Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on September 2, 2010 under Customer Moments, making a difference | 
Do you delight your customers? I found an article written by Alain Thys that was published in 2007 that says it best:
It’s funny that when discussing Customer Delight, most people start talking about customer service. While this nicely fits our managerial illusion of control, it also completely misses the point. Customer service is what companies do to their customers. Customer delight is what the customer feels when he has been dealt with in the right way. One may be related to the other, yet more delight doesn’t always come from more service (in fact, as Ryanair and Aldi have proven, the inverse might even be the case). Customer delight is not about giving more customer service, it’s about giving the service that matters.
Building relationships with our customers is the same as delighting them but over a sustained period of time. We confuse offering customer service with really engaging with our customers.
In fact, “customer service” is actually more closely associated with the stress and frustration of trying to resolve an issue with a company and receiving anything BUT service. Being a customer-focused company isn’t a quick fix. It doesn’t involve offering a special discount or creating a loyalty program that requires the customer to keep track of a “frequent purchase” card.
Being customer-focused involves really getting into the thick of things with your customer. Think about the relationships you have in your life. Personal, professional, casual, life-long. Did they involve a single experience?
We have to start changing our mindset when it comes to the customer and think more along the lines of DELIGHTING them. And you know you know what that looks like. It is a win for both the associate and the customer because at the end of the day – both walk away feeling great!
So what are you doing today to DELIGHT your customers?
Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on August 27, 2010 under Customer Moments |
I am working on writing a series of articles for a customer on the importance of developing and documenting business systems. You know what they are, right?
- How you do your business
- Who your customers are
- How you find them
- The 1,2,3s of producing your product/service
- Your billing and receivables process
- Employee relations and hiring/firing practices
It is all pretty cut and dry. The step-by-step instructions for how you do what you do so that someone could walk in off the street – read the manual – and continue your business operations without missing a beat.
But what about the customer service process?
A few months ago a prospect called. They’d found me on the Internet and wondered if I would come and conduct training for their call center employees. Apparently there had been some customer complaints and they wanted me to come and teach the staff the right words to say.
I asked about their customer service focus – what was their customer service strategy?
The response? We don’t have one. I just want the employees to stop saying dumb things so the customers don’t complain.
hmmmm. I didn’t pursue the opportunity.
As a business owner, if we hope to have happy customers that return and refer us to their friends, we have to establish our system for customers at the same time we are developing the step-by-step instructions for assembling our products and services.
Customer service as an after thought to combat complaints isn’t a customer-focused culture – it is just sloppy business.
Sounds harsh? Gee, I don’t know. Who signs our paycheck? The customers.
So How Do You Start Developing a Customer Service System:
- Identify your target customer
- Understand what they value, expect and desire – not what YOU think, but what they think
- How does that information impact the actual customer experience:
- The look of your location
- The customer greeting
- The way the phone is answered
- The website and its functionality
- Your marketing message
- Your packaging
- Your return policy
- Your refund policy
- Your order process
- The payment options and process
- Handling customers that want what you don’t have
- Handling upset customers
Each of those components and more are part of the customer service portion of your business. Determine the how’s and why’s of every aspect of your business that involves the customer. And trust me – every aspect involves the customer. Even those departments that never talk to or see a customer, have an impact on the customer.
Do you have a customer service system in place and in writing? If not – I’d love to help. I don’t usually sell myself in this blog, but this is one time when I’d like to be available to a business owner interested in putting their customers FIRST in the process. Call me 330-414-8792.
Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on August 18, 2010 under Customer Moments |
On the last Thursday of every month, you’ll find me sipping the decaf flavor of the day (black, no sugar) and talking about social media and ways to connect with customers with about ten other business professionals. We call ourselves the Akron Bloggers Community.
It started a little over three years ago when Chris Brown of Marketing Resources and Results, Inc. and I decided it would be fun to have a meet up with other bloggers in the area. Each month the people change, a few are regulars, and some come and go but we always find something new to talk about.
The one constant? The location. Mocha Joe’s Coffee Shop (formerly Arabica Coffee) has graciously hosted our meets up without a fee or fuss. And sometimes they have a right to fuss. We start with a table for four and sometimes keep moving their furniture until we can accommodate 12-16 people! And we aren’t exactly quiet. And we stay – sometimes for three hours.
This last month when I ordered my coffee the barista said “it’s nice to see how your group has grown over the last several months.”
Rather than complain about the fact that we basically take over the place and may only order one cup of coffee each – he was grateful for our business and aware enough to see that our community was growing.
Mocha Joe’s Coffee House is a great place to meet, relax and connect. The coffee is always top notch and the bakery is yummy! If you are in the Stow area and in the mood for a cuppa – I would suggest dropping in. You’ll feel welcome and nourished!
Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on August 10, 2010 under Customer Moments, Employee Moments, First Impressions |
Customer Relationships are just like good friends
They sound similar but do they mean the same thing? I asked the question of the Build Customer Relationships group on LinkedIn this week and overwhelmingly the answer was NO. Everyone agrees that customer service is the foundation – what gets customers in the door the first time and turns them from prospects to customers but it is only when we work to build customer relationships that we enjoy a long term – REPEAT – business with our customers.
Susan Garvey had this to say:
Actually knowing and ensuring each customer receives the type of service they want, not what we THINK they want. This can take any number of forms beyond the obvious such as prompt, informed attention by capable associates, the right products available when needed, etc. The best overall customer service usually comes down to some very basic requirements that most customers want ~ genuine, not scripted or “forced / manufactured” service, help available when it’s desired and not being offered or having products pushed that are of no real need to the customer. Making sure the customer feels and IS valued and always treated as such.
If you were to create a Customer Relationship Experience rather than a Customer Service Experience – how would they look different? Or would they? Do your employees understand the concept of building relationships with each person that comes in the door or calls on the phone? Share your tips for success here.
Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on August 9, 2010 under Customer Moments, making a difference |
Friday, August 6, 2010, I lost a dear friend, Bekah Facemire. We didn’t grow up together. Our kids weren’t in soccer together. We didn’t work at the same place.
Bekah was the friendly, neighborhood cashier at Drug Mart. That’s where we met – at register 5.
Bekah greeted every customer with more than just a smile and a warm hello – she KNEW her customers. We were part of her family. Oh, management might have felt she talked to customers too long, but it was her friendship and genuine interest that kept us coming back between 8-4pm Monday-Friday. Week after week.
Drug Mart is a quality store, has lots of great stuff at affordable prices. But so does Walgreens and CVS and Wal-Mart.
It was Bekah’s personality that brought me back – sometimes daily – for one thing and another and a friendly conversation.
Bekah was diagnosed with lung cancer just six short weeks ago and as a community we began praying for her recovery. Customers came in to ask of her progress. When I learned of the diagnosis I went straight from the store to the hospital to give her a hug. I was surprised and overwhelmed by my feelings but that is the kind of relationship she fostered with her customers.
I just came back from a regular shopping excursion to Drug Mart and although they still have the same great products and the rest of the staff knew my name and greeted me warmly – it just wasn’t the same.
I left realizing that I probably won’t go out of my way to shop there any more. A new CVS is opening closer to my home. It wasn’t the products or the prices or the location – it was Bekah that brought me back time and time again – often to buy things I didn’t need but found myself putting in the cart while we chatted.
She remembered her customers – knew what they liked. She hollered out one day a couple months ago “Deb – the hoola hoops that you wanted just came in – they are on aisle two.” I had mentioned wanting to purchase a bunch of hoola hoops for another friend of mine LAST FALL and yet she remembered.
People make the company. It isn’t the name over the door. It isn’t the products or the prices or the special sales. Oh – maybe for a one off shopping experience you’ll be influenced by a sale – but it is the RELATIONSHIP each employee makes with each customers that creates a loyalty no special coupon offer can match.
I will miss Bekah very much. Loving mother, sister, aunt and friend. She had an impact on all she encountered. She knew the meaning of building customer relationships. I’m lifting a margarita in toast to you, my friend.
Question for you: do your employees foster that kind of relationship with each customer?
Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on August 3, 2010 under Customer Moments |
This weekend Scott Ginsberg started the sentence and asked readers to finish:
CUSTOMERS ARE…..
How would you finish the sentence?
Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on August 2, 2010 under Attitude, Connecting Moments, Customer Moments |
Sounds like a nice slogan. But it isn’t easy. Glenn Ross at All Business published a post called How to Lose Customers and Fail at Business which consists of a 20 question true/false quiz.
The quiz is divided into three sections: Employees, Online Presence and Customer Interaction.
I’ll let you in on a little secret – the correct answer should be FALSE. But ask yourself truthfully, would you answer “false” to some of the following:
- If we have customer service training, we do not show the link between customer service and reaching our business goals.
- We hire on the basis of how well we think the prospective employee can do the job, not how well he or she can interact with and assist customers.
- We have not measured how user-friendly our Web site is in the past two years.
- Our monitoring of incoming customer emails is delegated to low level employees.
- We do not track customer complaints in order to identify trends.
- Our senior managers seldom interact with customers.
- Our policies and procedures were designed with the organization’s needs in mind, not the customer’s.
We like to think we put the customer first in all we do, but the need for sales and profitability tends to get in the way.
So how do you ensure that every department and manager put the customers first when hiring, marketing and measuring?
- Constantly ask the question – is this for the benefit of the customer or my bottom line?
- Listen carefully to customer complaints – is there a trend that needs to be addressed – an employee or a process that isn’t customer -focused?
- If I were the customer – how would I feel about the sales process and the experience?
- Do managers and executives regularly interact with customers? with front line employees? with customers in the call center?
You can have the best, well-intentioned front line employees that want nothing more than to serve and care for their customers but if the managers are out of touch with what the customers want in an exceptional experience, then eventually that will make it difficult for the employees to put customers first.
Rob McKelvie offers 7 ways to put customers first in your business planning and executing that is worth reading.
Take Glenn’s quiz and then pick ONE of the 20 questions and truly analyze how your business approaches that one item. Is there a way for you to change that one item and make it more customer focused?
If the customers are happy – they return, they refer and they bring the profits you need. Which came firsts, the profits or the customer? The CUSTOMER, every time.
Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on July 16, 2010 under Customer Moments, Loyalty, making a difference |
Lifelong Relationships
Here’s a great observational comment that Norma Rist made to someone she was coaching:
“You are treating your customers as transactions but you need to think of them as lifelong relationships.”
Have you ever been in sales? Or operations? It is the 16th and you are fast approaching the end of the month. Will you make your quota? Will the proposals that are outstanding come in before the 31st?
Do your potential customers become dollar signs or lines on your P&L as you think through your finances? Sometimes it is hard to avoid that trap, isn’t it? You have financial obligations and if you could get just one more customer before the end of the month you’d hit your break even. It is when we think like that, that our conversation changes with prospects.
We move from recommendations to sales pitches. How do we avoid treating our customers or potential customers as transactions and think about the opportunity for a lifelong relationship?
What would that mean in terms of our conversations. Might that mean that we walk away from a “sure thing” sale today and settle for planting seeds for the future? Customers are smart. They know when we are SELLING versus making recommendations based on need.
Frances Sharpe has written an article offering tips for Retaining Customers. In the article she talks about the value of the customer relationship and actually suggests a mathematical formula for calculating the financial value of a lifelong customer relationship. Good stuff!
If you were to ask your customers; would they say they felt like a transaction or a lifelong friend?
Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on July 14, 2010 under Connecting Moments, Customer Moments, Websites |
I once heard someone say – if you can’t find exactly what you want – build it yourself. I love the lively discussions that happen on LinkedIn in the various groups. I belong to several; local groups with a variety of business types and industry specific groups for speakers, writers, customer service and HR professionals.
I have answered questions and joined/started discussions but I felt like something was missing. We talk about CUSTOMER SERVICE but I didn’t see a group that dealt with the “relationships” we have with customers.
Customer service is what happens the first time we see the prospect and hopefully turn them into a customer. It is all about that experience. But what about AFTER the sale?
So today I started a new group called Build Customer Relationships with the goal being the creation of a platform where we can share ideas for how to keep that relationship alive once the customer walks out the door so they Remember – Refer and Return.
I started by asking – What is the most important part of building relationships?
Zane Safrit • The most important thing? How do you build a sustainable business without building customer relationships? Riffing quickly here we can see our economy’s performance over the past few years reflects a lack of customer relationships and the investments in meaning, purpose, engagement, leadership required to build them. It is possible to see our economy’s recovery dependent on resuming that primary purpose of a business: to create customers.
Ivana Taylor • Well – you have to give yourself credit too. Building customer relationships is like motherhood, America and Apple pie. Yet we still think it’s more important to bring NEW customers on (and it is important) but then ignore the customers that have been with is.
So the most important thing in building customer relationships might be just to STOP IGNORING your existing customers and treat them with love and attention.
Jay Izenman • This is it, Answer the phone!! There is no better thing to build a customer relationship then answering the phone, getting back to people and just making them feel wanted as a customer. If you don’t talk to your customers, you will have nothing to build. And thats it in a nutshell…
Mike Link • In my experience, I have found that the ball is dropped after the sale. Too many sales reps out there think their job is finished as soon as they make the sale. Big mistake! To build and maintain customer relationships, the communication after the sale is just as important, if not more important, than the actual sale itself.
Those aren’t the only comments – others mention that building relationships requires trust, honestly, integrity and so much more. All good conversations.
I hope you will consider joining Build Customer Relationships. The discussions are monitored and I’m requesting that we use the forum for discussion not as a sale platform.
What do you think is the most important component to building customer relationships?
Posted by Deborah Chaddock Brown on July 13, 2010 under Attitude, Connecting Moments, Customer Moments |
The Rock Band YES!
A favorite customer of mine called last week and asked if we could meet for an hour. It seems that she has a customer who asked her to do something that she isn’t comfortable doing. But her motto is to “just say yes and figure it out later.”
What a great attitude.
We talk about saying yes to our customers but when faced with a request that we just don’t have the answers for, we fall back on “gosh, I’m sorry, I wish I could help you but I don’t carry that product, don’t offer that service, don’t know how to do that process, don’t want to do something I’m not good at.”
Rather than look for a partner to enrich the customer’s experience and give them what they need – we leave them without a resource.
Think about the last time someone said “no” to you. How did that make you feel? The conversation is going along just dandy and then you ask a question – they say nope can’t help you – and you are left with this awkward silence. How do you pick up the conversation from there? You might ask “well, do you know someone who can say yes?”
Why not be that person?
In Alan Alda’s book “Never Have Your Dog Stuffed….and other things I’ve learned,” he talks about saying yes no matter what just to keep active in your industry. His example is saying yes to keep food on the table. He tells of a time when he said he knew a significant part in a play when in fact he didn’t – he learned quickly – but said yes first and learned how later.
As new business owners/sales professionals – we start by saying yes and taking every job that comes our way. Later we become more discriminating – but even so – we should still say yes.
To the customer we don’t want: “Yes, I understand exactly when you are looking for and ABC Company is a perfect resource for your needs.”
To our loyal customer: “Yes, I can provide that service.” And then, like my customer – quickly find a vendor partner that you can collaborate with to make it happen.
Yes is a great word. See how many times you can use it today!
