In a recent training session, a group of employees shared with me reasons why they were not meeting their sales goals. They said their territory is too small, quota is too high, the company doesn’t advertise enough, bad economy, businesses have cut their budgets, prospects lie and won’t return phone calls…
Companies work long and hard to give a respectable name and personality to their product/service. They spend untold millions of dollars to market and sell it to the public. So it is a sad day when broken promises tarnish the brand/reputation of a business. For example, when the telephone service provider brags that customer service is their first priority and the consumer’s service is interrupted/stopped but the support representative is not empowered to “go off script” to try to solve the problem but explains that for a fee, a technician can come out between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. to fix it. It is no surprise that the consumer is left with feelings of frustration and anger.
Is your customer loyalty program updated and ready for implementation? Make sure you don’t confuse a loyalty program with a marketing strategy. How can you tell the difference? If you take away the “rewards/perks” and lose customers, that is a marketing strategy. Positive experiences is what keep customers coming back.
Evolve a system that recognizes when return customers enter your website or building that sends a message to their mobile phone or other device acknowledging them and making them feel appreciated. Here’s an example: “Hi Samantha! Congratulations on your 7th visit to Boxes and Bins. We have a gift waiting for you and need to know the best way to deliver it to you. Let us know and we’ll get it right over to you.”
It takes a lot of shifts and gears to run a successful company. A predominant gear of any profitable business is the delivery of red carpet customer service to every customer every time. Customers want businesses to be proactive, anticipate and fulfill their needs within a reasonable timeframe. This statement presents a strong argument for businesses to focus on a philosophy to deliver the best service rather than a customer service policy.
With frequent regularity, someone makes a point to tell me that the concept of delivering exceptional customer service “is no big deal because common sense tells anybody how to make customers happy” and yet many of us have told stories to friends and others about awful customer experiences we have endured leading us to jump ship and buy from a competitor.
Businesses that give nothing more than lip service about delivering personal service are missing the mark in understanding how powerful it is to touch clients on an emotional level which makes the difference between the customer forgetting you after the last transaction and becoming a loyal client.
