I was struck by a blog post I read recently entitled “7 Golden Rules of Customer Service: Lessons in Customer Service from a Country Store” written by Davis Woodruff. On the surface, the contents of Mr. Woodruff’s post seem rather nostalgic, perhaps not terribly pertinent to today’s modern customer service practitioners. However, reading through his reflections on how his family ran Miss Dots, their country store in rural Alabama, it was hard not to draw parallels to the relationships that made for a successful small local business with those that a successful online customer service community can deliver for virtually any business. Let’s look at Woodruff’s 7 Golden Rules of Customer Service:

1. Be there when your customers need you
2. Know your customers
3. Never let your business systems dictate how you do business
4. Treat your customers like they’re important because they are
5. Quality counts in the product and the service you provide
6. Value is what the customer wants, not just price
7. Appreciate your customers

Virtually any one of these Golden Rules can be applied using an online customer service community, if approached with the same deliberation as a well-run country store. In fact, extending a traditional customer service capability with an online community guided by these simple rules could very well create the customer loyalty, repeat business, insights into customer needs and lower service costs companies require. Here’s how an online customer service community can help companies leverage these simple yet important Golden Rules:

1. Be There When Your Customers Need You

As with Miss Dots Country Store, customers' needs for service do not always match a company’s standard hours of operations. Staffing a contact center around the clock is not always a feasible approach given costs. Having an online customer service community -- where customers can go any time to look for answers, post questions to the community, and engage as needed with company staffed community managers or service agents -- enables a business to extend its hours of operation virtually. Because customers can often find the answers they need from other customers or content posted in the community, the costs to service customers outside the hours of operations is typically far less than staffing a 24/7 contact center.

2. Know Your Customers

As I was reading Mr. Woodruff’s post, I could easily visualize what it must have been like to walk into Miss Dots Country Store and hear his father or mother say, “Hello Bill, how are you today?” Indeed, it's typically this type of intimate customer knowledge -- the employees even know your name -– that often brings customers back to a business. And it’s not uncommon for customers to pay more for this level of familiarity and service. Creating an online customer service community enables a business to create this intimacy and better know its customers. As customers engage in an online customer community -- asking questions, offering suggestions, airing complaints -- a company can develop a much better understanding of their customers than by merely looking at customer satisfaction surveys or holding the occasional focus group. An active online customer service community allows a company to get continuous, real time feedback from customers, generating a deeper understanding of what they need.

3. Never Let Your Business Systems Dictate How You Do Business

Miss Dot’s Country Store could not stock every item a customer wanted when they wanted it and at the price they expected to pay. This is typical for most businesses. What enabled Miss Dot’s to effectively deal with the inherent mismatch between their business systems and customer needs was a conscious flexibility in how they responded to such mismatches. In many cases, the perception of being flexible gave Miss Dots the time it needed to address customer needs when its business systems fell short. Having an online customer service community can give a business this same kind of flexibility. Having service agents engage in an online customer community enables them to quickly identify when an internal business process might not adequately address a customer need, allows agents to engage proactively to address systematic mismatches and offer workarounds or alternative solutions.

4. Treat Your Customers Like They’re Important Because They Are

It’s easy to imagine why Miss Dot’s customers felt important. They were greeted when they came into the store, special requests were accommodated, they likely knew each other and shared similar experiences. How does a typical business make its customers feel the same level of importance when those customers are online and not in a store? Making customer service an integral part of the customer's online experience is a good start, and many companies are migrating more of their customer service capabilities online. However, simply taking inbound emails or posting FAQs to a company website likely does not make customers feel as important and they do when visiting Miss Dots. Creating an online customer service community -- where customers feel they are listened to, where they can engage with other customers, and where the company can actively participate in the community in a one-to-many way -- can dramatically improve the customer experience and make them feel important.

5. Quality Counts In the Product and Service You Provide

There is no doubt lots of research on the implicit value of good customer service. Miss Dots knew the importance and value of good customer service without reading the research reports. The owners bagged groceries, carried them to the car and pumped gas. There are great examples of companies who are clearly differentiating themselves online with great customer service -- Verizon is one example that comes to mind. Verizon has created an online customer service community and turned to its customers to help improve the customer service experience. Having customers who know and use Verizon’s service has actually helped them deliver better service online, and helped Verizon offset the costs of service delivery.

6. Value Is What the Customer Wants, Not Just Price

Miss Dots offered a service to help pay their customers' utility bills. While they charged their customers for this service, it was not an issue. Customers were willing to pay for the value of not having to bother with paying the utility company directly, which was likely not an easy task in rural Alabama. This was more than just a product line extension, it was a valuable service that customers were willing to pay a premium for. Often companies wonder how they can afford to implement a customer service community, and often they are pointed to ROI studies that demonstrate the fast payback of these investments. What is often overlooked is the willingness of customers to pay for service that provides true value. Whether it's paid for explicitly in a premium customer service program or implicitly in the price of the product, it’s clear customers are willing to pay for good customer service.

7. Appreciate Your Customers

Is there any doubt that customers at Miss Dots felt appreciated? Of course, Miss Dots likely had its share of customer complaints along the way, as all businesses do. But I am sure we can all imagine what customers felt like in that small corner store in rural Alabama. We’ve experienced it ourselves in many of the good, well-run companies and stores we frequent. Creating that sense of appreciation online is just as important as it is in person. Big companies like Verizon, Intel as well as smaller companies like Infusionsoft and Marketo are using online customer communities to engage customers, show appreciation and improve customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention.

With his 7 Golden Rules, Mr. Woodruff shows us that making investments in new school approaches does not mean we have to shed old school rules. In fact, embracing what has worked successfully in the past and applying those approaches to modern applications is often the smartest way to go.