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Customer Care
If I fail to satisfy my customers
they will not do business with me. During a customer
care seminar, I asked managers in their groups, "What is
customer care?" This was the response from one of the
groups.
CUSTOMER CARE
"Identifying, meeting and exceeding
customer's
expectations, to provide
benefits both to the
customer and the organisation. To
achieve a total
experience which
will encourage commitment
and loyalty."
Managers from the
National Union of Students. 1997
The above statement clearly describes what customer care
is. Failure to adhere to it will result in loss of
business, bad publicity and many other harmful issues.
The following memory aid, I LOVE CUSTOMERS, will assist
you to remember the key points to gaining and keeping
customers.
|
I |
Inspired and In-touch With
Customer Needs |
| |
|
|
L |
Listen Carefully |
|
O |
Objective Questioning |
|
V |
Verily, Verily, Customers Pay
the Bills |
|
E |
Eliminate Partiality |
| |
|
|
C |
Customers Are Your Business |
|
U |
U Must Be Polite, Sympathetic
and Friendly |
|
S |
Staff Must Be Rewarded |
|
T |
Treat Customers and Suppliers
Professionally |
|
O |
Obsession on Quality, Value
and Service |
|
M |
Market Results |
|
E |
Environment Must Be Clean,
Safe and Caring |
|
R |
Respond to Customer Needs
Immediately |
|
S |
Study People and Customer Care
Continually |
Inspired and In-touch With Customer
Needs
Your first objective is to be an
inspired person who is fired up, excited, enthusiastic
and self motivated about excellent customer care. Your
second objective is to find out what needs your
customers have. You cannot win and keep customers until
you understand what their needs are. The best way to
find out is to "ask them". When you have identified and
satisfied the needs of your customers, you are in touch
with them. Once you have satisfied the need, you must
then keep in touch with them by news letters, postcards,
telephone, letters, personal visits or by any other
means necessary. If you do not, your competition will.
Listen Carefully
One of the greatest and most
important skills in customer care is being able to
listen to the customer with patience, understanding and
accuracy. Most listeners are more interested in what to
say rather than what the customer is saying. When you
show interest in what the customer is saying and
demonstrate that you really care, you will win their
business. Listening to your customers will put you ahead
of your competition. This is a winning method that
cannot be neglected. Listen to your children, spouse and
others if you wish to win them and remain in business.
Do not forget this very important thought, "listening is
one of the highest forms of courtesy". Again I say,
listen to your customers.
Objective Questioning
Questions that enable you to
understand the needs, wants, feelings and desires of
your customers are objective questions. When you ask
objective questions you give your customers the
opportunity to explain precisely how best to satisfy
their specific requirements. Prepare appropriate
questions for your organisation and ask them. Open ended
questions also allow the customer to open up and share.
Verily, Verily, Customers Pay the
Bills
Verily, verily means truly, truly.
The most important person in your organisation is the
customer. It is not the chairperson or the chief
executive that pays the bills, it is the customer. If
your customers do not purchase your services or
products, you will not have money to pay the bills and
remain in business. Do not argue with customers or
regard them as an interruption to your business, they
are doing you a favour by doing business with you.
Unhappy customers will tell between ten and twenty other
people of their unhappiness with your services or
products and they may never do business with you again.
If one of your customers spends £5.00
a week, that customer is worth a minimum of £260.00 a
year. If you lose that customer you may also lose the
custom of all the other people that s/he may influence.
That one mistake may cost your organisation £2,500 a
year or more. What is the worth of a single customer to
your organisation? The customer is king.
Eliminate Partiality
Partiality creates resentment,
confusion, loss of business and bad publicity. Develop a
policy for treating customers equally and remove all
traces of partiality from your life, family and
organisation. If I treat one of my children in an extra
special way I could create unnecessary problems for
myself and for my family. In an organisation where I
worked, I had the honour and privilege of meeting HRH
the Prince of Wales, when he actually came and launched
our organisation. Before his visit, my organisation
spent over £20,000, hundreds of hours in meetings, dealt
with a mountain of paperwork and had many sleepless
nights. Every hour of our day was spent in planning. We
even had a department that was completely dedicated to
the overall planning of the event. The night before his
arrival I got home so late that I deliberately slept in
a hot bath, in order to awake when the water became
cold. His visit lasted thirty minutes with over 1,500
people in attendance. Shortly after his visit, it dawned
on me, that the way we treated HRH was completely
different to the way we treated our loyal customers. I
thought, "If only we would learn from this situation and
treat every customer in this way, we would be one of the
top five organisations on the planet."
Customers Are Your Business
If you can understand, remember and
adhere to this key principle, "customers are your
business", you will never go wrong. Customers are the
reason why you are in business, without them you have no
business. It is amazing how many organisations claim
that the customer is "King", yet customer care is never
discussed in their meetings. Any organisation that has
customer care as their number one agenda item, will have
the advantage of staying ahead of the competition.
U Must Be Polite, Sympathetic and Friendly
The more polite, sympathetic, helpful
and friendly I am to customers, is the more they keep
coming back to do business with me. This approach used
by Marks & Spencer has impressed me to the point that I
find it extremely difficult to purchase clothing
anywhere else. After telling a Marks & Spencer staff
member that I had no money to purchase a particular
item, she still removed the plastic wrappings on two
garments for me to see. This is a clear demonstration
that the customer is the priority and by her having a
polite, sympathetic, helpful and friendly attitude, she
knew that I would return, and I did. So powerful and
impressive were her actions that I now write about it so
that millions may read and follow her example.
Always
put yourself in
the customer's position.
Staff Must Be Rewarded
Almost every member of staff comes
into contact with the customer through letters, the
telephone or in person. An unhappy member of staff that
has direct contact with the customer has the potential
of ruining your business. On the other hand, a happy
member of staff produces a happy customer and happy
customers lead to large profits. Failing to recognise
the importance of rewarding extraordinary performance is
a major mistake. You can reward staff in a number of
creative ways, which could include some of the
following:
|
G |
Growth: Personal development |
|
R |
Responsibility: Authority &
accountability |
|
A |
Advancement: Promotion |
|
S |
Status: Position or rank |
|
P |
Power: Control |
|
S |
Salary: Money |
Treat Customers and Suppliers
Professionally
Treat customers and suppliers in the
same way that you would like them to treat you. Applying
this simple and effective principle will bring about
great rewards to you and your organisation. Some
customers can be extremely rude but with a professional
and empathic approach, you will be able to deal with
these challenges. Use a professional approach to turn
angry customers into satisfied customers.
Obsession on Quality, Value and
Service
There is no such thing as customer
loyalty if customers are not happy with your services or
products. Members of your own family will go elsewhere
if quality, value and service are poor. Those who
advance in their field are those who are intensely and
obsessively preoccupied with delivering quality, value
and service that customers need. Provide an unbeatable
quality, value and service to your spouse, children,
friends and others? If you do not, you may lose them to
your competitors.
Market Results
It is important to communicate to
your customers the actual benefits or results that they
will obtain by purchasing from you. When you market the
results or benefits to your customers, you will always
be ahead of the competition. This is an additional
advantage which cannot be ignored if you wish to remain
in business. For example, I am not selling the book you
are reading, what I am selling are the benefits and
results, which can be found in chapter 1, under Targets.
Environment Must Be Clean, Safe and
Caring
Every successful organisation will
tell you that success in business comes primarily from
satisfied customers. If your customers are not satisfied
with the cleanliness, safety and care that you provide,
they will not do business with you for very long. I
enjoy shopping every Friday with my wife and children,
we use this occasion as a family outing. One of the
supermarkets that we used was reasonable in price and
quality. However, this shop was unclean, unsafe, with
small pools of water on the floor and untidy shelves.
Because of this, I advised my wife that we should go
elsewhere and we did. This supermarket lost over £1,500
each year, that is what we were worth to them.
Respond to Customer Needs Immediately
Responding to customer needs
immediately will bring about repeat business, which is
one of the keys to business longevity. How quickly do
you answer the telephone, respond to letters or customer
complaints? Do you allow your customers to share ideas
with you for improvement, or problems that they are
facing with your services or products? I purchased a
suit from Marks & Spencer and discovered a major fault
with it. When I returned it to the customer service
desk, it was replaced immediately, without any questions
asked. Guess where I now purchase all of my suits?
Study People and Customer Care
Continually
Organisations that become complacent
because of success soon find themselves in a
disadvantaged position having been left behind by the
competition. When you study people and customer care
techniques, you are putting your organisation in an
advantageous position. Is your organisation benefiting
from these three major areas of business longevity?
|
R |
Repeat business |
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E
|
Enlarged customer base |
|
V
|
Volume of sales |
REV is a technique that has been
adopted by most major organisations around the world. If
these three areas are not working in your organisation
it is only a matter of time before your business will
suffer. Repeat business relates to you getting the same
customers to keep purchasing from you, month after month
and year after year. Enlarged customer base relates to
the amount of customers that purchase from you each
month. Volume of sales relates to how much money each
customer spends with you. Are you studying to REV up
your organisation up the success ladder or are you
revving down your organisation out of the market place?
Study to stay in business and become a proprietor that
is always ahead, rightly dividing good customer
practices from bad. When you REV up your organisation,
you are automatically increasing its worth. Keep on
REVving, you can only grow. |
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