Mahatma Gandhi who in a speech in South Africa in 1890 said:
“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider of our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to do so.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Take customer service seriously. Invest in it, both in the training of your team and the systems they work on. There are tons of tools out there, CRMs like Hubspot can boost your customer relationship management if used properly.
The nature of your business will determine how and where you engage with customers, but appreciation, attention and value-delivery are what counts.
Complaint handling is just as crucial and in fact is an extremely powerful marketing tool. By dealing well with a complaint you can gain a customer for life and they will be sure to tell how you corrected things.
The customer should be the focus of all your thoughts and you should try to provide each customer with the best products and services at the best possible price (always ensuring that you will make a profit). Remember that if a customer is not happy with you, they can always go elsewhere.
When communicating with a customer, take note of the following:
- Always answer customers’ questions clearly.
- If you don’t know the answer, find out and get back to the customer as soon as possible.
- Always be polite and speak clearly (especially on the telephone).
- Always be friendly and helpful.
- If you arrange to meet a customer, make sure you are there on time.
- If you promise to give a price for the job at a specified time, make sure you deliver it.
- If you are offered a job, make sure you start on the date arranged.
- If you say the job will take two weeks, try to complete it in time.
- If a customer leaves a message on your telephone answering machine or with your wife or husband, get back to him/her within 24 hours – you may lose business if you don’t.
When it concerns physical shop spaces or receptions. Four guidelines for dealing with customers:
- Stop what you are doing and give the customer your undivided attention.
- Avoid distractions. Don’t take a phone call or speak to a colleague while the customer is speaking and don’t interrupt the customer.
- Show interest by making eye contact, nodding your head in agreement and keeping the conversation going.
- Check for understanding. Tell the customer how you understand their needs and revise your thoughts if necessary. Ask questions for clarification and take notes.
Always put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Empathy and an Outside-In Perspective can help you develop great products and services. Read more about Outside-In Perspective HERE.
Where does one draw the line though?
There are expressions out there such as “The customer is always right”. But where you have delivered in terms of product or service, and the best efforts have been made with someone but they are in the end far more trouble in relation to the income they will provide the business, they can in fact at a point be deemed to no longer be a ‘customer’. A customer is a person who pays for a product or service, but sometimes the monetary value of the sale is not worth the damage the person is doing to your staff or general business. If you find yourself dealing with such a person, whom you can not satisfy despite going several extra miles, a liberating action can be to draw the line. Disregard all the threats of them writing bad reviews, reporting you or turning to social media, and pulling back from serving them. Some people are just toxic, and even if they spread bad stories about you, people they associate with are often just as toxic or know to take what they say with a pinch of salt. If you are doing a good job, your reviews and general perception will outweigh the handful of people you may encounter like this.
