Turning Your Customer Service Into a Profit

A moment of truth is when it really counts to impress someone with your service. Any idea what yours are? Take time to list them out – start by looking at when your business interacts with your prospects / customers. As soon as you have this list you’ll start to see areas which are not impressing and are there for failing the moment of truth test with your customer or prospect. This is where you are losing business.

Let’s take a step back… Want to know why your customers leave you?

• 1% due to death
• 3% due to a house or job move
• 5% due to buying from a friend – or someone they have a better relationship with
• 9% are buying from a competitor
• 14% are due to getting a better price or even a better product
• 68% due to perceived indifference.

That means 68% leave because they perceive your business does not care about them or their needs. The efforts of your competitors are hardly making a dent in comparison at just 9% and 14% - add the 5% that leave due to buying from a friend to the 68% and there stands just one thing to change in your business. Your business needs to not only care but been seen to give a damn for their business.

So what types of customers do you have? You’ll have the same 4 types as everyone else; these are:

• The Owners: these customers need serving by the business by providing an acceptable level of profits
• The Team: the business needs to provide these with recognition, rewards and a wage.
• The Suppliers: paying the bills is the prime need for these
• The Customers: meeting their needs

Now these 4 types may have come as a bit of a surprise – after all most of us only think if customers of our business being the last type – and let’s face it that’s where we focus a lot of our time (hopefully) BUT – the exact same strategies I’m going to tell you about for them apply to the other 3 also – so why not use them too?

First up I want you to start thinking of every customer as having an Emotional Bank Account in which your business needs to make deposits and withdrawals. As with any bank account you cannot start your relationship with a withdrawal – you need to start with a deposit. This could, for instance, be a deposit of goodwill, trust, price offers, a job offer, some valuable yet free information, and so on, then and only then once you have built up the a positive balance can you start making withdrawals; such as Sales. Of course you need to keep topping the account up to keep making withdrawals. Have a look again at the interaction with your customers and see where you can start making deposits – maybe some additional product for past customers at a special price, or a critical non essential – such as an anniversary card.

All of the post so far is about ‘customer’ now let’s take some time to look at the second word in ‘Customer Service’. Service, but in particular Customer Service is about Satisfaction. Do you leave your customers completely satisfied – even more so if they have complained? Two things to understand at this point:

1. The customer expects to be satisfied at the end of their interaction with you – why else would they deal with you? They have a need – they want it satisfied.
2. Understanding what EXACTLY their expectation is gives you a very powerful sales and marketing benefits to use

Focusing on point 1 above… they’ve gone to the trouble of finding out which business can satisfy their need and they have done something about it – gone to your website, phoned you or travelled to your business. What happens next will determine the lasting impression they have of your business… they are expecting satisfaction BUT will tell others about your business if they get MORE than they expected, so go on, give them something to talk about.

This is the first step in creating great relationships, opening with a positive balance in the emotional bank account and becoming great referrers of new customers to your business.

Real Customer Service is about being pro-active – not waiting till it all goes bang. Think about the ways and means of taking care of your customers think of what you can do to build a relationship, ask your team about what you can do – brainstorm. Think outside of the box. This is not a one off – you have to always be finding new ways to impress.

Winning Customer Service in three steps…

Step 1. Be Consistent. Whenever they visit your service needs to consistently and systematically pass their expectations every time they buy from you. Consistency also build trust.

Step 2. Make it Easy To Buy From You. Knowing what to expect each time they return also helps make it easy to buy from you – I’m talking about how you sell but also the relationship you build – make it strong so it’s ‘easy’ to buy from you

Step 3. Introduce the WOW. Only when you have step 1 & 2 in place can you truly deliver the wow factor. To do get a wow by going beyond their expectations you need a plan, it’ll need to cover the at least the following:

• ID your ideal customers. The ones you want the most.
• Find out what your ideal customers would regard as excellent customer service – this is your ideal customers ‘vision’ of what they want customer service to be like
• Create your Customer Service ‘best of vision’. What does the ideal look like?
• Decide what promises you are going to make (something you can do right each and every time). My ideal is to under promise and over deliver
• Get your team looking at ideas on how to deliver the vision
• ABC-U? Always Be Checking Up. Make sure you are delivering
• As you improve your customer service – move the goal posts – keep improving

And remember my two golden rules…

1. Always give your customers more than they expect
2. Always smile

Your prospects and customers are prepared to pay for service – when it’s service they desire. Keep the service good they will stay and tell others, keep it poor and they will leave, talk negative about your business and will be hard to get back.

In summary – make sure you leave with them smiling.

Regards

Peter