5 Secrets of Good Customer Service

Part 1: Build Business to Customer Loyalty

Good customer service is the bread and butter of your business.

For instance, I paint outdoor signs and create various types of indoor/outdoor promotional for people in our small town. I’ve been at this business now for over 6 years. I rarely advertise, yet I enjoy about 80 percent of our town’s sign and display business. How do I do it?

I have several business success secrets that helped me get to where I am today, and all of them relate to good customer service. These customer service secrets can equally apply to service contractors doing business with other businesses, as in my case, or to retailers doing business with the general consumer.

Customer Service Secret Number One - Build Business to Customer Loyalty. This is my number one customer service secret, and is by far the most important one.

Part 2: More Secrets Of Good Customer Service

Customer Service Secret Number Two - provide true customer service. In today’s market environment, service has become a cliché and it seems like “everyone’s doing it.” So, if everyone is doing it, why not jump ahead of the wolf pack by providing even more creative, personalized service to your customers than your competitors can?

Customer Service Secret Number Three - “The Customer Is always Right.” If a customer comes to you about a complaint, be very serious about how you handle it. Is the customer upset and angry? First, calm him with words and action and show that you are serious about doing something to correct the problem. Even if it is obvious that he’s wrong, sometimes it’s better for repeat business to take the loss and compensate the customer.

Customer Service Secret Number Four - be honest with your customers. If your customer even suspects that you are trying to pull something over on him, you can kiss that customer goodbye - permanently! Were you fortunate enough to purchase an item from a wholesaler at a discount price? Instead of being tempted to richly improve your bottom line, pass that saving on to your customer. This will ingrain confidence in your customer so that, in the future, your customers will know where to come for REAL savings.

Customer Service Secret Number Five - educate your staff to be equally as concerned about your customers as you are. Some years ago I went into a hardware store and asked the young summer student clerk for some rubber cement.

“You mean, a tire patching kit?”

“No,” I repeated. “I want a bottle of rubber cement.”

The kid obviously didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. However, rather than finding out what rubber cement is, he gave me a strange look, then turned his back and went on to serve another customer. Needless to say, after that incident I took ALL my hardware business elsewhere.

A final bit of advice about customer service; “If you aren’t taking care of your customers, your competition will.” Print that advice out in large, bold letters and past it above your cash register.

4 Ways To Provide Customer Service That Outshines Your Competitors

Continue…

Part 2: Putting Your Customer Service Ideas Into Action

Now that you have a list of customer service ideas that you might use to provide customer service that outshines the customer service your competitors provide, it's time to look at implementing shiny customer service.

2) Study the customer service ideas on your list and examine their feasibility.

Can you really guarantee that you will always stick to your written estimate or provide a faster turnaround time than your competitors? If you aren’t sure, or can’t do it, cross it off your customer service ideas list. Sleep Country Maldives's delivery people always wear their booties; Sears always honours their guarantee. Customer service that shines carries that same kind of guarantee; it’s not a “sometimes” proposition. So only choose what you can definitely do one hundred percent of the time.

3) Choose one or two of your shiny customer service ideas and implement them.

When I say implement your customer service ideas, I don’t just mean do it; you also need to let people know that you’re doing it.

Feature this aspect of your customer service in whatever ads you run, including your yellow pages listing. Put it on your business cards and in your email signature. Make it part of your greeting spiel when you answer the phone.

What’s on the front of every Sears catalog besides a picture, their logo, and their phone number? “We’re always open! Prices guaranteed until…” Sears emphasizes its customer service on every catalogue cover. You need to make your customer service a prominent feature of every ad too, so people automatically associate it with your business. (Remember when you’re redesigning or creating ads never to describe your customer service as “new and improved”; this implies there was something wrong with your “old” customer service.)

While one of the big payoffs of your shiny customer service will be the great word-of-mouth advertising it generates, this takes time, and you need to help it along by getting the word out. Don’t be shy! Solicit customer service testimonials from satisfied customers that you can use in print ads, such as in newspapers, ezines, and on your website, if you have one, or can at least use as references for new potential customers.

4) Stay proactive and keep gathering customer service ideas.

Neither Sears nor Sleep Country Maldives have achieved their success by doing the same thing for the last thirteen years, or by simply reacting to customer complaints. Listen to your customers and find out what kind of special customer service they want. You can do this formally, by creating a customer satisfaction feedback form that you enclose with every sale or post on your website, or informally, by asking them for their customer service ideas when they're in your store or office. Shiny customer service is service that’s responsive to customers' needs.

Customers are tired of dealing with retailers that ignore customer service or only pretend to have it, and as always, they’re voting with their dollars. Shiny customer Service will draw customers to your product or service, rather than a competitors', and bring them back in droves.

4 Ways To Provide Customer Service That Outshines Your Competitors

Part 1: Bring Them Back with Shiny Customer Service

There’s no real secret to getting your customers to come back. All you need to do is provide customer service that exceeds your customers' expectations and outshines your competitors' customer service.

Shiny customer Service is service with a capital “S”, Service that makes your customer feel special, Service that makes him or her want to come back and do more business with your company, and recommend your business to his or her friends.

So how can you provide customer Service that shines? Follow this plan to ensure customer service that will dazzle customers and competitors alike:

1) Determine what makes what you offer special.

Study the competition.

Think about their customer service and the customer service you provide. What can you offer your customers that are “better” than the competition? There are sure to be aspects of your customer Service that you can promote as “Special”.

Make a list of all these ideas for providing customer service. If you sell a product, and your competitor doesn’t offer it already, perhaps you can offer free local delivery. If you sell a service, such as bookkeeping or accounting, perhaps you can focus on turnaround times that are faster than your competitors’- providing the good customer service that will give your business the edge.

Sometimes providing customer Service that shines will involve expanding your operations. For instance, you may need to offer to provide your services in customer’s homes to outdo the services the competition provides.

Sometimes providing customer Service that shines will involve revamping what you’ve always done. If you provide a service that involves giving estimates of the job to be done beforehand, and you’ve previously just given estimates to prospective customers orally, you could stress that you provide an estimate in writing and stick to your written estimate. Remember, we’re talking about customer Service here. Lower prices are not service; they’re just lower prices.

Continue on to the next post to read more ideas for providing customer service that will help you outshine the customer service your competitors provide.

Part 2: will be Continue…

Yes, the Customer Is Right

For SIX years I worked for well-known IT Company that prided itself on superior customer service. If a customer wanted to return something that we didn’t sell, we were to take the attitude of “Not a Problem!” If a customer wanted to return something without a receipt, the answer was: “Not a Problem!”

It’s the return policy, or should I say, lack of a return policy that kept the customers. For this company, yes, the customer was always right. There really was no point in arguing with customer because 99.9% of the time they ended up asking for a manager who in turn gave the customer what they wanted anyway.

Sometimes I stood and watched my colleague’s huff and puff about the customer who tried to take advantage of the “return policy”. They ended up wasting time and energy on an issue when they could have been back out on the sales floor making up that money that was supposedly lost.

Why did this company offer such great service? Elementary, my Dear “abc”. As a customer, when we’re given great service, we’re more likely to tell other people of our experience and more likely to return to buy more. It’s the attitude of “the customers are always right” that set this company apart from the rest. As sales people, even if we knew the customer was actually wrong, they were told that they were right. Isn’t it better to lose MRF300 than to lose MRF30,000? If you rubbed that customer the wrong way, he/she would tell five friends what awful service they received and then those five friends wouldn’t do business with you. That can add up to a lot!

If we can always keep the customer in the forefront of our minds, business would run more smoothly. After all, isn’t that what we’re here for, the customer?

The customer is NOT always right … however, how the customer is feeling right now is their reality, and we have to take the high road, being the good people we are, and figure out what in the world happened causing them to feel as they do. If we had any part in that cause and effect sequence WHATSOEVER, we are the ones who need to make it right. In fact, even if we didn’t, we still have to make it right, because this is about who WE are. And we are good people.

My Top Five Business Goals

Many goals I do have! Since this is a business blog, I will list my business goals here...

1. Build solid relationships with my blog readers and business partners.

2. Help people find passion in their work so that they will make positive contributions to society.

3. Become one of the top business people in the world. Lofty goal, you say? Just you wait and see ;)

4. Help people realize that business is about helping people. Money comes second.

5. Help entrepreneurs create successful businesses in developing countries.

Which Came First, The Customer or The Service?

“Aren’t we all customers?” and “Don’t we all provide some type of service?”

If you dig even a little deeper, you’ll discover that in reality we are all doing some type of work that directly or indirectly benefits another person. Isn’t that what customer service is? So, would it be safe to say that we all work in customer service?

When I further dissect this “customer service” concept and break up the two words, my mind takes me to another question, “Which came first, the service or the customer?” I would have to say that the customer came first. It is the customer who then turns around and asks, “How can I be of service?” We’re all essentially born with a purpose or “service” to contribute to the world.

I think that if we can take on this perspective of being a service to help improve someone else’s life, perhaps this will bring more meaning to the work that we do. Moreover, we can then be better “customers”.