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Archive for the ‘Customer Service’ Category

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Smart businesses are always one step ahead of their customers…

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Have you ever been into a business where they seem to read your mind? Just as you have a thought, there is someone ­standing beside you with the exact item that you were thinking about. Or as you stand looking at shelf upon shelf of products, a knight in shining armour comes to your rescue and hands you the exact product that you need, with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye.

These businesses are excellent but, unfortunately, they are few and far between. It seems like they can literally read your mind but of course it’s much simpler than that. If a family enters a restaurant with small children, there is every chance that they will need a little assist­ance, but time after time I see families struggling to get seated, looking around desperately for a high chair, all the while being ignored by the restaurant staff, who act as if it is the first time they have seen a child before.

Smart customer service is all about being one step ahead of your customers—knowing them so well that you can meet their expectations without them even having to tell you what those expectations are.

Rather than waiting for the customer to make their request, try to be one step ahead of them. If they have a lot of packages, ask them if they would like them delivered or if they would like help taking them to their car.

If the customer is moving house and you are the removalists, offer to give them a printed inventory of their belongings for their insurance company or to call them the day before the furniture will arrive.

If you run a clothing shop and a customer buys some clothes that will need alterations, offer to have them done before the customer asks.

If your customers need to do any form of writing to complete a sale, give them a pen before they ask for it.

Not only is this simply a smart way to do business, it’s also a great way to generate some extra income. Friends of mine run a boarding kennel for dogs and they offer a grooming service, for a fee, which means you can pick up Fido all nice and clean after his stay in the Pet Resort.

This sounds like pretty straight forward stuff, but the real problem is that most people serving in a business are more preoccupied with what is going on in their world than they are with what is going on in their customers world. We have to be extra careful that this is not a trap that we all fall into from time to time.

So go ahead, make your customers think you have some kind of mystical power and figure out what they need before they do.

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A powerful story that will change the way anyone looks at customer service.

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

The following short clip is the story of Johnny the Bagger (a young lad who packs groceries for people in a supermarket) and how his simple actions changed a business forever. I would strongly suggest that the next time you get your staff together you watch this movie – here or on the original site – JOHNNY THE BAGGER


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We all need to spend more time on the front…

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

I recently attended a presentation by Tom Potter, one of Australia’s leading entrepreneurs and the founder of Eagle Boys Pizza, a business with 150 franchises across Australia. It was interesting to note that Mr Potter still takes the time to physically work behind the counter in many of the Eagle Boys Pizza franchises he visits. His reasoning: ‘To make certain I never lose touch with our customers.’ A lot of business people could learn a valuable lesson from his example.

Personally I believe that anyone who sits on the board of a large company should spend a prerequisite amount of time dealing with customers at the coal face of the business. Too often large companies lose touch with their customers simply because the people making the decisions are too sheltered from the frontline.

In small business we often spend a lot of our time trying to get away from directly dealing with customers because it can be tough, demanding, frustrating and time consuming. I am certainly not saying that every business owner should spend forty hours a week behind the cash register but I do believe every one of them should be communicating with the customers on a regular basis. Depending on the type of business this may mean making a few phone calls each week, or it may mean physically standing on the floor.

From my experience, those businesses where the final decision maker interacts directly with customers on a regular basis tend to offer far greater levels of customer service than those that do not. Don’t be afraid to talk to your customers and to ask for their opinions—remember without customers your business would be a very lonely place and sadly it seems that too many larger corporations forget this critical point.

What can you do today?
Consider how you can spend more time with customers to get their feedback and opinions on what your business is doing well and what it could do better.

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The basics are no longer basic, so lets start at the beginning

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

I often hear people talking about the basics of customer service, almost in a way that assumes that everybody knows them. From my experience, very few people are really aware of the basics of customer service and, like virtually every business skill, they need to be taught.

You might feel a little bit embarrassed about telling a member of your staff how to answer a telephone or how to greet a customer, but if it’s your business, your main focus needs to be on satisfying your customers and making sure that they have a positive and ideally a memorable experience when doing business with your organisation.

Customer service is a big issue and there is a lot to learn. I believe that you need to start at the beginning and work your way through all of the important topics, one step at a time. As every business has its own unique aspects, it is important to apply the principles of customer service in a way that is appropriate for your specific business. Sometimes it’s difficult for people to make the leap from a theoretical example in a book to a real life, everyday situation that they may face.

One way to teach staff the basics of customer service is to team up new and impressionable staff members with a senior member of the team who can teach them the ropes. Be aware though, that this can also backfire. The experienced member of the team has probably developed their own style, and it’s likely that they are confident, that their product knowledge is good and that they know a lot of your customers well. The new staff member might mirror their behaviour, which may not be appropriate. They may become overly familiar with the customers, they may not learn about their products for themselves but simply repeat what the senior staff member says to customers, or they may learn bad habits and take short cuts without learning and understanding the basics.

For this reason, I suggest that all staff should have a very clear understanding of your basic expectations when it comes to customer service. You should control and monitor this. Once the basics are clear, introduce new and experienced staff members to add a different dimension to fresh and impressionable new staff. The importance of this orientation should be emphasised to the experienced staff members.

It is often a good idea to have your experienced staff sit in on basic orientations as well, as it’s very likely that they have forgotten some of the basics. We all need to be reminded of these from time to time. But get them involved from the perspective that their experience will be of great assistance in the orientation.

The world is changing. What was once a basic or minimum is no longer that clear. If it is your business it is up to you to make sure you set the standards for what the basics are and then do whatever it takes to get all staff on board. The next part of this process is to work on exceeding all expectations – but that is a post for another time.

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Managing Expectations – master this and your business will never look back.

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

If you want to build a hugely successful business, one that has customers rushing in the door, regardless of what industry you’re in, you absolutely, positively have to learn the power of managing expectations.

In the modern business climate customers have become incredibly demanding. I know I certainly have and the reason is that we all have a lot more choice when it comes to where we will spend our hard earned cash. If a business can’t meet my expectations I’ll gladly go elsewhere. Customers have total power and they are most certainly not afraid to use it.

The sad part is that very few businesses are actually able to meet, or ideally exceed, customer expectations. In the past this has been OK, because the customers lower their expectations (dare I mention Telstra, Banks, Airlines), but with the advent of the internet and the resulting increased competition, this flaccid strategy won’t work anymore.

Customers have expectations at every level of their interaction with a business. Some people call these interactions touch points or love points and they may be face to face, over the phone, online or simply via a product that is delivered in the mail. To meet and ideally exceed these expectations we need to know what our customers actually do expect from us and that means we need to communicate with them.

One of the biggest reasons people stop using a particular business is because that business over promises and under delivers. Simple as that.

10 simple ways get more customers than you can ever imagine simply by managing expectations.

1. Talk to your customers and clarify what they expect from you, what are their main issues and what can you possibly do better.

2. Overestimate how long it will take to deliver and then deliver early (for example tell them it will be ready Friday, knowing full well it will be ready on Wednesday).

3. Be proactive – don’t wait for your customers to contact you, always be one step ahead.

4. Don’t be bullied into over promising by demanding customers – it always tends to backfire on you.

5. If you say you will do something, make sure you do it.

6. Review every aspect of your business to determine what things you could to do to exceed your customer’s expectations or even better, get an external person to do the review. A fresh pair of eyes will see what you can’t.

7. Be clear on the information you’re giving your customers. Is it factual and is it accurate?

8. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Customers hate it when they don’t know what is going on and can you blame them?

9. If there is a problem, get to the customer as soon as you can.

10. Go the extra mile. Often the littlest of extra service can totally exceed a customer’s expectation and therefore their experience.

How do we apply this to meeting the expectations of our customers when it comes to doing business online? Well it’s simple – apply the exact same principles. Be clear in your online communication, respond quickly, don’t leave your customers “waiting” in a cyber que and get feedback from them wherever possible.

Have an external company review your site for customer expectation management. Have your business mystery shopped – online, face-to-face, over the phone, it doesn’t matter. Use SMS to update clients or pass on short, but informative messages where possible. This is all sending a very clear message that you’re making an effort to meet and exceed your customer’s expectations and they will appreciate it.

Master this and you will never, ever struggle in business because the bush telegraph will keep as many customers coming your way as you want.


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