This is an obvious statement, but not as obvious to me, especially when I visit some establishments all over the world.
There are lots of little steps in between that help keep your business at its optimal peak and customer service is one of them.
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I just cannot believe it when people think they are more important than their customers. It must be an ego and pride thing.
The customers give you money. If you didn’t have a customer, customer number one, then you have no business. You might just as well go home.
There will be nothing to pack up and send out, no accounts to track, no telephone calls to make, no customers to talk to.
So when you get a customer, you want to make an effort to impress the heck out of them, and to make them come back.
Have you ever been to a hotel, where they treat you with indifference and then have you been to a hotel where they treat you like you are very special to them?
Where would you rather go to next time? Does it stand out?
What about in a restaurant where they appear to care and where they care genuinely not as if they are reading of a script.
Those of you who live in the UK, why don’t you fly to America, Canada, South Africa, or Australia, and visit restaurants in these areas and see what customer service is really about.
I see what customer service is about, but in England and places like France, it is quite often indifferent.
It’s as if we are inconvenience to the staff. It’s just not the same.
Right down to the fact that in America, when the whole table places their orders, and then when your plates of food come out to you, they actually put them down at the right person and don’t ask who order what.
They put the food at the right places. In England, you pretty much get asked, “Who ordered this entree”?
Why is that? It can’t be that difficult. Other countries are doing it. But customer service is everything.
When your customers call in to talk to you, how polite are you? Not only that, but how polite is the rest of your staff? Have you trained them?
Do you just assume that they are going to be nice to people? Or do you teach them to be nice to people?
If it is business these are your customers. Don’t assume that your staff know how to be nice to customers.
When a customer has a complaint, do you get all tense and instantly go into fighting mode? Do you think to yourself, “Why are they complaining? Customers are so annoying!”
Or do you think, “It’s their money. How about I be nice to them and surprise them?”
So let me give you another perspective — when you complain to a company, say to your phone company — everyone complains to a phone company.
How do they deal with you? How annoyed are they with you?
Before that phone call how annoyed were you? How annoyed were you afterwards?
Have you ever phoned up someone expecting to get a hard time and had them be so kind and so nice, that at the end, you actually like them?
And you had a polite conversation and they gave your money back.
How about you treat your customer that way. Imagine what your customer will think.
You go to all that effort to get that customer and then when they’ve got something to say or something to look up, because sometimes they don’t actually correspond with you directly.
They may look it up. They may look up the information. Their hours may be different than yours.
So the way you treat them is important whether you’re thinking of speaking to them face to face or on the phone.
What if they are in the middle of the night trying to look up the information on your website, or they send an email and you don’t follow up.
You might think someone else will get to that, but no one contacts them.
You don’t know because there is not system. You think someone followed up because you assume your staff know what to do, but there is no system.
The staff think someone else is doing it. Or, why should they? They have too much other stuff to do.
That customer just thinks, “Next time I’ll try someone else. Next time I’ll go back to Amazon”.
There isn’t going to be a next time for you. Remember all that effort. Remember it’s not about you it’s about them. Its their money.
They are giving their hard earned cash to you .
Friendly Follow
Today is Wednesday and it is time for friendly follow. Today, it’s a good one. Let me introduce you to Holly Hanna.
Her twitter handle @holly_hanna and her website is The Work at Home Woman.
She is the work at home woman, but her stuff will apply to men as well.
She has advice on every which way you can work from home –whats good, what’s bad, what’s working, what’s not.
This is a fantastic recourse. She has a lot of followers and they are good and her interaction’s great.
Go and check her out. Have a through look at her blog. I have something good for you tomorrow.
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What does your customer service look like?
