How do you keep your customers happy?
Many business people hold the belief that to keep a customer happy means merely delivering on your promises to them.
Sadly, THAT ALONE is not enough to put a smile on most customers’ faces these days. To CONSISTENTLY keep our customers smiling, we need to be delivering something over and above what they are expecting from us.
You’ve probably all heard the saying “under promise and over deliver”. Well, this is the exact principle we need to constantly employ in our businesses to move our customers from a position of feeling NEUTRAL about our business, to feeling GREAT about it.
As a good business operator, we must have a clear understanding of the expectations that our customers hold - about our business, our industry and our selves. Only when we fully appreciate the bar they have set in their minds can we establish a powerful customer service strategy that has the ability to over deliver.
But how are customer expectations are formed? How do we know the bar that HAS been set for us by our customers?
Think about the promises you make to your customers. Are they expressly made promises or are they implied? Service guarantees such as "money back if not 100% satisfied" or "leave a message and I will call you back by close of business today" are easy enough to interpret. WE are in control of those promises. WE set those expectations in our customers minds.
But what about unspoken promises, made to your customers with no awareness on your part? It's a difficult concept to grasp, isn't it? How do we stack up when comparing customer service performance against an entirely unknown standard? Well, let's take a look at a couple of examples.
When you make an appointment with a client to meet them at a particular time, could that be viewed as an implied promise that you will be there on time? Is it creating an expectation in your customer's mind? You bet it is! But how often do we think of this as we run 5 - 10 minutes late for appointments?
When you tell a potential client that you will get them a quote, are you specific in explaining when you will get it to them? If not, how do you know what their expectation is and how will you know if you have succeeded in satisfying that expectation?
Customer service involves setting standards in your business that you can confidently deliver upon, and communicating them to your customers. It also involves injecting a range of little extras along their customer journey that will put a smile on their faces.
Be careful though, as people can make quite easily turn a one off surprise into a standard expectation if we're not careful in the way we position it.
A good example of this is a one off corporate luncheon that you might host to thank your very best clients for their loyal support over the years. If everyone has a great time at the event, this little unexpected "extra" hits the mark. Everyone is feeling the love, the client/supplier relationship shifts up a notch and you score big brownie points. But as they say goodbye, you can be sure that a few of them will be saying "this was great, see you next year". They already have an expectation that the event will be repeated again the following year.
So what happens if you go ahead and do it again the following year? The surprise will have waned a little, the hit won't be as great, the impact not as high. And the real kicker is that at the end of the second luncheon, almost everyone in that room will now have the expectation that this luncheon is now an annual event.
Stay tuned though - there's more danger ahead if you make the very brave decision of NOT delivering the lunch a third time around. What started out as an "extra" has been turned into a standard expectation and we have already established what happens when we don't deliver on our customer's expectations. They DO NOT Like it!
So, by all means deliver the extras, but make sure you expressly state your intentions regarding repeat performances, so you keep the clients' expectations right where YOU need them to be!
The message here - understand your customer's expectation, set it yourself where you can, reset it where necessary, and ensure that any little surprises you deliver are welcome but well positioned as "one offs".
Shirlaws Coaching have developed a whole model around Standards and Extras to help their clients understand the simplicity to building and implementing a successful customer service strategy. It is their model that I have based this article on.
As a CHAMBER Partner, Shirlaws provide ongoing support to, and coaching for Sydney Hills BUSINESS CHAMBER. If you need help with YOUR customer service strategy, then I highly recommend having a chat with Simon Askey Doran of Shirlaws as he is an expert on the subject. You can call him on 0412 927 523 or email him on saskeydoran@shirlawscoaching.com. Check out Shirlaws website http://www.shirlawscoaching.com/
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