How is your business handling all the current economic doom and gloom?
Are you looking to move inventory by offering sales and discounts? Are you cutting costs, letting people go? Are you focusing on improving customer service?
If you say “yes” to the first two questions but something like “what, are you kidding” when it comes to customer service, you may be missing the boat, a rather large boat at that.
When times get tough it is only natural to look inward and focus on what can be done to minimize the impact. But in good times and bad, we need to keep our eye on the fact that THE single most important person in our business is our customer. Study after study in book after book confirm that those companies that are truly customer service focused and oriented consistently outperform those companies that are not customer service focused.
As customers become more conservative in their purchasing decisions they are going to want to take their business where they feel good. That may be in the form of confidence in the quality of the product or service, or a return or warranty policy that will cover any product issues, or that a shipment will arrive on time and in good condition, or that any problems will be resolved quickly and to their satisfaction. It may simply mean a place where there is a friendly person or voice on the phone to help them out. In other words, they will gravitate to those businesses that offer superior customer service.
Now is a great time to focus on improving your customer service and on developing customer loyalty. People have enough to worry about without adding the extra headache of dealing with a place that offers poor customer service. Not only that, sooner or later the economy will turn around and your loyal customers of today will be your loyal customers of tomorrow. Also, loyal customers are much more likely to recommend you to others which in turn gives you the chance to nurture more loyal customers.
Developing a true customer service orientation within a company starts with strong leadership that makes customer focus part of a well defined and understood mission statement; strong leadership that sincerely understands and supports the efforts to create a customer focused environment. It means examining the company’s cycle of service and knowing all the “moments of truth” a customer may have. It means being able to honestly assess and make corrections in areas that are weak.
Sometimes businesses are in a do or die situation and have no choice but to cut personnel. If you find yourself in that position, look closely to make sure that you will not also be forced to cut customer service. Remember, the customer you lose today will not be a customer tomorrow.
If times are still good for you and your business environment is going strong it is just as important to keep or develop a true customer service focus. Whatever the economic times, it still costs between 5-8 times more to get a new customer as to keep an existing customer.
Want to know more about how to take your customer service to the next level? Need to learn what your cycle of service is or what a customer’s moments of truth are? Need to have staff that can deal with a difficult customer? Then attend the GoldCore workshop, “Customer Service: A Strategic Advantage” on Thurs. Oct. 16th. For more information on this valuable workshop, follow this link to our website or call 770-813-0488.
No comments yet
Comments feed for this article