It’s obvious isn’t it? We should care about our customers and yet.. how many times do you feel like tearing your hair out or wringing someone’s neck because they didn’t treat you well as a customer or potential customer ? How many times have you said recently “I won’t be going there again” ?
I’m sure as consumers we have way too many examples of a lack of customer care and I’m equally sure this is because so many firms don’t see the need to care about their customers and so don’t institute a customer care culture – hiring poeple who care inately care about people and training them in how their company likes to care about its customers.
The Benefits of Caring
If a company cares about its customers – and its potential customers – there are so many benefits:
- maintain / enhance reputation
- earn customer respect
- aids customer retention
- fewer complaints
- builds customer loyalty
- differentiates (= it could become your USP – Unique Selling Point. Think Zappos or Singapore Airlines)
- reduces marketing costs (it costs less to keep a customer than to acquire a new one. A satisfied customer can be a great ambassadeur for your brand – think WoM)
- satisfied customers like to buy from you and this can increase your market share
- makes it easier to enter new markets – whether geographic or to introduce new products / services
- aids cross selling
- increases profitability
- enhances opportunities for feedback
- benefits your staff – happy customers, fewer complaints makes the day brighter for your staff
Sadly so many companies – large and small – seem to have never even thought about customer care or they provide customer service yet do no more than begrudgingly process their customers.
When customer service is seen as a cost, the main objective is to deal with people quickly. But once you see it as a way to create marketing resonance, the focus shifts. All customer service should have the goal of improving the experience for the customers, with the objective of getting them to spread positive word of mouth.
SOURCE: Empowered: Unleash your employees, Energize your customers, and Transform your business by Josh Bernoff & Ted Schadler
Customer Expectations
It’s important to know what your customers expectations are. You should get to know your customers, ask them what their expectations are, tell them what they can expect and then live up to their expectations. It’s important to maintain consistency. If you give too little service the client may complain: ‘customer service was poor’ but if you give too much service they may say that ‘service was intrusive’.
On the latter point I’ll always recall a dinner out with my staff at a very fancy restaurant in Paris where you only had to extend your hand to pick up the sale for example and a waiter would be there to grab it and pass it to you. At first we were bemused but then it became irritating. I guess we weren’t their ideal clients !
And that’s a topic for another blog post – knowing who your IDEAL clients are. This is especially important when you provide services.
And so..
My questions to you..
- do you care about your customers and potential customers?
- why?
- in what ways?
