Take
Care of Your Customers and They'll Take Care of You
Your
company can have great products, wonderful services, and terrific prices, but
if you don't take care of your customers, you will have nothing. If your
business is to succeed, you must differentiate yourself from your competition
by providing superior customer service.
That
means treating your customers with respect. It means listening to the customer
when he or she has a problem. It means doing whatever it takes to solve that
problem.
Customer
care begins with communication. Whether it be a smile when the customer enters
your business or a 15-minute explanation of the various features of a product,
it is important that your communication be timely, specific, and sincere. While
that might sound simple, often it isn't.
Take
this situation, for example: A customer comes in with a complaint. Before that
customer can explain the situation to the employee, the telephone rings and she
answers it, leaving the customer to stand and wait while she finishes that
conversation. When the customer finally
gets the employee's attention and explains the problem, the employee appears to
be bored with the whole situation.
The
result? The customer is frustrated and feeling neglected. The employee then
says she can't solve the problem, tells the customer to wait, and calls for a
manager. She then begins to ring up other customers' sales while the customer
with the problem again waits to be helped.
In
another scenario, the customer is irate and immediately begins to berate the
employee because the DVD player she purchased isn't working properly. The
employee in turn becomes defensive, which only escalates the situation into a
shouting match. The customer demands to
see the manager. The employee sulks. And both feel frustrated and angry.
Each
of these situations is more common than most of us would like to admit. The
good news is that each is easier to handle than most of us realize. In the
first scenario, the employee should have told the caller on the telephone that
she was helping another customer and to either hang on or call back in five
minutes. Then she should have listened intently to the customer's complaint,
repeated the complaint back to the customer to make sure she understood it
correctly, apologized for the problem, and then immediately done whatever it
took to solve the problem.
In
the second scenario, the employee should have put himself in the customer's
place and tried to understand the frustration she was feeling. A simple,
"I am so sorry; what can I do to make this situation right?" would
have gone a long way to defusing the situation. He should have asked questions
and made comments during the discussion to let the customer know that he
sincerely cared about her problem. He then should have solved the problem as
quickly as possible or found someone who could solve it.
It's
important to realize that only a small percentage of customers complain.
Research shows that only one out of 26 people complain when they have a problem
with a company. It also shows that, if a customer's complaint involves a
purchase of more than $100, he or she will never do business with you again.
Multiply that amount by the number of possible complaints your company could
have each year and you can see that the loss of sales could be substantial.
It's
critical that you teach your employees how to handle these difficult
situations. Teach them to listen, respond, apologize, and take whatever action
is necessary to solve a customer's complaint. And remember that each customer
complaint is an opportunity to win that
customer's long-term loyalty. In fact, studies show that dissatisfied customers
who have had problems resolved to their satisfaction are consistently more
loyal than customers who have never had a problem with a company.
When
customers complain, they are giving you another chance to keep them as
customers. By handling those complaints quickly and effectively, you have an
opportunity not only to salvage the relationship with that customer-but to
cement it. Take advantage of those opportunities, and you will be rewarded with
a strong and loyal customer base.
