Smart customer service
What are your best strategies for keeping your customers happy? Share your ideas with other entrepreneurs by making a post here.
From Chris McKie, San Jose, CA I'd like to share some pointers from Joe Pinto, SVP Technical Support Services, Cisco:
- Make customer success your #1 priority – ALWAYS.
- Listen to your customers using a methodology based on balanced, comprehensive feedback. (Then take action to deliver tangible changes to the customer experience.)
- Foster a culture of evolution. (Anticipate your customers’ changing requirements; embrace change.)
- Drive customer intelligence throughout the company so that you can collaborate internally to drive innovation, improve products and services, enhance go-to-market strategies.
- Employee focus – To keep your customers happy, focus on keeping your employees happy first. (Empowerment, Authority = Responsibility, Rewarded/Recognized, Well-trained)
From mitzi taylor, grand haven, MI Our (www.notsobasictraining.com) best strategies for keeping our customers happy:
• Ask questions to ensure we understand their true need.
• Deliver solutions completely focused on their needs – not on what we want to sell.
• Listen to them.
• Do what we say we are going to do.
• Deliver an amazing service.
I honestly can count on one hand the number of times we have had to deal with an irate customer and we have been in business for 13 years. We must be doing something right!
From Mike Anderson, Eden Prairie, MN One of the things that we do quite often here at PartnerUp.com is bring customers into our offices and hear what they have to say about our product (which is our web site) and new features/functionality that we're working on.
These are very informal get togethers and we always bring in free food and refreshments, some prizes, and sometimes a speaker. We usually invite around 50 customers at a time and 20-30 usually show up.
By letting our customers get to know us in person at meetings like these, we are able to build relationships with our customers, give them some insight into how our company works, and help them meet other entrepreneurs.
The results of these meetings are always very positive. We strongly believe that being proactive about customer service, that is asking customers what they like and don't like and what potential problems they see before we even introduce features and products, is the key to really happy customers.
During a Friday breakfast meeting, I received a phone call from a customer of mine.
The doctor said his front office door was acting up again.
I apologized for his distressed situation, and said I would be stopping to fix the problem, ASAP.
Mind you, it was NOT the method I used to install this malfunctioning device. It was the device, itself, malfunctioning!
My breakfast companions stated I handled the situation very well by apologizing, even though I had no control over the device, or it's reliability.
We often respond that it's not our fault, that the device/product is quirky.
This leaves a foul taste in our customer's mouths.
Always apologize for their distressed situation, and point out the problem that you find exists, once you are face to face with your customer/client.
Accept responsibility for even the product(s) that you choose to install, and address problems as soon as they are encountered.
You may find that you are pleasing a great "center of influence," and you may receive a multitude of referrals from this person, because of your willingness to accept responsibility for even a faulty product, over which you have no control!