If You Don’t Take Care of Your Customers, Someone Else Will

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Why you have to care for your customers

The basic truth is, to be successful in sales you need to be a Jack of all trades and a Master of looking after your customers, else, you will realise that, other outlet will take your customers away from you. So there is a HUGE financial link between high levels of customer satisfaction and the bottom line of a company.
 For example,  if a company eliminates just four representatives in a call center of about 36 agents (that’s about a 10% layoff), the number of customers put on hold for four minutes will increase from 0 to 80.  

Understand the following and work on the lapses if you are on this table: 

  • 90% of customers dissatisfied with the service they receive will not come back or buy again.
  • Only 4% of unhappy customers bother to complain.  For every complaint we hear, however, 24 others go un-communicated to the company.  Imagine that.  So, in theory, if you have 10 complaints in a month, that means that potentially 240 customers also have complaints but just didn’t share them with you.  But they did share them with others…
  • Unhappy customers tell his or her story to at least nine other people.  That’s not the “word of mouth” you want about your organization.  And with today’s social media, I think the number is growing.
  • Of the customers who register a complaint, between 54-70% will do business again with the organization if the complaint is resolved.  That number goes up to 95% if the customer feels the complaint was resolved quickly.  This is commonly referred to as “service recovery”: we all make mistakes, but it’s how quickly and thoroughly a company resolves those mistakes that determines whether a customer will remain loyal and engaged.
  • 68% of customers who quit doing business with an organization do so because of company indifference.  In other words, if you don’t respond and/or resolve a customer-related issue, your customers perceive that as not caring about their business.  And it takes 12 positive incidents to make up for one negative incident in the eyes of customers.

The following are the possible way out:

  • Develop listening and learning approaches to capture the voice of the customer.  We need a way to hear – and understand – their needs, expectations, and requirements, not just of the products and services they are buying but how they prefer to buy them…the whole customer experience pre-, during, and post-sale.
  • Consider the touchpoints you have with your customers – the phone calls, the face-to-face interactions, the emails, and so forth.  And then proactively think about how you can create positive interactions – experiences that satisfy or exceed customers’ expectations.  Consider doing this in a team or department meeting to get everyone on the same page and exchange ideas for better service touchpoints.
  • Identify processes that touch the customer – ordering processes, inquiry processes (like call/contact centers and your website), complaint and suggestion processes, physical space (your lobby, your “store”), and certainly service/product delivery processes – and ensure that each of these customer-facing processes is designed to ensure more service “deposits” than “withdrawals.”  Then,
  • Focus on your workers: train your staff to ensure that they have the skills and tools necessary to serve customers, internal and external.  Cross-train employees so they can step up to fill a variety of needs, which also gives you capacity and flexibility in your staffing model.
  • Reward staff for their good customer service (and for service recovery).

These tips don’t only apply to retail, service-oriented businesses.  They apply to manufacturers, schools, healthcare providers, non-profit and governmental agencies.  Remember, 90% of dissatisfied customers won’t come back: so there is a huge financial return for those organizations which truly focus on customers rather than just talk about customer service.

Think like a customer to deliver the best Face-to-Face service

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How can you think like a customer in other to deliver the best? 

You need to be aware of your body language and your tone of voice and how both are affecting the perception customers have of you and your company.

“Using professional actors to deliver immersive and interactive training makes perfect sense because they are the experts in voice, body language and how to calm nerves if someone lacks the confidence to approach customers or interact with them,” Lucy Morgans.

She adds: “Actors spend years understanding their body and characteristics. They are also aware of how their mood changes their body language and how energy levels can fall during a busy shift as tiredness kicks in and what to do.”

The importance of body language

  • Do you come across as bored and disinterested?
  • Be aware of your facial expressions and/or any physical habits (we all have them)
  • Does the customer look unhappy or confused? Or angry?
  • Are you making eye contact with the people you are talking to?
  • Are you coming across as friendly? Think about the power of a smile
  • Think about how you perceive people in different situations based on how they appear and act
  • You also need to be able to read other people’s body language so you can react accordingly.

It isn’t just what you say, it’s how you say it

Remember to be articulate. The words and phrases that are crucial to the information you need to convey must be spoken clearly

  • You need to add light and shade to your voice to sound interested and engaged
  • Think about accentuating key words to help you communicate more effectively
  • Use an upward inflection at the end of a sentence from time to time
  • Actors talk about he 5 ‘p’s’. These are Projection (can people hear you if you are talking to a table of people in a noisy restaurant, for example), Pace (how fast are you talking? If you are reading a list, give people time to take in the information), Pause (you pause for effect if you are talking about something important? Perhaps a special offer or meal), Pitch (how does your voice sound? Is it monotone, too high or too low, and is this affecting how people react to you?), and Power (do your words have the right impact? You may have certain words or phrases that have to resonate with the customer).

“It is also important to be a good listener so you take on board what the customer is saying and can offer the correct service. Sometimes we can be so focused on what we have to say that we do not actively listen,” says Morgans.

Dealing with complaints

If you are asked difficult questions or someone is complaining remember to remain calm and truthful. Authenticity, empathy and a willingness to help will go a long way.

  • By sympathetic that a problem has occurred. This is not admitting fault (unless this is obviously the case) but accepting that there has been some inconvenience for the customer
  • Explain why something went wrong. Why was the food cold/late? Why was their room not ready? Why are you out of stock? Why was there a delay in the service being offered? Basically, what happened?
  • Inform them of how you have responded. What changes have you implemented. What has happened to solve the problem and (hopefully) ensure it won’t happen again