Have you ever been into a business where they seem to read your mind? Just as you think 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 twinkle in his eye.

These businesses are excellent but unfortunately, they are few and far between. 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 them struggling to get seated and they have to ask the staff for this and for that, like they are the first family to ever dine in this restaurant.

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

Rather than waiting for the customer to make their requests try to think one step ahead of the customer as often as you can. If they have a lot of packages ask them if they would like them delivered or if they would like help taking them out to their car. If the customer is moving house and you are the removalists offer to give the customer a printed inventory of their products for the insurance company or offer to call the customers the day before the furniture will arrive.

If you run a clothing shop and a customer buys some clothes that will need modification offer to have the modifications done before the customers asks if you can do it.

Wherever possible try to predict your customers needs and make suggestions or recommendations that will prove useful to the customers.

Related items

• Smart businesses are always one step ahead of their customers…
• A powerful story that will change the way anyone looks at customer service.
• We all need to spend more time on the front…
• The basics are no longer basic, so lets start at the beginning
• Managing Expectations – master this and your business will never look back.

Confidence is a tough one. Some people seem to have it and some people just don’t. Communication skills can be built over time, however for a lot of people it is a lifelong challenge. Being confident enough to talk to customers doesn’t mean that you have to be able to sit down and have a four hour conversation about the effect of global warming, it simply means that you are confident enough to have an interaction with a customer over something as simple as did they enjoy the meal that they just had?

Most of the time customers are happy to have a bit of chit chat and whilst it is generally only small talk, it all collectively goes into creating the customer experience and it allows them to make the decision on whether or not they enjoyed this particular shopping experience.

If you find that you have difficulties communicating with customers try doing a few personal development courses (Toast Masters is a perfect one). There are a lot offered and they deal with areas such as: starting a conversation, overcoming awkward moments, thinking of topics to talk about, use of voice inflection and many more new and innovative areas.

Another interesting point to note here is that many people feel that they are not confident when it comes to talking to people, but to other people observing them they look incredibly confident and very effective communicators. I always remember an old friend of mine passing on some words of wisdom “ What you perceive as your greatest weakness other people perceive as your greatest strength”.

Related items

• Smart businesses are always one step ahead of their customers…
• A powerful story that will change the way anyone looks at customer service.
• We all need to spend more time on the front…
• The basics are no longer basic, so lets start at the beginning
• Managing Expectations – master this and your business will never look back.

This is a beauty. We have all walked into a lift to be greeted by the waft of someone else’s body odour. Very disturbing to say the least. A recent study showed that if there was one thing that most people would like tradesmen to improve it was their personal hygiene – don’t come to my place and stink it up.

There is a great story that I came across a few years ago. There had been a number of complaints about the level of hygiene of taxi drivers in this particular city. A national men’s fragrance company decided to do a promotion where they gave every driver a bottle of after shave and deodorant to be kept in the taxis and to be used throughout the day (sparingly to avoid overcompensation). The promotion was a huge success and everyone was happy. Both companies got great national press coverage and the customers could once again get into taxis without holding their noses.

Personal hygiene is a key consideration when it comes to customer service. Of course if you are a telemarketer it is of less importance but stop and have a think about the person sitting next to you sharing your telemarketing booth.

If you work with food personal hygiene is huge. It can be hard to discuss a personal subject like this and I would suggest that you make your expectations very clear when employing staff. Put it in writing and make sure that the new employee is very aware of how they need to be groomed.
An area that is often harder to break through, is when the actual business owner has a personal hygiene problem. There have been a quite a few times when I have had to sit down a business owner and suggest that the best way that they could increase the number of customers coming to their business is to start using deodorant. Some people take it well – others don’t.

Once again it is all about respect. By taking the time to show that you care about your personal hygiene you are showing the customers that you take your job seriously. By association you are taking them seriously.

Related items

• Smart businesses are always one step ahead of their customers…
• A powerful story that will change the way anyone looks at customer service.
• We all need to spend more time on the front…
• The basics are no longer basic, so lets start at the beginning
• Managing Expectations – master this and your business will never look back.

Have you ever gone into a restaurant for a quiet meal only to find that the staff have the stereo pounding loud music to every corner of the business? Background noise can be very enjoyable, but loud intrusive noise can be a real distraction for customers.

There has been a lot of research done on the effects of music on customers. In restaurants there is a common theme that states “eat to the beat”. If you want your customers to eat fast and move on, you have music with a faster beat. If you want them to take their time, perhaps to buy more, play music with a slow beat. On a similar basis, classical music gives the subconscious impression that a business is expensive (high quality, but expensive). So playing the blues could have a greater impact on your bottom line than you might ever have known.

When it comes to playing music in your business there are two main issues – the type of music and the volume of the music. When it comes to the type of music, play something that is indicative of your business. This theory goes out the door when you leave a member of staff in charge of your new age book store which works well with Enya playing in the background. Sadly, your staff member prefers AC/DC, played loudly. If you notice that sales drop on a particular shift check this out as a possible reason.

The same goes with the volume. Set the volume and if you are not sure if it is too loud, ask your customers. The music should not interfere with the conversation. After all, unless you own a music shop, your customers are not coming in to buy the music. In fact loud music is very disrespectful to your customers, it is sending the message that “we want the music loud because we enjoy it, and you will have to live with it or go elsewhere”.

Show your customers that you appreciate their business and that you respect them by being mindful of the type of music that you play in your business and the volume of the music that you play.

Related items

• Smart businesses are always one step ahead of their customers…
• A powerful story that will change the way anyone looks at customer service.
• We all need to spend more time on the front…
• The basics are no longer basic, so lets start at the beginning
• Managing Expectations – master this and your business will never look back.