satisfaction: Unlike many customer service metrics, this value is a ratio. To calculate it, divide the number of satisfied customers in your surveys by the total number of customers who responded.
• Net promoter score: You calculate this metric using a single-question survey that identifies how your customers feel about your brand. The lower your score, the more work you can do to turn less-enthusiastic customers into loyal ones.
• Customer churn: To calculate customer churn, determine why customers stop using your services. Then, analyze the data that’s relevant to those factors every month. Your ultimate goal is to figure out how to push this data in a direction that helps you retain customers.

Be available to your customers.

Customers want to know that you hear their voices and that their concerns are your concerns. Using social media for marketing and customer service is an effective tactic to show them you care. Social media platforms, especially X (formerly Twitter), are excellent tools for quickly listening and responding to customer issues.

However, responding quickly to online reviews, tweets and comments isn’t the only way to be available to customers. Powell emphasized the importance of taking phone calls from customers who want to speak directly with a service representative.

“It is difficult to build a strong rapport with a customer when the only form of communication is [digital],” Powell said. “Speaking with customers on the phone does take a bit more time than just emailing them, but it shows them they are worth the customer service representative’s time.”

Jared Weitz, founder and CEO of United Capital Source, said businesses should avoid relying too heavily on chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI) for customer service. “Remember that you are serving people,” Weitz said. “AI, service bots and automated content are great resources, but they should not be the only resource for providing service.”

Use live chat the right way.

Although you may supplement your support channels with chatbots, live chat is still important. In fact, 41 percent of customers prefer live chat to other customer service channels. It’s crucial to adhere to live-chat best practices or use live-chat apps to successfully incorporate this channel into your customer service options. Here are a few tips: 

• Use a person, not AI. For starters, remember the word “live.” A person should be behind your chat tool, ready to respond to incoming queries. 
• Record all interactions. Your live-chat technology should record what your team and customers say during each conversation. 
• Incorporate post-chat surveys. Include a survey at the end of each interaction to determine how your customers feel about your live chat.
• Analyze your interactions to improve service. Evaluate your agents’ conversations, and analyze your survey data. If you see concerns about response time or poor communication, train your team to do better. As you improve your live-chat service, you’ll help a substantial portion of your customer base feel more satisfied.

Offer personalized experiences.

So much of consumption these days is about the whole experience, not just a product or service. Customers want to feel special and valued, whether they’re shopping for a Porsche or a new paint color.

Jason Taylor, co-founder of Prestige Transportation, pushes his company to go the extra mile in personalizing and creating value in his customers’ experiences. “For many of our regular clients, we keep notes in their account and bring them their favorite Starbucks drink when taking them to the airport in the morning,” Taylor said.

Another way to personalize your service is to start customer loyalty programs. Loyalty programs can include direct mail, rewards programs, card-linked offers and other purchasing incentives. You could also ensure that actual people speak to your customers during key interactions and make recommendations based on their buying history.

Level the playing field.

The Ritz-Carlton’s motto is, “We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.” This concept goes along with the idea of empowering your customer service team to create stellar experiences for your customers. If you give the same respect to your employees as you do to your customers, they feel valued and motivated to pass on a positive experience.

Furthermore, as a CEO or business owner, you should strive to interact directly with employees and customers. “Even as CEO, I get on the phone with customers myself,” said Bob Seidel, a private jet pilot and CEO of Alerion Aviation. “No request is too small for me to listen to, which makes the client feel important.”

Powell reminded business owners that the customer should always come first, regardless of your company’s size, industry or target market.

“It is important to build a relationship with the customer so they feel like they are more than just a transaction,” Powell said. “Smaller companies should make this the foundation of their company. Build your company on the idea that it is built to fill customers’ needs, and their needs should be the priority. No company is too big or too small to provide customers with excellent service.”

Outsource customer service to a call center if you can’t do it yourself.

Sometimes, providing luxury-level customer service means knowing you can’t do it in-house. Maybe your skills and knowledge pertain solely to your products and not the art of interacting with customers. Or maybe you can’t quite build the infrastructure or afford the costs of building an in-house customer service staff.

If this is the case, choose a customer service call center for your business. You won’t be alone: More than half of companies outsource their customer service lines, and some companies outsource human resources to a third party.

All kinds of factors play into whether a particular call center service fits your needs. For example, a domestic call center may offer more services than an international one, along with superior technology and agents who may be better suited to work with your customers.

Other considerations include whether your agents will be dedicated to your company or distributed across many clients. You should also look into the service’s policies on outages, minimum monthly call volume, availability and reporting. Reporting is particularly crucial; the best call center services report real-time data, record calls and offer maximum transparency.

Some of these services, such as Go Answer, excel at handling inbound calls. (Read our Go Answer review to learn more.) Other call services may be better for outbound calls, primarily those involving lead-generation tactics that not every business may need.

No matter your customer service needs, you can likely find a call center to help.

Best customer service software

The best contact center services can play a crucial role in helping you implement luxury-level customer service strategies. These platforms provide tools for managing customer interactions, tracking key metrics, and ensuring personalized, timely responses. By using the right software, businesses can efficiently handle customer inquiries and maintain high standards of service. 

Here are a few top options to consider: 

• RingCentral: RingCentral offers a comprehensive suite of communication tools that can help businesses implement luxury-level customer service strategies with AI. Businesses can identify patterns and collect feedback through forms while monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs), such as speech and text analytics and traffic volumes. As our RingCentral review explains, the platform’s 24/7 support ensures customer inquiries are immediately addressed with personalization, thereby enhancing availability and responsiveness.
• Salesforce: Salesforce Service Cloud offers robust features designed to enhance customer service operations. Businesses can use omnichannel support to engage with their target customers through different channels, including calls, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Apple Messages for Business. Our Salesforce Service Cloud review explains how this platform’s detailed reporting and analytics functions help companies monitor crucial metrics and leverage comprehensive customer profiles and interaction histories to provide highly personalized service. 
• Five9: Five9 provides cloud-based contact center solutions that facilitate luxury-level customer service. Its real-time call transcripts and reports help you monitor data to ensure a clear view of service performance. Five9’s numerous add-on options will help you customize the platform to your specific business needs. As our Five9 review explains, the platform also supports agents by providing interaction history, AI assistance and customer intention identification with speech-based self-service to help you deliver proactive and tailored service.
• GoTo Contact Center: GoTo Contact Center offers robust solutions that help businesses deliver exceptional customer service and maintain control over interactions. Its real-time analytics and reporting functions — which address metrics such as average queue time, agent availability, trends and answered calls — help businesses stay on top of KPIs and agent productivity. Our GoTo Contact Center review details this platform’s multichannel communication reports, which cover total calls over time, caller summaries, call outcomes, talk time, transfer histories, and chat conversations and results. 
• Twilio: Twilio’s flexible communication platform enhances customer service operations. Its comprehensive analytics functions allow companies to monitor metrics such as call traffic, voice calls, customer data and response times, providing insight into service performance. Additionally, Twilio provides multichannel support so customers can reach businesses through their preferred methods. Our Twilio Flex review examines the platform’s live-chat features, which include real-time route optimization and customizable workflows to streamline interactions.

Elevate your customer service to a luxurious level

Luxury-level customer service isn’t confined to high-end brands. By adopting the right practices, small businesses can create exceptional customer experiences that foster loyalty and satisfaction. Remember, it’s the quality of interactions, attentiveness to customer needs and continuous improvement that set luxury service apart. Implement these strategies, and watch your customer relationships thrive.

Amanda Clark contributed to this article.