One of the great advantages that small businesses have over their large corporate cousins, is the ability to form relationships with their customers. In a big firm, people come and people go, accounts are passed around the business, when customers call they rarely speak to the same person twice. Small businesses have a much greater degree of consistency that customers like. It is nice to be able to call the local butcher to place an order and he knows you, he asks about the family and your plans for the weekend.

As small business owners and operators we should all cultivate the building and developing of these relationships. Take a few minutes to get to know your customers and always use the personal touch for little ways that you can make a visit to your business memorable.

Sometimes it can something as simple as walking through the business talking to your customers, perhaps giving out a few treats or offering advice. I like to make my clients tea or coffee when they come in for an appointment. I often have to fight with my receptionist because she feels that she should do this task, but I enjoy making my clients a drink and I know that they appreciate it. It is a very small thing, but it is personal touch.

The personal touch can extend to small notes of thanks if a client or customer has some good fortune or a reason to celebrate. If in the course of a general conversation you find out that it is their birthday shout them a product of some sort on the spot. Be spontaneous and show the customer that you value their business and you value them as a person.

Some people struggle with spontaneity, but if you work at it, you will be surprised at how good it feels and how appreciated small personal gestures are. I also believe that it is important to encourage your staff to be spontaneous.

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.

I think we should take this one step further. CEO’s of every major company should be made to have to experience their business as any normal customer would. Imagine how quickly Jetstar’s service really would change if Jeff Dixon actually had to stand in a line for an hour and see and feel what it’s like to be treated as a Jetstar customer. I think the service would change a lot quicker.

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.

If you want to be truly successful in business, never, ever stop communicating with your customers or most importantly of all, put yourself in their shoes and see what their experience with your business is really like.

Mystery shoppers (or shadow shoppers) are used by more businesses every day to provide an independent evaluation of what the business is doing well and what it could be doing better. They are not witch hunts trying to find the underachieving employee who can then be thrown to the wolves. They are mechanisms for giving an honest appraisal of a business.

Companies that offer mystery shopping services can be found in most cities. Often this is a service provided by marketing companies and training organisations. In more recent times, firms that do nothing but offer customer service evaluations, utilising mystery shoppers as one of their key resources, are being set up.

Ideally no one, not even the business owner, will know when a mystery shopper will be dropping by. They will appear just like any other customer and that is the aim. A short while later a report will be issued and the overall performance of the business can be measured. Periodically the mystery shopper evaluation can be repeated to determine if the business has improved or worsened.

Normally the first mystery shopper is the tough one. It highlights the most glaring weaknesses and it can be quite confronting for the business owners and the staff. Often the initial response is to point the finger and blame, which is not the best course of action. What is needed following this first report is a clear and level-headed plan to rectify any problems and to work at improving the business in any of the areas that need improving.

• Mystery shoppers can be used to evaluate the following:
• service and selling skills offered over the telephone
• how easy the business is to find
• how appealing the entrance is
• general layout of the business
• first impressions of staff and the business overall
• overall cleanliness of the business
• overall ambience of the business (smells, sounds etc.)
• appearance of the staff
• selling skills of the staff
• perceived value for money
• general level of customer service
• response time to internet enquiries
• quality of the products or services sold.

There are many other related and specific areas of any business that can be evaluated and the information is usually valuable. While it can be a little confronting the end result is that your business will have the opportunity to rectify problems that can be losing you customers.

It is also interesting to note that if your staff know you are having regular mystery shoppers they tend to try a little harder as they never quite know if the customer standing in front of them is today’s mystery shopper. Because of this, it is important to share any mystery shopper findings, good and bad, with your staff. Show them the information that is collected and that you are doing something with it.

It takes a strong business to use mystery shoppers—but they are a great way to work out the difference between mediocre and extraordinary. There are no businesses that I can think of that wouldn’t benefit from being mystery shopped. 

Got for it. 

I am a strong believer that we are standing on the precipice of a new age that I like to think of as “The Customer Service Revolution”. It is time where technology is influencing our lives more than at any other period in history, and in all likelihood, these changes have only just begun. The technological advances experienced in the last twenty years are nothing compared to those that will occur in the next twenty years.

Customers literally have a world of choice. I buy products from the other side of the globe on a regular basis. I do work for clients thousands of miles away simply with the click of button. Things happen fast and people expect fast service. Small businesses can look like large corporations with some smart promotional material and a good website.

As business owners and operators we all have access to new and developing markets and new sources of customers. Populations are growing, business opportunities are also growing and in reality, it doesn’t take a lot to start your own business. Pay a few taxes and register a name and bingo – your a business owner and operator. This means that we are all  facing increased competition and I believe that the competition we face today is nothing compared to the competition we will face tomorrow.

There is battle going on for most businesses trying to attract more customers. Market share is a term that has enormous significance, especially for companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi but it is equally important for small businesses. Prices are comparable and becoming closer and closer. Competition has ensured that suppliers have to be highly competitive in their pricing otherwise they will go out of business.

So if there a lots of businesses offering the same products at basically the same prices in the same area  what is left to give one the advantage over the others – the answer is customer service. Those businesses that are smart and sharp enough to make this realisation that the future of their business success lies with increasing levels of customers service, will prosper in coming decades. The revolution has started and see signs of it everyday, in advertising and in the range of customer services being offered by larger organisations.

Consumer backlash to mechanised telephone systems, standing in long queues in banks and other institutions is allowing room for smarter operators to come in and develop their own market share simply by offering better levels of service at the same price. The larger organisations that have forced us to queue in long lines or wait on hold had the right idea – the are trying to get their customers to use the internet or ATM machines, which in reality are much faster and definitely more convenient, but rather than selling the advantages they made it unbearable for us to the do business with them in conventional ways. So we learnt to bank online because we got sick of waiting a line for an hour every other day. We book our fights on the internet because it quicker than being put on hold by the airline for 40 minutes.

The customer of today is time short and demanding. They know that they have choices and they are prepared to take their business elsewhere if the service is sub standard or prices are not competitive.

I believe that more customers are lost from lousy service than poor pricing. People don’t return phone calls, don’t deliver on time, they don’t thank you for your business and so on. And once you lose a customer it is very hard to get them back.

So whilst this is a testing time for many businesses there are enormous upsides. Customer service is one of the easiest areas to improve in any business. Normally it involves changing the way that you do things. If it does involve money it is normally minimal. Improving customer service can begin immediately.

So as the “Customer Service Revolution” continues, your business can either grow stronger and be a leader in your field, or it can be left behind to wallow with the majority of others.

I will be posting a number of blogs with ideas, advice and tips for building extraordinary relationships with our customers over the coming weeks. So stay tuned.

Cheers,

AG