It’s 90+ degrees out and the air conditioner in our office building broke yesterday and it’s still broken today! It’s about 85 degrees in my office right now and there is no air movement at all. It got me thinking about customer service and how we treat customers when something unexpected happens. You see, we are customers of the landlord for the building and the service we have contracted for is not currently being offered. Now it’s not their fault the air conditioning broke. But the question is: What is the response to the customer when something goes wrong?

In this case, the response is we just have to suffer until the repairman can work us into the schedule. I’m wondering how much trouble it would be to bring some fans downstairs and offer to set a few of them up to move some air around and maybe cool things at least a few degrees.

Or, how about coming around with an update and a cooler of ice cold drinks or maybe even set up an ice cream sundae bar and make all the tenants an ice cream sundae, get everyone laughing about it a little and creating a sense of community? All these seem like pretty easy and low cost things to do and would buy a lot of goodwill.

Think about that for your own business. How do you react when something doesn’t go right for your customers? Do you take a look at the situation and find a way to build goodwill with your customers?

It’s amazing what impact just a small effort can have on our customer satisfaction and retention. Whenever something goes wrong in your service delivery you obviously need to fix it as quickly as possible, but also look for ways to build satisfaction with your customers by letting them know you care and adding a few unexpected surprises along the way.

By Reggie Shropshire

Chris Carman from ActionCOACH Business Coaching helps business owners in SE Wisconsin make more money, work less hours, and recruit, train, and retain high quality employees.  For solid business advice, please visit  www.actioncoach.com

There are two aspects to increase the value of your marketing which in turn creates profits in your business. What are these two sides of marketing? In short, they are Acquisition Cost and Lifetime Value.

The goal of Marketing in the business should be to reduce the Acquisition Cost and increase the Lifetime Value. So, we will reserve Acquisition Cost for a later discussion and focus on how you develop the Lifetime value of your customers.

Based on the knowledge that it is six times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to sell more products and services into your current customer base, ActionCOACH has created a system to build customer loyalty. The concept I discuss in my book, “Instant Repeat Business,” is to increase lifetime value by using the Ladder of Loyalty:

Raving Fan

Suspect

The concept is to categorize each and every name in your prospect and customer database into levels according to their loyalty to your business.

You start with SUSPECTS which are businesses that fit into what you have defined as your target market. Any name that you obtain through marketing efforts that fits your criteria enters the Ladder of Loyalty at the SUSPECT level.

Once the SUSPECT becomes interested in your product or service and makes an inquiry, you would move the business up to the PROSPECT level.

Next, a SHOPPER would be a business that buys once from you, but has not yet determined that you are a vendor he or she wants to do business with again.

If the business buys more than once, then the SHOPPER becomes a CUSTOMER.

Once the CUSTOMER becomes a consistent buyer of your products and services, you may begin offering incentives and privileges to them so that they become MEMBERS, and no longer look elsewhere for competitive products or services.

MEMBERS do business with you because of the relationship and trust that you have developed.

An ADVOCATE is where your MEMBERS begin selling for you through testimonials and referrals.

An ADVOCATE becomes a RAVING FAN when he/she cannot stop selling for you. Anytime a RAVING FAN is out in the community they are promoting you to everyone about how wonderful you are.

Now, here are some important questions: How many RAVING FANS do you have in your customer base? What would happen to your business if you moved everyone in your database up one level?

Massive profits do not occur by bringing more SUSPECTS or PROSPECTS into your database, but rather moving MEMBERS to ADVOCATES and then to RAVING FANS.

Massive profits occur at the RAVING FAN level. As an assignment, go into your prospect and customer database and determine how many businesses you have at each level. You will create a world of opportunity once you begin to implement strategies for each level on the Ladder of Loyalty.

By Brad Sugars

Chris Carman from ActionCOACH Business Coaching helps business owners in SE Wisconsin make more money, work less hours, and recruit, train, and retain high quality employees.  For solid business advice, please visit  www.actioncoach.com

Building Raving Fans Involves Trust.

It is well documented that it is more affordable to retain an existing customer than to find a new one; most references sight a savings of six times. Not only do we want these customers to stay, but we want them to become raving fans.

This level of commitment is built on establishing trust, based upon the following:

• Reliability: Can your customers count on, and find you reliable enough to fulfill your commitments and keep your promises? Life is filled with unexpected events; any consistency you can provide, will be a welcome change.
• Competence: Do you demonstrate that you know what you are doing? Is your quality of service high enough for customers to want to come back again and again?
• Rapport: Have you invested in getting to know your clients well? Do you know simple things like their names or their favorite product, etc.?
• Vulnerability: Are you willing to admit when you have made a mistake? Will you go the extra mile when something is not done correctly, and accept responsibility rather than blame it on something (or someone else)? Nothing demonstrates commitment like accountability.

• Loyalty: Will you do what is right for the client (even if it does not maximize your benefit)? Will you continue to treat your clients/ customers in a ’special’ manner?

Most customers move onto other businesses, because they do not believe the business cares about them. By establishing trust first, you can build a dedicated client/customer list that in turn, will include your true raving fans, and help you build the business you want.

By William Gilliland

Chris Carman from ActionCOACH Business Coaching helps business owners in SE Wisconsin make more money, work less hours, and recruit, train, and retain high quality employees.  For solid business advice, please visit  www.actioncoach.com

Customer loyalty should be a key focus in any business, with good reason. Estimates suggest it can cost six times as much to get a new customer as it does to keep an existing one.

A business that is not paying proper attention to this is like a farmer milking a cow with a hole in the bucket. You have to work even harder at milking while the leak continues. Working out how big the hole is for your business is the first step to take in improving your customer loyalty, the next is understanding how and why they are leaving.

Working out how many customers leaked out is not just simply comparing the No. of customers you have now as compared to how many you had this time last year; that would give you your net gain/loss of customers.

The formula for working out how many customers you have lost in a given period is:

Total No. of Customers =
(No. of Customers at the start of the measuring pd.) X (No. of Customers at the end of the measuring pd.) + (No. of new customers added over the pd.)

So to measure how many customers you have lost, you really have to measure how many you have gained!

It is important to find out why do customers leave? The six main reasons for customers taking their business elsewhere are:

* 1 % Death

* 3% move away

* 5% buy from a friend

* 9% sold by a competitor

* 14% product/price

* 68% perceived indifference

The biggest reason of all is perceived indifference i.e. the customers don’t think that you care about them or that they matter to you. If this is the reason for them leaving, then it is a really tough job to win them back. The key focus should be to keep them happy while they are a customer very much a case of prevention being better than the cure.

These days with the abundance of alternative options available to customers, you really have to focus on keeping them satisfied. Simply providing them with the product or service is not good enough

Here are seven tips for providing that extra bit of attention that will make your customers want to keep coming back:

• Master delivery. Deliver on time every time. Inform you customer if there is a problem and explain how you are going to be dealing with it. And then follow up and make sure that everything turned out ok. Make sure your invoices are correct and delivered in a timely fashion.
• Thank you notes thanking them for their order or business.
• Follow up calls to find out if everything is ok (like they do when you have a meal in a restaurant)
• Prior notice of new products or of an upcoming sale.
• Deliver your product with an unexpected gift.
• Send cards. Birthday, anniversary or any other date relevant to the customer.
• Depending on the product, a follow up call to offer them another or a refill or an add-on.

Most of these things are not difficult to do. Yet very few businesses do them. Make them a part of the way you do business and you will have made a very important and valuable improvement to your business.

By Brad Sugars

Chris Carman from ActionCOACH Business Coaching helps business owners in SE Wisconsin make more money, work less hours, and recruit, train, and retain high quality employees.  For solid business advice, please visit  www.actioncoach.com

Ask any business owner about customer service and satisfaction and most will admit that it’s critical to their overall success and profitability. Ask them what they DO to insure their team consistently delivers quality service and the answers are vague or in some cases they simply shrug and say ‘not much’.

While customer satisfaction is important, it also makes great CENTS to improve it.

Here are a just a few things to consider:

• loyal customers spend more and buy more frequently;
• customer satisfaction is linked to retention;
• it’s cheaper to retain customers than acquire new ones;
• customers are willing to pay more when service is better than competition;
• happy customers refer others; and
• unhappy customers tell at least 10 others about their negative experience – who needs that kind of PR?

Seven Ways to Improve Customer Service:

1. Get feedback. Encourage and welcome customer input about how you can improve. Provide a method and process to get constructive comments and suggestions. Customers can be your best advocate and are knowledgeable of competitors and what they do or don’t do well. Remember, you cannot fix or improve something if you don’t know it is broken.
2. Treat employees well. Appreciation starts at the top. Your team will treat customers the way you treat your team. Do you greet them when you arrive? Do you thank them? Do you listen to their concerns and ideas? If you take care of your team, your team will take care of your customers.
3. Document and handle customer complaints. No matter how good you are, things can and will go wrong. Identify the source of the top five to seven complaints (even if they only occur periodically) and develop a process to handle them. Don’t forget to include guidelines and limits of authority so your front-line employees can resolve the majority of complaints without going to the boss! Also keep in mind, complaints that are handled well can actually build loyalty with customers.
4. Measure and reward customer satisfaction. If customer satisfaction is really a priority in your business, demonstrate this to your team and customers. Develop a method to measure it, set goals for improvement and reward the team when the goal is accomplished. And here’s another plus. If your ‘documented’ customer satisfaction levels are 95 percent or better – you now have a great message for use in marketing. It sure beats the “we deliver great service’ message so many businesses like to put out there!
5. Train your team. Customer service skills, like technical or sales skills, can be developed and improved with training. While most businesses train new employees – existing team members need ongoing training and development too. In addition to better service, employee training is linked to improved employee retention and satisfaction – a big benefit in today’s competitive labour market.
6. Document your critical systems and processes. Too often, the source of dissatisfaction or perceived poor quality is tied to your processes. Take a look at the processes – from initial contact through billing – and document what gets done. I guarantee you will find gaps in consistency and opportunities for improved efficiency and effectiveness. Documented systems put money on the bottom line by improving customer satisfaction and reducing re-works, returns or call-backs (a big satisfaction driver).
7. Set expectations. In marketing and sales, a ‘can do’ attitude is important – but only if you can deliver. Real success in business comes from delivering what you promise and doing it each and every time. So set the right expectations and remember the old saying – better to under promise and over deliver

By Brad Sugars

Chris Carman from ActionCOACH Business Coaching helps business owners in SE Wisconsin make more money, work less hours, and recruit, train, and retain high quality employees.  For solid business advice, please visit  www.actioncoach.com

Companies can cruise along for a long time by giving adequate customer service.

Transitions in business mostly go smoothly.  But what happens when there is a bump in the systems or a delay shipment of product or an employee’s impromptu leave of absence?

This is when GREAT COMPANIES distinguish themselves from the average.  Most of these companies see service recovery as an opportunity to improve rather than a painful experience.

Human nature naturally increases their blood pressure when they hear customer complaints and dissatisfaction.  The natural response is to be defensive.

These employees obviously are not trained.  Successful business owners and trained employees understand that this is an opportunity to cement relationships and most are worth saving.

Here are some techniques in cementing your relationship with your customers:

1. Keep In Touch: Don’t let your customers forget you.  Send them information regarding specials, new products, etc.  Keep your customers tied in.

   In today’s world, keeping in touch with your customers is critical to the success of your business.

   Your customer base is a valuable asset.

2. Inform Your Customers With the Best Information: Another way to distinguish your business from competition is educating your customers.

   Yet, information that is not clear can become confusing to your customer so you must first evaluate the information you are giving them whether it be on your web-site or through other media like brochures.  Make sure your tone is not too abrupt.

   It is also important to ensure that you speak clearly and not in the tone of your industry.  There is nothing like reading information and wondering what all those abbreviations mean.

3. Measure Your Information Efforts: What good is informing your customers if you don’t know if they are reading the information?

   Keep track of questions most asked by your customers.  If several people are asking the same questions then you have issues.  Give an incentive to your employees to pass on customer feedback by offering incentives for listing customer comments.

   It’s one thing to accept customer feedback, but it’s another thing to respond and correct your actions.  Customers love being heard especially when they know you have taken action.  Everybody wants to feel they are needed.  Even your customers.

   The more you go beyond your customer’s expectations the more your build customer loyalty.

4. Master Recovery Skills: Only you can be the judge of whether a customer is worth saving.

   The most important fact to consider is the high cost of replacing a customer versus saving a customer.

   Recognize that unhappy customers want to be listened to, a sense of urgency to fix their problems, to be treated with respect, and assurance that the problem will not reoccur.  Sounds very simple?

First empathize with your customers.  Make them feel that their problem is important and you are thankful for bringing it to your attention.  Don’t debate their point.

Then tell your customer that you want to help them with their problem.  You want to make sure that you apologize to them for the situation.  It is critical that you explain their options clearly, then summarize the action you will take.  Don’t forget to tell them again that you value their business.

If all goes well, you should gain a strong sense of satisfaction after handling an unhappy customer.  Remember, don’t loose your cool and dignity and don’t take it personally.

By Tom Maier

Chris Carman from ActionCOACH Business Coaching helps business owners in SE Wisconsin make more money, work less hours, and recruit, train, and retain high quality employees.  For solid business advice, please visit  www.actioncoach.com

There is a saying, “the only thing that stays the same is change.”  In today’s world we are subject to change more than ever, because we now have much more choice than ever before. Through the internet, we now have access to unlimited amounts of information – we Google something and we get thousands of opinions, options and choices.

All this choice is both a good and a bad thing for us.  On the plus side, we like to have options, and freedom of choice is something we continue to fight for.  On the negative side, too much choice and constant change can be very stressful and overwhelming.  So what is best?

The simple answer is we need both, and how much of each really depends on the individual. Some people like constant change and risk taking, whilst others prefer to maintain the status quo.  So how is this relevant to business?

Well, we need to recognise that our customers now have greater choice - they have unlimited access to buy products and services from anybody else and in some cases from anywhere in the world.  So no longer can we rely on the fact that as long as our customers are satisfied with what we do, they will stay with us.  They will be constantly bombarded with new choices and even if they have the most anti-change personality, can we really afford to just sit back and hope that they don’t go and try our competitors?

In his book “Customer satisfaction is worthless, customer loyalty is priceless,” Jeffery Gitomer identified that we have to work as hard on keeping our existing clients as we do getting new ones.  This is a really important issue.  I had a client who was spending tens of thousands of pounds on generating new leads for their business, but the customer base was not increasing year on year.  When we looked in detail at what was happening, we found that they were losing as many clients as they were bringing on.  So we took some of the marketing budget away from lead generation and put it towards looking after our existing customers and this helped the business to start growing again through improved customer retention.

So the key question to ask yourself is, WHY should your customers stay with you?  The first answer is, of course, the product or service you supply.  This must be first class and give great value for money.  In ACTION we call this Delivery Mastery and it is this that stops your customers going elsewhere.  However, it is not sufficient to make your customers WANT to stay – the real key to building customer loyalty is going the extra mile for them and creating the “WOW factor”. So what is the “WOW factor?”

Think of it the little extras that you do for your customers over and above the normal product or service you provide. It is the things that you do that tap into the emotions of your customers and leave a lasting impression.  A classic example is of a top hotel in New York that ensured its top guests’ rooms had their favourite flowers, wine and chocolates waiting for them when they arrived.  It also trained its staff to remember the little details that would make their guests’ stay so much more memorable and ensure that they would never even think of staying anywhere else.

Paddi Lund, the most successful dentist in Australia, built his entire business on referrals and loyal customers.  He called these extras “critical non-essentials” or CNE’s.  The key to their success is that they are not directly related to the product or service you are offering.  Just giving more or better service is not enough; your customers expect the best, so when you deliver it, they are just getting what they have paid for.  The WOW factor comes when you surprise the client with something different and unique to them, so much so that they not only say WOW to themselves, but they also go and tell everybody they know about it.

An example of this recently happened to me playing golf at Celtic Manor. Being taken to the locker room and shown to my own personal locker with my name on it, two lockers away from Tiger Woods’ locker, was such a memorable moment that I tell people about it whenever I get the opportunity!

The key to successful CNE’s is to overcome the 3 reasons NOT to do them:

1 Lack of ideas – give yourself time to think.  Talk to your customers find out more about them and what interests and excites them.  And speak to friends and colleagues too - it is always easier to come up with ideas for other people’s businesses than it is for your own.

2 Lack of money – if you remember that your CNE’s are marketing, then you should be allocating some of your general marketing budget to them.  Also be creative - some of the best CNE’s don’t have to cost a penny.

3 Lack of time – always make sure that any CNE you start you can continue to do however busy you become.  You can do this by systemising the process, training and delegating responsibility to your team.

So now you know how to create the WOW factor, you just need to put it into ACTION, because if you don’t your competition might beat you to it!
By Kevin Stansfield

Chris Carman from ActionCOACH Business Coaching helps business owners in SE Wisconsin make more money, work less hours, and recruit, train, and retain high quality employees.  For solid business advice, please visit  www.actioncoach.com

Raving fans are customers who are so over the moon with your business and service you provide that they will not only tell all their friends and colleagues about you but, actually bring them to you and help you make sales to them.

It’s a frightening fact of business life that we spend six times as much money attempting to attract new customers to our businesses than we do to up-sell, on-sell and generally over service our existing customers. Another frightening fact…68% of customers who stop buying from an organisation do so simply because of a perceived indifference. The business actually didn’t do anything wrong, the customer just thought the organisation didn’t care enough!

Would you like your customers to shout your name from rooftops telling people why, if they’re not dealing with you, they’re missing out on something awesome!

Here are some simple tips that you can introduce in your business today. They will help you keep your customers coming back, bringing their friends with them.

• Send them thank you cards

• Sell them everything they need to gain maximum benefit from the purchase

• Use their name frequently

• Call them up just to make sure everything is going well

• Call them up when something new arrives in stock that you know they would like

• Follow up & follow up again

• Under promise and over deliver

• Keep in touch often

• Use Critical Non-Essentials

Try to implement just a few of these tips. As the business owner you must lead by example as your team does everything you do. If you care for your customers, your customers will care for you and help you to grow your business. It is a simple as that.

By Simon Williams

Chris Carman from ActionCOACH Business Coaching helps business owners in SE Wisconsin make more money, work less hours, and recruit, train, and retain high quality employees.  For solid business advice, please visit  www.actioncoach.com

As a business owner, it’s easy to get swept up in the day-to-day activities of running a business. The demands on your time seem endless and it feels as if everyone and everything needs your attention now!

Under these circumstances, it’s easy for a business owner to get “tunnel vision” in their own business. I often use the analogy that owning a business is like getting swept into the current; once you’re in the current, you swirl around endlessly and it’s difficult to get out. This condition can be detrimental to how your business runs and ultimately how well you service your customers.

Very often, especially when conditions get really busy, things begin to fall through the cracks - without you even knowing. Your customers see it and your employees see it, but sometimes it takes a real customer crisis to get your attention.

It’s critical for business owners to extract themselves (or get pulled out) of the current and back onto the beach to get a true perspective of what’s really happening and what needs to change. One of the best ways to make the changes you need in your business is to put yourself in the “shoes” of your customers. There are several strategies for doing this.

Many large organizations utilize mystery shoppers. Mystery shoppers can provide a wealth of insight into the customer experience and expose where breakdowns are occurring. The cost of paying a mystery shopper is far less than the potential loss of profit you may witness with a deterioration or breakdown of your services.

As a Business Coach, I often have the privilege of using the services of my clients. It’s a great opportunity for me to witness the lifecycle of an order and experience firsthand each step in my client’s order fulfillment process.

As one of their customers, I have a viewpoint that they don’t have and it allows me to see more effectively where our focus is needed to help them get better results. For small businesses who may not be able to afford hiring a mystery shopper or hiring other outside help, there are other ways to achieve a similar end result.

Use a family member or friend that may not have used your product or service in the past. Many would probably do it for free, but I would encourage some kind of compensation be provided to them as a courtesy, whether it be some of your own product, a gift certificate, etc. It’s also important to ensure that they experience what a normal customer would experience. Don’t attempt to make any changes in your business or even hint to your staff that you’ll be using a mystery shopper.

In fact, for any type of mystery shopper service, it’s vital that he or she experience “business as usual” in order to get the real picture of what’s happening. At a minimum, if you feel your circumstances won’t allow for some kind of mystery shopping service, it’s essential that you get inside your customer’s head.

Randomly choose a few customers and offer to take them to lunch or meet with them in some other way. Let them know you’re genuinely trying to improve your business and that you’d greatly value their feedback on how you can improve. Most customers (even those who may have not had the best experience with you) will gladly accept the opportunity to voice their opinion about your business, your team, your product, your service, etc.

If you do get this opportunity, make sure you are prepared with a list of questions to ask about every step of the customer experience. Ask probing questions that focus not only on what happened, but how they felt about the experience and what suggestions they recommend to improve the experience overall.

Spending this precious time with your customers could very well be the best time you will ever invest in your business.

Most importantly, take the feedback you receive and make the changes that are needed.

Let your customers see that indeed you really are listening!

By Bill Stack

Chris Carman from ActionCOACH Business Coaching helps business owners in SE Wisconsin make more money, work less hours, and recruit, train, and retain high quality employees.  For solid business advice, please visit  www.actioncoach.com

On a recent Southwest Airlines flight, crew members gave a passenger, who happened to be celebrating his birthday that day, a birthday “cake”- a toilet paper roll standing on end complete with “Happy Birthday from SWA” written on the side, “candles” fashioned from stir sticks stuck on top of the roll, and several bags of peanuts in the center of the cake.

As the crew presented the cake to the birthday passenger, they led the entire plane in a rousing chorus of “Happy Birthday”. What impression of Southwest Airlines do you think that those passengers left the plane with that day? I would guess that it was very favorable and brighten their day. These days, airlines are suffering from high fuel prices but Colleen Barrett, President of Southwest Airlines, has made sure that her employees live by the mantra, “We are not an airline with great customer service. We are a great customer service organization who just happens to be in the airline business.”

What lesson can you as a business owner learn from this?

Become known as a great customer service organization that just happens to be in your line of business.

Today, we seem to be bombarded constantly with news of the difficulties faced by business. A stock market struggling to recover from an almost unprecedented bear run, falling industrial investment, more bureaucracy, credit worries, high street spending on the decline – are we in recession, or is it merely a ‘severe downturn?’
Is it all bad news? Certainly not!

Is there anything a businessperson can do to overcome these pressures? Absolutely, but success in these challenging times is never easy.

As always, it demands commitment, hard work and an obsession with customer service.

In difficult economic times, many businesses focus on cutting costs – an understandable and generally prudent thing to do.

But some try to cut costs by cutting corners on customer service. This is exactly the wrong thing to do. Right now, service matters more than ever.

Here’s why:

* When people buy during an economic downturn they are extremely conscious of the “hard earned” money they spend. Customers want more attention, appreciation and recognition for their purchases, not less.

* Customers want to be sure they get maximum value for the money they choose to spend. They want assistance, education, training, installation, modifications and support. The basic product may remain the same, but they want more service.

* Customers want stronger guarantees that their purchase was “the right thing to do.” In good times, a single bad purchase may be quickly overlooked or forgotten, but in tough times, every expense is scrutinized. Provide the assurance your customers seek with generous service guarantees, regular follow-up and speedy follow-through on any queries or complaints.

* In tough times, people spend less time travelling, wining and dining, and more time carefully shopping for each and every purchase. Giving good service enhances the customer’s shopping experience, and boosts your own business’ image.

* When times are good, people make decisions quickly and sometimes don’t notice your efforts. In tighter times, people move more cautiously, and notice every extra effort that you make.

* When money is tight, many people experience a sense of lower self-esteem. When they get good service from your business, it boosts their self-image. And when they feel good about themselves, they feel good about you. And when they feel good about you, they buy.

* In tough times, people talk more with each other about saving money and getting good value. “Positive word of mouth” is a powerful force at any time. In difficult times, even more ears will be listening. Be sure the words spoken about your business are good ones.

So giving great service in tough times makes good business sense. But how do you actually achieve it?

Here are eight proven principles you can use:

1. Understand how your customers’ expectations are rising and changing over time. What was good enough last year may not be good enough now. Use customer surveys, interviews and focus groups to really understand what your customers want, what they value, and think about what they are getting, (or not getting) from your business.

2. Use quality service to differentiate your business from your competition. Your products must be reliable and up to date, but your competitors’ are likely to be, too. Your delivery systems must be fast and user-friendly, but so are your competitors’! Make a real difference by providing personalized, responsive and “extra-mile service” that stands out in a unique way which customers will appreciate and remember.

3. Set and achieve high service standards. Go beyond basic and expected levels of service to provide your customers with desired and even surprising interactions. Determine the “norm” for service in your industry, and then find a way to go beyond it. Give more choice than “usual”, be more flexible than “normal,” be “faster” than the average and extend a “better” warranty than all the others. Your customers will notice your higher standards. But eventually even the highest standards can be copied by your competitors. So don’t slow down. Keep on improving.

4. Learn to manage your customer’s expectations. You can’t always give customers everything their hearts desire. Sometimes you need to bring their expectations into line with what you know you can deliver. The best way to do this is by first building a reputation for making and keeping clear promises. Once you have established a base of trust and good reputation, you only need to ask your customers for their patience in the rare circumstances when you cannot meet their first requests. Nine times out of ten, they will extend the understanding and the leeway that you need. The second way to manage customers’ expectations (indeed, to exceed them) is with the tactic called “Under Promise and Over Deliver”. It works like this: your customer wants something done fast. You know it will take one hour to complete. Don’t tell your customer. Let them know you will rush the project…but then promise 90 minutes. Then, when you are done in just an hour (as you knew you would be all along), your customer will be delighted that you actually finished the job “so quickly.”

5. Bounce back with effective service recovery. Sometimes things do go wrong. When it happens to your customers, do everything you can to make things right again, as soon as possible. Fix the problem. Show sincere concern for any discomfort, frustration or inconvenience. Then “do a little bit more” by giving your customers something positive to remember - a token of goodwill, a small gift of appreciation, a discount on future orders, or an upgrade to a higher class of product. This is not the time to lay blame for what went wrong, or to calculate the costs of repair. Restoring customer goodwill is worth the price in future orders and new business.

6. Appreciate your complaining customers. Customers with complaints can be your best allies in building and improving your business. They point out where your system is faulty, and where procedures are weak or problematic. They show you where your products are below expectations or your service doesn’t measure up. They point out areas where your competitors are getting ahead, or where your team is falling behind. These are the same insights and conclusions that people pay consultants to provides, but a “complainer” gives them to you free. And remember, for every one person who complains, there are many more that won’t even bother to tell you. The others just take their business elsewhere. At least the complainer gives you a chance to reply and set things right.

7. Take personal responsibility. In many organizations, people are quick to blame others for problems or difficulties at work: managers blame staff, staff blames managers, engineering blames sales, sales blames marketing and everyone blames finance. This doesn’t help. In fact, with all the finger-pointing going on, it tends to make things worse. Blaming yourself doesn’t work either. No matter how many mistakes you may have made, tomorrow is another chance to do better. You need high self-esteem to give good service. Feeling “ashamed” doesn’t help. It doesn’t make sense to blame the computers, the system or the budget, either. This kind of justification only prolongs the pain before the necessary changes take place. The most reliable way to bring about constructive change in your organization is to take personal responsibility in order to help make good things happen. Make recommendations, propose new ideas, give your suggestions, and volunteer to help out with problem-solving, teams and projects. See the world from your customers’ point of view. We often get so caught up in our own world that we lose sight of what our customers actually experience.

8. Make time to stand on the other side of the counter, or listen on the other end of the phone. Be a “mystery shopper” at your own place of business. Or be a customer for your competition. What you notice is what your customers experience every day!

Finally, remember that service is the currency that keeps our economy moving. “I serve you in one business, you serve me in another.”

When either of us improves, the economy gets a little better. When both of us improve, people are sure to take notice. When everyone improves, the whole economy grows stronger and there is no longer any reason for the depressing headlines to which we’ve become so accustomed.

So, let’s all start looking after our customers and let the economy look after itself.

Focus on becoming known as a stellar customer service organization that just happens to be in your line of business!

By Brad Sugars

Chris Carman from ActionCOACH Business Coaching helps business owners in SE Wisconsin make more money, work less hours, and recruit, train, and retain high quality employees.  For solid business advice, please visit  www.actioncoach.com