Andrew Griffiths Blog

A business that is not absolutely committed to its customers is one that is going to get into big trouble somewhere down the line. When times get tough and the customers start to question their relationship with the business, the strength or fragility of this bond will soon become apparent.

When we start our businesses we bend over backwards to meet our customers expectations and exceed them anyway possible. Nothing is too much trouble and the slightest hint of an unhappy customer has us begging for forgiveness (well not quite but you know what I mean I hope).

But over time the business grows. The person who started the business and had such a passion for their customers now spends less time dealing face to face with the customers because they have to their staff and all of the other aspects of running the business. As time goes on, they don’t even leave the back office.

The only time they hear from a customer is when there is a problem so they start to really dislike their customers who seem to do nothing but disturb them with complaints. Anyone in this place needs to change their business or their attitude dramatically.

 Our staff mirror our actions and our attitudes. If we have bad attitudes towards our customers they will pick up on this in a second. I stand in shops waiting to be served and watch the staff. I can tell in a second when the owner has lost their passion for the business and the customers because I can see it and hear it in the voice of their staff.

As the business owner, you are the business barometer. Everyone adjust their mood and their attitude based on yours. Clearly an issue if you are not in a positive, customer service focused state of mind.

Customers are everything to a business. We should all be looking for ways to service them better, to listen to what they need, to build strong relationships and to do whatever we can to make life easier for our customers.

Some businesses seem to go out of their way to make every interaction hard. It’s hard to find the business, then its hard to park, it is cluttered and dirty inside, nothing has a price on it, they have one bored staff member behind the counter and five customers waiting to be served, then when you get to the counter they say that they don’t accept credit cards and so on. More businesses make it hard to buy from them than we realise.

There are many great books, websites and training services that show how to improve your overall level of customer service, however, non of it will work if the person who owns the business isn’t committed to treating their customers as the number one priority every single day of the year.

Losing a customer over a few cents is such a waste that it is hard to believe that it happens. Unfortunately it does happen, and it happens a lot. When running your own business so much time is spent trying to attract new customers that you need to be certain that your not losing customers unnecessarily.

I recently hired a DVD at the local video shop. When I arrived home it was late at night and I decided that I would curl up in front of the television and watch the movie.  I opened the box and found out that they had put the wrong DVD in the case. Thoroughly disgusted I went to bed and the next day I returned the movie asking for a refund. A very gruff and very young lady served me and she stated that I should have rung them immediately to say that the movie was the wrong one. Why I should have done this I am not sure but apparently it was “store policy”. She said that they would have to charge me for the movie because I could have watched it (so now I am a liar as well as a difficult customer).

This went on for a while and finally I pointed out the fact that it would have made no difference whatsoever if I rang the night before because I most certainly was not going to get in my car and drive back to the video store in the middle of the night to change the movie that they had got wrong in the first place. With more huffing and puffing I was finally asked what it was I expected her to do.

I said that I don’t want to pay for the wrong movie. She grudgingly accepted this, we glared at each other and I snarled a little. Then I asked her to look up my record to see how many videos I had hired since being a member. With some more huffing and puffing she complied and told me that I had rented over 1000 videos (obviously too much time on my hands). This equated to almost $6000 in video hire charges and goodness knows how many drinks and packets of late night chips. I vowed never to return to that business and I haven’t.

So instead of apologising, giving me a free video hire and generally placating an upset customer one shop assistant has cost that business a good customers.  Where is the logic in this? I don’t even blame the girl that served me -  I blame the business manager for having such regimented and clearly ridiculous rules. 

There are many businesses out there losing customers every day because of the “rules” that don’t allow for logic. We all need to be careful about upsetting customers and more importantly losing them because of silly rules. I see this happening a lot and now more than ever, we need to do what we can to keep our customers most importantly keep them happy. 

Don’t lose perspective of the long term value of your customers and if there is a showdown over a few lousy cents be prepared to compromise. 

I talk about coffee shops a lot. There are two reasons - the first is that I spend a lot of time scribbling notes furiously in coffee shops and the second is that they often produce the best customer service anecdotes that can be applied to virtually every other kind of business.

I visited a coffee shop recently that just couldn’t seem to get it right. The shop itself was fabulous, the location was great and even the coffee was good but when you talk customer service, they had absolutely no idea. To order you coffee you had to stand in a line that moved at a snails pace. The staff working the till had to punch so many buttons that I thought they must have been writing a novel. Then after they have taken your order you have to wait by the counter with the rest of the crowd, for your coffee. The saddest part is that there is no way to know whose order is whose. They will put a cappuccino on the counter and yell out - “one cappuccino”. Of course, everyone there ordered one cappuccino so who owns this one?

The whole process is a mess. People are arguing, the staff have no idea whose order is whose and the owner sits at a table and watches to whole dilemma  unfold, all day, every day. Who is ever going to go back to the counter and order a second coffee in the midst of this mess? How simple would it be to give people a number? I still don’t understand the reasoning behind this coffee shop’s service philosophy but it is a great way to learn what not to do.

This business made it really hard to make a purchase. Many businesses follow the inadvertent process of putting as many obstacles in front of their customers as they can to eliminate them from buying products. Sometimes it is a cluttered counter, sometimes it is making it a prerequisite that you purchase a minimum amount of a product (a ten year supply). Perhaps you have to sit on the end of telephone for half an hour for the privilege of handing over your money or is it simply too complicated for a customer to simply get served.

Whatever the reason, a key to customer service is to remove all obstacles that make it harder for your customers to make a purchase with your business.  Every step of the buying process should be as smooth as silk and this is the way to start the overall process of improvement - break your entire customer interaction into pieces and look for ways to speed up, fix, change, make better and seriously improve each piece. 

The results of doing this are amazing. I have no doubt that coffee shop I mentioned could have easily increased its turnover by 30-40% simply be introducing better systems and doing what was easier for the customers not what was easier for the business owner. 

In this modern world there are no shortages when it comes to choice. We will persevere for a couple of times with a business, perhaps, but then we will quietly slip away never to return.