Customer service trumps all else. Welcome to episode 21 of the Marketing For Owners podcast. My name as usual is Jon Butt. It always is! Customer service is the bane of my life.
I can’t abide customer service issues.
My staff is given the powers to make any decision they want to ensure the customer is happy. I don’t care what it is! I don’t care if they’re out of guarantee. We’ll always honour a guarantee, even a year later. Doesn’t matter to me!
Think about it, when you stay at a hotel on holiday, if it’s bad when you get back, don’t you tell people how bad the hotel was? Do you think any of those people are going to go and book that hotel?
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When you get back, and the hotel was pretty much as you expected, do you tell many people? No, not so many.
But do you think it’s good to have customers talking badly about you?
Have you heard of the statistic where if they get good customer service, two out of ten will tell their friends? If they get bad customer service, then something like six out of ten will tell their friends.
Now have you ever stayed in a posh hotel, a really top notch one? How do they look after you? If you ring down, is anything too much trouble?
Wouldn’t you like your service to be like that?
Do you think their staff is particularly talented or special or there’s something different about them? Would you think that’s training and policy?
Exactly! It comes from the top.
We have a company in the UK called Ryanair that is a “budget airline”. They treat people badly but their chairman seems to think that it’s part of the expectation and he thinks it’s fun and “What do the customers expect for the money?”
I say why can’t he just tell his people to be nice? What’s the difference? It doesn’t cost anything.
The Ritz Carlton Hotel chain have one of the best customer service programs going as you’d expect for an expensive hotel but, get this, every member of staff, I mean every member of staff is given the allowance to give up to $2000 worth of something to a customer that’s not happy to make them happy.
Now, you’re going to say, “You’ve got to be kidding”. However, it’s in the training. It’s because they understand “the why”. The staff understands how important it is and in all the twenty years or something they’ve had that policy, no member of staff has ever, ever given away $2000.
They don’t have to because their service levels are great because it’s from the top. It’s down to the boss.
Think about it. Ratings on Yelp! Ratings on Google! You can’t get rid of them once they’re there.
It’s no good phoning the new customer afterwards. Once they’re there, they’re there. Just make sure those ratings are going to be great.
When you buy on Amazon, do you look at the ratings and see what everyone else thinks about it? I do! Everyone does! It’s the way of the world.
Young people today, when they want to buy something, they just ask all the friends on social media. And they ask “What do you recommend?” No one’s going to recommend something that’s bad. Think about it!
Again customer service trumps all else. No excuses.
Empower your staff so they don’t have to ask you. Tell your staff, “What would you do if it was your company, if it was your money?”
Give them the power that makes them see it from your point of view.
Book For The Week
This week’s book is fantastic (as they all are!). It’s called Book Yourself Solid and is written by a guy called Michael Port. Michael used to be an actor. He’s actually been on TV on things you’ve probably seen.
Book Yourself Solid is a full system, as you can imagine. If you’re going to build a business you want to be booked solid. So it teaches you how to do it everything; marketing, social media, website, how to position yourself, how to speak, absolutely everything you would need to know.
I strongly recommend you go give it a read.
Another one worth mentioning is our sponsor, Rainmaker. Rainmaker sponsor the podcast but they also power our website. I recommend you go see them.
That’s it for another episode. See you soon.
