B W C J AOMOLE

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.