March 30, 2011

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor and bankruptcy expert who President Obama put in charge of setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I met her at a White House Christmas party this past year (see us pictured, left to right: Warren, Dee Dee Myers, me, and Betsy Myers). She’s faced tons of opposition, which is not especially surprising; the agency, after all, will have the authority to write and enforce rules covering mortgages, credit cards and other consumer lending products.

Her work is important for small business owners, who have to protect their consumer relationships at all times. Perhaps this seems obvious, but you’d be amazed how many business owners forget this. A 2010 report sponsored by Key Bank's Key4Women program and conducted by Forbes Insights found that although 69 percent of 320 women polled found customer retention and customer service top priorities, 82 percent didn’t have a formal customer service plan. Only 18 percent had a company-wide service strategy, with 55 percent saying they addressed customer service on a case-by-case basis. Twenty-seven percent had no strategy at all.

This is problematic, because relationships are all we have, and it’s critical to build and nurture them. So here is my advice for both women and men business owners on building healthy customer relationships.

1.  (Social) Network, (social) network, (social) network. Like it or not, communication these days is all about tweeting, blogging, Linking-In and Facebooking. Consumers are becoming more and more used to interacting online, so you definitely need a company website (with a space for comments/complaints). Twenty-five percent of those surveyed in the Forbes study didn’t have a website.

2. Add offline contact information to your website. The Web will certainly enhance your presence, but you still need to list your offline information so consumers can call you up via the (gasp!) telephone.  Only 47 percent of respondents in the Forbes study said they listed their offline contact information for customers. Nothing’s more annoying than logging onto a website and not being able to find a real live phone number or address.

3. Promise—and deliver. Most people have the best of intentions, but sometimes they just don’t follow through. While that’s annoying in personal relationships, it’s downright deadly to a business.

4. Keep in touch. The worst thing for a business is to get a reputation for failing to do this. People like to know that their friends are thinking about them. They also like to know that the companies they care about have a vested interest in them (and not just financially). A quick e-mail or telephone call speaks volumes.

5. Be clear. Elizabeth Warren told the Los Angeles Times that clarity, not disclosure, was her main priority. “Disclosure has come to be a dirty word,” she said. “Disclosure has become like shrubbery, a dense thicket of words that are a good place to hide tricks and traps. Clarity is about emphasizing the key pieces of information that someone needs to know: price, risk, easy comparison of other products.” Words to live by.

Nell Merlino is the Founder and President of Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, the leading national not-for-profit provider of resources for women to grow their micro businesses into million dollar enterprises. She is the creative force behind Take Our Daughters to Work Day and the author of “Stepping Out of Line: Lessons for Women Who Want It Their Way in Life, in Love, and at Work,” from Broadway Books, which is available on Amazon.com.

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Join the conversation ( 1 )

• Jacob Yount 1 year 1 months and 29 days ago

  

  It blows my mind that folks aspiring to be successful professionals will say something and not follow up. Whether it's not doing something on the time they SAY they will do it, showing up when they SAY they will, not doing something they SAY they will do....you get my pattern. As professionals, if we say we're going to do something, clients and contacts need to be able to put stock in our words. If our words don't mean anything how can our service or product? Keeping in touch: in this day of quickie tweets, iPhone, etc... it seems like people are getting worse at following up and creating a real communication bridge. Start caring about your customers, not just your own benefit and you'll naturally have great touch-back + personal skills