Introductory

Customer: A person who buys. esp. one who buys from, or patronizes an establishment regularly.

Service:     Giving aid or assistance; helpful; useful.

The foregoing definitions lay the fundamental ground rule for the way I discuss customer service. Fundamentals are always valuable to have when things get confusing, complicated and out of control.

Customer service today, is all over the board. Some is very good, some is mediocre, most is very bad. I attribute this  to a lack of empathy, lack of enthusiasm, and a severe lack of manners. Quite frankly, there is a huge lack of understanding of what customer service really is!

If  no one is complaining about your customer service, don’t brag! Service has become so bad that many have just given up complaining about it. This doesn’t mean they won’t do something about it. In many cases they just quietly go away and try somewhere else. For you numbers people out there, it costs about 5 times as much money for you to gain new customers as it does to keep current ones. I’m no genius, but this tells me it might be worth the effort to put customer service at the top of your to-do list.

Product exclusivity can sometimes lead to lax customer treatment. But exclusives are very hard to get. And even if you get one, it won’t be long before it’s copied. In other words, product is not the most important part of building a loyal-customer based business. Although , good quality products do come in a strong second place on the list. What I talk about here also applies to service-based businesses. Your service is your product.

Excellent customer service is not hard to achieve. You only have to “want” to provide it!

I  talk about it without the over complicated theories, analysis paralysis and rocket science, and discuss what really works. Not what should or what I’d like to work.

WHERE SERVICE  BEGINS

Customer service begins with your very first contact with a customer or client. It’s a great advantage to be able to sense what the customer wants or needs. You develop this sense mostly by knowing everything you can about what you are selling.  This doesn’t  mean only the benefits of your product.( I’ll explain why this is so important in my next post). Too many people don’t know enough about the products they sell to be as effective as they should be. The more you know, the more you can help.

If you’ve noticed where I’m going here it’s that Service and Sales are not really separate issues to deal with. They are synergistic. You really can’t separate them if you want to be effective and create satisfied and loyal clientele.

Sometimes, among my posts, you will find ideas or concepts repeated. I do this on purpose to reinforce points I feel strongly about.