May 16, 2011
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Affordably Build Your Brand
FedEx Global Brand Management Director Monica Skipper shares a cost-effective way to build a bigger brand for your small business.
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Sam Walton, who founded Walmart, once said, “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” He knew the importance of providing good customer service, and as an entrepreneur, so should you.
Customers Equal Cash
No business can survive without business. It doesn’t matter what it is, even the most clever of entrepreneurs has to be getting their cash flow from at least one customer. And because customers are so important to your bottom line, it’s a good idea to make sure you are doing enough to keep those customers coming back.
Here are 5 ways that you can instantly improve your company’s customer services:
1. Great people, not great scripts
Your customer service process will never matter as much as the people behind it. Hire people with naturally great people skills. Having people representing your company that have a great, outgoing attitude will take your company farther than a great script ever will. Your customers connect to people.
2. It starts with you
Every employee’s morale is directly influenced by you, the entrepreneur. If you want them to treat your customers well, you need to treat them well. The way you treat your employees will help set the tone on how they are expected to treat others.
Want to read more about excellent customer service? Check these out:
3. It’s all in the name
Dale Carnegie once said there is no sweeter word in the English language than our own name. People feel like you are more interested and sincere when you use their name. So use the clients name in all customer service communications, but make sure you pronounce it properly! And if you don’t know how to pronounce it right off, ask them. They will appreciate that you care about getting it right and took the time to ask.
4. The benefit of the doubt
Even if it is highly likely your customer is wrong, just proving that you are right will result in a lost customer. You have to ask yourself if you want to be right or you want to retain a customer. Keep in mind that being right won’t help pay the bills at the end of the day.
5. Under promise, over deliver
Customer service is all about managing expectations and then beating them. Commit to a resolution and time frame that you can comfortably achieve, then do better. It will rock your customers' world.
Contemplating Service
If you haven’t given much thought to your customer service procedure up to this point, now is the time. Providing good customer service is about enhancing your customer’s experience, so they feel like you care about them in the first place. Just making some simple efforts can go a long way toward keeping customers coming back, rather than driving them to your competition.
If you have ever taken the time to figure out what your average customer acquisition cost is, it can help put things into perspective. You may find that you spend quite a bit of money—and time—to obtain every new customer, making it even more well worth your effort to retain them. And how you do that is to provide a quality product or service, along with good customer service. Providing good customer service is not difficult. But it does take treating your customer how you would want to be treated.
Check your balance, review recent transactions and pay your bill on the go.
VEERA PAUL 1 year 0 months and 13 days ago
Since we have started telling our managers and the staff at the floor level that customer is the boss, the culture of our company has been transformed. We have become more customer focused company.http://www.bestcustomshirt.com