The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,900 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.
Posted in Uncategorized
As a marketing consultant I am often asked, “How do you really know if the money spent on advertising is wasted or driving in business?”
The most basic rule of advertising is this: More pieces out equals more responses back.
If you outflow (send out) flyers, coupons, newspaper or magazine ads, letters, etc. you will get more people coming in (inflow). More outflow equals more inflow. This basic principle applies to many areas of life. The more times you send out your resume the quicker you tend to find a good job. Networking is another great example of this principle. The more you get out and meet people and make friends the better your business goes. In an even more general sense the amount of kindness one sends out is directly proportional to the amount of kindness one receives.
But back to advertising! How do you know if it is working? Well, many businesses ask callers or new customers the question “how did you hear about us?” This is a good thing to do and you should definitely do it. But are the answers you get accurate? Very often they are not.
First, look at how advertising works. Each advertisement is a message. The message reaches the ears or eyes of the potential customer and can be ignored or accepted. How many messages does it take to get a response? How many times do you need to hear about a business or product before you go to take it for a test drive, or go in for a visit?
Timing is important. One reason the message needs to be repeated is that the message needs to hit the customer at the right time for it to be accepted. You may hear or see an advertisement for a place to get your oil changed many times and never notice it and then one day you hear or see the ad when you are actually in need of an oil change and it’s on your mind. Bingo! Now the ad registers and is accepted.
Most potential customers need to get your message repeatedly before deciding to try your product or service. So when you ask the client “how did you hear about us?” they usually give you the first thing that comes to their mind. “I saw your yellow page ad”, or “I received your Val-Pak coupon”, or “a friend told me about you”. But realistically they probably have heard or seen your message many times before actually arriving for service.
Well, if this is true, how does one ever know if their marketing is working? Simply by looking at the raw statistics of how many people come in for service.
Remember the basic law above. If you send out your message, whether its via Val-Pak coupons, letters, postcards, email, your web site, newspaper ads, TV, radio, networking groups, billboards or word of mouth your should expect a response. So, the more you send out your message the more numbers of customers you should be getting in. This does not always mean that you will get in more new customers, just more customers.
Just remember that the response you get may not be what you expected. You may devise an advertisement with the intention of attracting new clients, and instead you may get a lot of former clients coming back in for something. They see or hear your message and it reminds them that they need to come back in to see you!
As you probably know advertising does not always work immediately. Sometimes you need to send out your message repeatedly for some time to start to see noticeable responses. So the message here is: be Patient!
There is one more VERY important thing to mention related to advertising and response. The quality of your service or product and the level of customer service you provide. Actually these are two things, not one. You can have a great product or service and lousy customer service. An example would be a dentist who is wonderful, friendly, and a great technical dentist, but the front desk employees are hurried and uninterested. The opposite is possible as well; you can have an auto repair business with great front desk staff who the customers love and lousy technicians who can’t fix a lawn mower much less an Audi. Of course (heaven forbid) it’s possible that both of these situations exist.
So let’s look at what happens if one of these variants exists: you, the owner invest money and advertise your business. Customers show up for service. The product or service is in some way not up to par. Those customers may come back, maybe not. They for sure are not loyal customers, and they will
probably not be referring other people to you. These customers will most likely be looking for something better and when they find it, goodbye to you! So of course to attract more new customers this owner may need to spend more money to advertise.
You can see where this is heading. More and more money spent for advertising and less response and less customers coming in. If this is happening you MUST immediately do what ever is needed to handle it now. More staff training, better equipment, or even new equipment and new staff! Poor product or less than wonderful customer service is like having an open artery pumping your blood onto the sand. You (or your business) will soon die!
What should be happening is this: you advertise, new customers come in, they get great product and service, become loyal customers and refer new customers to via word of mouth. You business expands and grows. This should be what is happening.
Yes, if you are spending your hard earned cash on advertising you should expect to see a result. If the results are not there it could be that you are sending the marketing pieces to the wrong groups of people. Like sending oil change coupons to people aged 70 and older who live in a retirement community. Maybe you need to survey customers better or redesign your ad. Maybe your vehicle used for advertising (say, advertising in the local newspaper) is not getting responses anymore.
And lastly, but NOT leastly, my advice would be to take a complete, detailed look at your quality of product and your level of customer service. Improving them can be the difference between an advertising campaign that drives in boatloads of customers and one where you get few or no responses and your hard earned cash is wasted.
Is word of mouth really the best form of advertising?
Yes. Without question Word of Mouth IS the best form of advertising. This fact is widely known and accepted. The big question is: How do I capitalize on this fact and use it to expand my business?
Just knowing that Word of Mouth is important or telling all of your employees how vital good word of mouth really is to the business will never be enough to create the level of service necessary to WOW your customers.
The purpose of this article is to expand understanding of the basic factors making up great word of mouth and excite you, the business owner, so that your creative juices flow and ideas pop like a huge 4th of July fireworks display and you get all excited about what can be done in your company to expand through word of mouth!!!
A few basic facts…
If a business is providing adequate, normal, regular run-of-the-mill service they will get SOME word of mouth referrals. The way this works is that if, for instance, someone asks you where to go for dry cleaning or computer repair you will most likely want to give some recommendation. People generally want to be helpful and we all like to give advice, so we will give some answer, we will often refer someone to a place where we received simply mediocre service. The point is that if you are providing what is considered to be good, or acceptable service you can only expect a few referrals.
Really great word of mouth comes from a remarkable or memorable experience. Lets say that you have been in to your local veterinary hospital, or Thai restaurant and the experience was memorable you very possibly will not wait until some asks you for a good vet clinic or Thai place before you tell people about it. Your word of mouth becomes unsolicited. Have you ever done this or seen it done? I have seen people talking up their hair stylist or espresso stand to people who are bald or don’t even like coffee!
Let there be no mistake, unsolicited word of mouth is what will really drive in more new customers. This is (or should be) the goal of any company.
On the other hand, unsolicited word of mouth DEFINITELY applies for bad service as well! Customers who are irate with a business will sometimes tell as many as 20, 30, maybe up to 50 people about their bad experience, with out ever being asked directly about the business.
So, when we are speaking about word of mouth, we must understand that what, exactly, we are going for is unsolicited, positive, word of mouth about your business.
Why IS word of mouth the most effective form of advertising?
Well, the first answer is that word of mouth means that someone, probably someone who you know, is telling you that Olympic Pizza has the best pizza, or that Fred’s Auto Repair does fantastic and reasonable work. You’re hearing it from a person, someone that you know and (probably!) trust.
Compare this with normal advertising: TV, Radio, news papers, magazines, web, direct mail, etc. Let me ask you this, as a consumer, do you BELIEVE what you see advertised? I mean really, if you get a flyer in the mail offering you a “low cost mortgage”, do you believe it? If you see an ad for a cheap airline ticket toFlorida, are you suspicious that it may be a scam? Do you wonder if the quoted price for the ticket actually includes things like airport fees, taxes and that your baggage actually gets to go with you?
By far the majority of consumers, when they hear any advertisement, wonder: “What’s the catch?” We look for the fine print. We think, “If it sounds too good to be true, then it is!” We have all heard the pat phrase, “new and improved” so many times that the words don’t have meaning to us. The point is the very few people completely believe ANY regular advertisement. We know that ads all too often contain exaggerations, half truths, gimmicks and sometimes even complete fabrications. In case you haven’t noticed, this trend is getting worse, not better.
But if someone you know, or better, someone you like, or even better, someone whose taste or opinion you respect, tells you that the Mocha’s Espresso stand on 4th and Main is awesome, or that theNorthCascadeVeterinaryHospital is the best around you will listen. If you have a connection with the person telling you about a business it becomes much more believable. Another reason for this believability is that the person has no reason to mislead you. The person telling you about the fantastic service atNorthCascadeVeterinaryHospital probably doesn’t work there, or get commissions from them, so we reason that they don’t have any reason to mislead us.
There is also a common statement that not only is word of mouth the best form of advertising, but it’s the cheapest. This brings up the question of how to determine how much it costs to attract a new customer, client or patient. Most businesses I see are sorely lacking in any effective method to track where their new customers come from, but at least they can say how many new clients they had in a month. Calculating the “cost of each new customer” is not too difficult, simply add up your entire expenses for advertising and marketing for a month and divide this by the number of new customers, and there you have it, you can now see how much you “paid” for each new customer. This is a great exercise, by the way and I highly recommend not only doing the calculations but sharing the results withALLof your staff.
Of course if you are really on the ball and can track not only how many new clients you got in a month but HOW each new client heard of you, it is possible to calculate the cost-effectiveness of each form of marketing you use. (Look for a new blog entry coming soon on tracking new clients.) For example you can see how much your yellow page ad cost, and how many new clients it brought you and do the math. This is a very enlightening exercise and the most intelligent way to make decisions about where you spend your advertising dollars.
In either case I bet you will be surprised to see how much one new client “costs”.
Word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing because it is more believable and the less expensive than any other form of advertising.
Great word of mouth about your company makes all of your other marketing efforts much more effective.
The above statement should be in huge bold CAPS. This is one of most important and grossly overlooked laws in all of advertising and marketing.
Let’s say that you have a spa. You are sending out all sorts of marketing messages; yellow page ads, a web site with search engine marketing, you’re in lots of travel guides, you attend chamber meetings, maybe you use billboards, you are using a whole host of avenues to get your name out there.
Now let’s look at this from two possibilities, let’s say first that the overall word of mouth about your spa is awesome. If someone has already heard from a friend that the spa is great and then they see one of your ads, or maybe a special offer you are currently running, they are much more likely to respond. Positive word of mouth makes your other marketing more believable, more effective, more productive. A business will get a MUCH bigger bang for their advertising buck when they have great word of mouth.
Once in a while I have heard people talking positively about an ad they saw or heard for a business or product. Your friend tells you about the great experience she had at a clothing store recently. A little later your with a different friend and you see or hear an advertisement for that same store, and you say: “Hey, isn’t that’s the place Sally went last week where she bought those cute new dresses?!”
The effect of great word of mouth on your other marketing efforts cannot be overstated!
A person may hear some good word of mouth about a company and at that time not need the service or product, but later when the need arises and they are searching or when they get exposure to an ad, they willTRYto remember what they heard and will respond.
On the other hand, if the word of mouth about your spa is poor, then the money you spend on marketing will get LESS response. If a potential new customer has already heard some negative feedback from someone about the Bayside Spa and then they see an ad somewhere promoting the Spa, their tendency will be to discount it, or ignore it. They won’t listen to your message, their mind is already turned away from the business.
Have you ever experienced this? If you have heard bad word of mouth about a company and THEN hear an advertisement for the company, what’s the first thing that flashes in your mind? The negative story you heard before, that’s what!
How about this example, lets say you yourself had a very bad experience with a company (think telephone service provider, or maybe bank…). Now you’re sitting with a friend watching TV and an ad comes on for the company that you feel wronged you. What happens? In many cases just seeing the ad will elicit a negative comment from you to your friend! “That’s the bank that ripped me off!” “I used to have that cell phone service and I’ll NEVER go back to them!!!” Have you ever seen this, or done this yourself?
What can be done to improve your word of mouth?
Here are two of the most effective (and rarely done!) things to do:
Follow up.
Calling a client, customer, patient, back to see how they are doing is an AWESOME way to improve word of mouth. Has your doctor ever called you back to see how you were feeling? If they did, did it impress you? Have you ever been to a restaurant where the chef (or cook) came out into the dining area and asked the customers how they liked the food? This can be done in auto repair, chiropractic clinics, schools, nail salons, cleaning companies; really, the list of businesses that can make use of follow up contacts is endless. It does take some basic communication skills so that your follow up doesn’t make the customer angry, but it’s pretty simple. And the higher up the person doing the follow ups is, the more wow factor it imparts. Anyone who is doing follow up calls MUST be interested in what ever the customer has to say, positive or negative. I think that one reason that follow up calls are NOT done is because there is trepidation that the response will be less than positive. Who ever makes the calls has to be equally happy to receive positive or negative response, and be prepared with what to say and do if the response is negative.
There’s an infinity of questions that you can ask.
Follow up calls, done correctly; show the customer that you genuinely care about the product or service that was provided, that you care about the customer and that their complete satisfaction is important.
Follow up calls can give you valuable feed back from your customers that you can use right now to make your product or service better.
Remember that statistics show that only 1 in 25 unsatisfied customer will ever say anything to you about what they don’t like. (Although they may tell 25 other people what they didn’t like about you!) Asking them in a way that shows that you WANT them to tell what they liked or didn’t like REALLY works.
Compensation when things go wrong.
Every company has things go wrong with clients from time to time. Customers get shipped the wrong thing, or someone’s steak is cooked wrong, or there is WAY too little chocolate in their mocha. How you handle it when things go wrong is HUGE. If a customer has to wait, or client came in to pick up a product (which you forgot to order for them), or what ever you did wrong, be sure to have on hand some form of compensation ready. I recommend buying $100 worth of $5 coffee cards, and also movie tickets, or restaurant gift cards and have them on hand to give out. I say have three types and values for the various levels of how badly you may have messed up (or how irate the customer is!)
Your company should have a set system for compensating irate customers. Create “tiers” of compensation, start with the coffee card, then the movie tickets, then the restaurant gift card. If the client has to wait more than a short time, use the coffee card: “Mr. Thompson, we are very sorry you had to wait so long today, here is a gift card for the “Mochas” espresso stand over on Fir Street, thanks for hanging in there with us today!”
You may not think that a $5 coffee card is going to make any impact, but it DOES. Your customers will feel appreciated, acknowledged, validated and recognized.
I have gone over this idea with many businesses and everyone thinks it a great idea, but implementing it is not always a snap. From my experience the hardest thing is to get the staff to hand them out as much as I would like! Sometimes employees will get a little stingy with them, “Well, she only had to wait half an hour, and it wasn’t our fault she had to wait, so no card for her”. “I don’t want to waste the card on that person, or why give away five dollars…” are some of the things I have heard. Some times you get busy and just forget to hand them out…
Let’s go back to an earlier article: Why IS word of mouth the most effective form of advertising?
This was where we discussed the cost of a new customer, and if you did the calculations in that article you probably saw that a new customer may “cost” $50, $80, $100 or possibly a lot more.
Well, how many people will your customer talk to about you if they receive a coffee card or movie tickets? Do you think that they’ll tell anyone? If you give out a $5 coffee card and the customer tells 7 people about it, how does that work out? You get the idea, giving out a $5 coffee card that results in even one new client is easily the “cheapest” form of advertisement ever! So, give the cards out when there is any even slight problem.
Back to our tiered system of compensation, the coffee card is for a small upset or inconvenience, the movie tickets for a bigger screw up on your part, the restaurant gift certificate is used for…you get the idea, figure out your own system and tiers. If you don’t like coffee cards you can use discounts for future services at your business, you can credit money to the clients account, give out free items, the list is endless. The stuff you give out does not need to be expensive to create a powerful effect.
This is NOT only for irate customers!
Do you have awesome customers or clients who you love? Give them coffee cards or what ever you decide for “compensation” once in a while! “Julia, I just wanted to say that you are the most awesome customer! Here, have a coffee card (or movie tickets, or what ever).” There doesn’t have to be any set system for this (like giving a gift card on a special holiday, etc), in fact random and unexpected tends to create more of a memorable experience.
Two more short footnotes:
Word of Mouth Round-up!
Well, are your creative juices popping like pop corn? Are you excited to implement some of your new ideas about improving your company’s word of mouth?
I certainly hope so! I am always happy to receive any feed back, so if you have any great ideas on improving word of mouth, please send them in!
And lastly if after reading this article you are thinking that you would certainly LOVE to implement some of these ideas, but it would be difficult because of a lack of time, or that some (or all!) of your employees may not embrace your enthusiasm, then with out question you are in need of a little help!
If you call me directly I may be able to assist you in handling these barriers. There is no charge for calling, I am available to give advice anytime! I am located inWestern Washington, Pacific Time zone! My number is: 360-809-0661.
Best of luck!
Andy Porter
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In most businesses the owner and even the employees are the last ones to know what the customers think!
A business is there to service or provide products for customers. At the same time, research shows that only one in twenty-five dissatisfied customers, will tell you what was wrong. The other twenty-four customers, who leave dissatisfied with your business, will almost certainly tell other people. They just won’t tell you!
Customer feedback is extremely valuable. You can do so much with it. A primary use is to help the business correct problems. If your customers are complaining of long wait times, you can add more staff or streamline the order process. But that’s just the tip of the tulip. Customer feedback can be used to:
In fact customer feedback is one of the most valuable management tools in existence!
It’s really impossible to get too much customer feedback. I don’t know of any company that gets enough. Realistically if you want to create loyal customers you need to know what ALL of your customers think about you, NOT just the ones who love you!
Of course how you USE your customer feedback is tremendously important. But before we get to that lets discuss more about HOW to gather the feedback.
A company must establish three easy-to-find and use channels for customers to communicate what they like and don’t like. In addition, you must create a customer service record where you and your staff can track any and all customer comments, both good and bad.
Methods to gather customer comments:
Rule # 1: You must have at least three channels for customers to provide feedback.
Rule # 2: One of these channels must enable customers to give feedback anonymously.
Rule # 3: In addition to the three avenues you choose to gather feedback, you must ALSO use the Customer Service log!
Before we tackle the methods of gathering feedback let’s look at the survey itself. What questions do you want to ask your customers?
Posted in customer service, management, marketing, perception of value, word of mouth | Tags: customer complaints, perception of value
The purpose of a customer survey is to get your customers to tell YOU if there was anything they didn’t like. And to tell what they DO like!
As already covered, only 1 in 25 customers will tell you what they didn’t like. This is not good! A customer who leaves unhappy may or may not come back to see you, or they may start to look for a new service provider. They will almost always tell other people what they didn’t like about your business. It’s always better for them to tell you, and the sooner the better, so something can be done.
From my view, I always want to know what went wrong: Why did the customer leave? Maybe you can fix things and the customer stays, maybe you can’t. But even if the unhappy customer does leave, if you know why, you can make changes and prevent other customers from leaving as well.
Have you ever gotten lousy service or product and yet you didn’t complain? Why didn’t you say anything? The most common reasons are that the customer:
Generally speaking people are much more likely to tell you what they DID like than what they DIDN’T like.
If you are going to ask your customers’ questions about your company, you need to ask intelligent questions that will provide you with data you can use to make improvements.
To create your survey questions, start with making a list of the things that your customers are most likely to get irate about. Here are a few possible categories:
Next, make a similar list for YOUR business. Then, based on these lists, create your questions. If the questions on your customer feedback form make you nervous about asking them, then you are on the right track!
Make the survey no more than seven to ten questions. No multiple choice or numerical ratings. Just ask the question (or bundle of questions) and leave a box for the customer to answer.
I recommend that you list all your questions and have one box for the customer to answer. Below is a sample of a customer service survey from a web site:
How are we doing?
Your input is valuable and helps us in our never ending quest to improve our levels of customer service. Please take a moment and let us know how we did.
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You can leave your contact data if you like, it is not required.
Your Name: ____________________________
Date of service: ______________________
In this example you could have an answer box after each question, or just one box as above. There could be more questions. But don’t forget what you’re after: Honest feedback that enables you to make things better.
Once you have your survey questions the next step is figuring out how to get them distributed.
Now that you have your survey questions all ready, go ahead and choose three of the above methods for gathering feedback and get started
Hold Weekly Staff Meetings
There are many reasons to have a staff meeting each week. The most basic reason is that if you want to have a team that works together then you have to enable the employees to communicate. Yes, there is an investment of time, and it’s hard to schedule, etc. But, NOT having weekly staff meetings, as outlined below, will decrease your bottom line, period.
Often staff meetings are rather boring affairs (at least from the viewpoint of the employees!). They are usually one-sided with management doing most of the talking. The actual purpose of staff meeting is to co-ordinate actions and get everyone working together as a team.
In all my years of experience I have never seen any system for staff meeting work better than the one outlined below:
The Customer Comment log is a record of any and all customer compliments or complaints, accessible so all staff can make entries. It may be a large sized book with specially divided sheets, or a shared spreadsheet document, etc.
The log is a vital tool for developing a team of people who work well together and care about what happens at work. Not to mention creating loyal customers and improving word of mouth about the company! Most everyone wants to take pride in their work and are highly motivated when they can personally make a difference.
The log has several columns that are filled in completely when a compliment or complaint is received. The columns are:
Client name / date / who took data / what was said /what was done / result.
Client name and date are self evident. Who took data is who spoke to the client and is writing the data.
What was said is EXACTLY what the client said. The only editing should be if there was any foul language used by the client. This need not be written verbatim. But if for example the client names a staff member who they feel has wronged them, this must be written down.
What was done is any action the staff member took at that time to remedy the situation. Was there any apology given? Was there a promise to investigate further? Was a product exchange or credit given? Was a refund given? Was nothing done?
Then, what was the result of the handling done in the previous step? Did the customer leave happy? Were they still upset? Did they say they would never come back? Were they smiling?
The Customer Comment log must be kept in a very accessible location where ALL staff can easily add to it or read what is in it. Larger companies might categorize the logs by department or division.
The idea is that ALL staff would take the time to fill in the things that they hear from clients, both positive and negative. Usually receptionists, and other front-line staff, hear more of what the customers have to say, but not always. Sometimes they are afraid to pass on what they hear because they fear repercussions from staff higher up. There needs to be a firm policy in place that no staff member can be disciplined in any way for writing what the customer says.
It is up to the executives to make sure that the log is USED. Any and all compliments or complaints should be recorded daily. The log should be reviewed regularly by executives and gone over in staff meetings.
The log gives execs a broad picture of the client’s point of view, where the company is strong and where it needs work. It is a very valuable tool and can and will create strong staff member enthusiasm when used.
CUSTOMER COMMENT LOG
| CLIENT NAME | DATE | WHO TOOK DATA | WHAT WAS SAID | WHAT WAS DONE | RESULT |
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Top-down Service
What creates an atmosphere of friendliness and a culture of truly caring customer service? Is it simply having great employees? Or a generous benefits package? How about an effective staff training program? Clearly these points are part of it, but there is a lot more to it.
Internal customer service, meaning how everyone in the company interacts with each other, is what sets the tone for the overall level of customer service. This is true in small businesses and it is true in large corporations. Larger companies have distinct levels or echelons of employees, owners or directors, upper management, middle management, and so on. Internal word of mouth between these “groups within the group” are the corner stone of a successful business.
What Employees Want
Employees want to know where things stand and they want stability. Sudden change never goes over well. Direct, honest communication works two ways: Ideally, management would communicate exactly what they think to employees and all employees would feel perfectly safe in communicating what’s on their minds to management.
While this ideal may never be completely achieved one can see that every company is somewhere on the scale of open communication. Where communication is more open and honest the employees tend to be more loyal to the employer.
Another thing that employees want is simply to be able to contribute to the company. Anyone who is part of a group wants to help out and make things better. When their efforts are ignored or rebuffed they tend to lose interest. If a person feels they cannot be of help to the group they stop caring.
Who are your customers?
Everyone knows the basic definition of the term “customer”. It’s a person who purchases your goods or services. This definition applies to most business transactions.
Now let’s look at the customers of a government office. In many cases the person does not purchase or pay for the service. So let’s revise that basic definition to: A person or group for whom you provide services or products.
These two concepts are similar in that the organization is providing services or products to an outside entity, an individual or group. One could say that these are external customers.
Internal Customers
Internal customers are those individuals or groups within a company or agency who are helping to provide/sell goods and services to the external customers.
Each department or division of an organization is a “customer” to the other. The sales department is a customer of HR. Shipping is a customer of Sales. All departments are customers of reception or the call center. Effective management views everyone, clients and all employees, as customers.
In the same way that a company can have bad word of mouth with its customers, an employee can create bad word of mouth inside a company. Have you ever seen an employee whom many of the other employees constantly complained about? “If you have a problem, don’t ask George for help, he’s always grumpy.”
An entire department or part of a company can have bad internal word of mouth. “Those idiots in shipping can’t even write their own names.” or “The planning department just sits on their butts all day long.” Have you ever heard anything like this, in your company?
Most companies and agencies tend to focus solely on external customers. The paying customer gets more attention than the company employees. This can be a grave mistake.
In any company with more than two employees a majority of the customer’s complaints stem from a lack of communication or coordination between employees, sections, groups or departments.
I’ve seen this in countless businesses: The wait staff bickering with the cooks; the technical support staff cursing the sales staff; the management critical of the employees, and vice-versa. It’s hard to be friendly, courteous and smile to the customers when someone you work with is being rude, nasty or disrespectful to you.
If you have work groups or departments bickering in your company, you had better get busy. Right there is the source of some, if not all, of your word of mouth complaints.
Drill: Give your company a grade on each of the 6 areas above. Grade each point like in school: A, B, C, D, F, and write the grades in the left-hand margin. If applicable, grade your department in the right-hand margin.
Any discussion of customer service and dealing with people needs to touch on the subject of emotions and stress.
Negative or unpleasant emotions and stress are what make dealing with employees and customers sometimes difficult. If everyone were happy and relaxed then dealing with people would be a snap and stress free. Of course this is not always the case.
Sometimes a person is temporarily grumpy or miserable. Life is full of surprises, some good and some bad. When a person is under any type of stress or strain it changes their emotional outlook. This in turn changes how a person communicates, how well they listen to what you have to say and of course what comes out of their mouth.
Everyone has experienced moments when they were under stress and said or did things that they may have later regretted. This doesn’t mean that the person is bad or always like this, in this case it was a temporary thing.
Then there are people who are just generally irritable, grumpy or unhappy. We have all encountered such people. In this case their emotional state is not temporary. For example: a person who always disagrees or argues or the customer that you just can’t please no matter what you do or say.
The difference is that in the first case the person soon “comes out of it” and goes back to being himself or herself, while in the second case the person stays in an unhappy condition.
Dealing with customers, employees or co-workers
Temporary upsets
When a person feels that something did not go as planned it can upset them. Some people get upset when there is any change, or if something unexpected happens. If a customer has certain expectations which are not being met this will cause some problems, not to mention if the customer feels that your company did not do what was advertised or promised.
When someone yells at you does it change your emotional outlook? How about when you get a speeding ticket? Are you happy about this? An otherwise happy person can become angry, sad, worried, etc temporarily when something happens that they don’t want to have happen!
When a customer is upset it is usually because either your company actually did do something wrong or the customers feels that you did something wrong.
A customer may be irritated and direct this to you or your company when the actual source of the upset was elsewhere. Maybe the person just received a speeding ticket, got laid off, or is ill. All of these things probably came as somewhat of an unwanted surprise and were not on the person’s wish list for the day!
It doesn’t matter what caused the customer to be upset. The biggest mistake that you can make is to take it personally and become upset yourself. Being defensive is one of the most common reactions. Interrupting the person because you don’t want to hear the customer’s problems is another one.
Sometimes what a customer is saying is pretty crazy. Once I called the phone company and was ready to scream at the person on the phone because they “couldn’t find my account”. Then it dawned on me that I was calling the wrong phone company!
Emotions are interesting. Just being near someone in a specific emotion can have an effect on ones mood and outlook. Of course when a customer is emitting a strong negative emotion it’s more difficult to remain light hearted.
Being able to master ones emotions and remain calm is a vital necessity when dealing with customers. It can also come in handy when being married, having a family or in any relationships!
The most important attributes of anyone dealing with customers are: friendly, calm, interested, helpful and knowledgeable about their services or products.
What about the person who is always unpleasant to deal with?
Customers:
Generally it would take many different interactions with a customer to know if they fall into the impossible to please category. But if this is the case, what does one do?
Of course all of the points above for dealing with unhappy customers apply: being friendly, calm, interested, helpful and knowledgeable. With such customers one needs to triple their efforts!
Sometimes it’s best to find another person to deal with the customer. Some personalities don’t mesh well. So you can tag team with another co-worker. In many cases this alone can turn the situation around and everyone will be happy. If you do this and it works, don’t take it personally! No one gets along with everyone.
Just recognizing that the person is generally grumpy or irritable can help. RULE: once you know the general emotional condition of a person you can predict what they will do and say. Knowing this you can keep from becoming upset about them. This rule can be helpful in dealing some customers and possibly even select relatives!!!
I am also a firm believer in the idea that you don’t have to like everyone. And you don’t have to service everyone. If a customer is just too belligerent then in some cases it may be better to send them elsewhere for service. Customers can fire their provider. Well, service providers can also “fire” a customer!
Employees and Co-workers:
What if you work with someone who is constantly miserable, grumpy and unhappy?
First of all make sure that you are looking at things on a long term basis, don’t look at a temporary condition.
People who are constantly negative don’t tend to have good days and bad days. They have bad days and worse days! Such people tend to get upset very easily and then stay that way. Another characteristic is that they tend to blame someone else for their problems. It’s never their fault.
Gossiping and spreading negative news or rumors is another favorite pastime. An interesting fact is that when they do spread gossip or rumors it is usually about your most productive employees!
There are many words written about stress at work. One idea is that stress comes from being busy. In my experience stress at work comes from having to work with someone who is constantly negative. Its hard to get excited about going to work if you know that you’re going to have to listen to Joe or Sally complain all day long!
I have hired many professional people in many different businesses. I have found that one of their main concerns is the atmosphere of the work place. Is there lots of unrest? Gossiping? Back biting? More and more people understand that this is the cause of stress at work and want to get away from such places.
When you trace it down you will probably find that the majority of the stress and drama at work comes from a very few people.
Don’t make excuses for such people. Just apply your regular HR procedures and start to hunt for a replacement!
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Holding a Client Appreciation Week is a wonderful way to promote your business, get the staff excited and attract positive attention from your clients and the community at large. The general idea is to schedule a week (or two) for the event.
The event is promoted as Client Appreciation! We love and appreciate all of our awesome clients and this event is for you! Come in to see us any time during the 2 week event and have refreshments, get entered in a drawing, pick up free stuff and generally have a good time.
For the entire duration of the event the business will:
Here are a few more details about what to do:
Other details:
After the event is over:
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If you take time to read customer service manuals, books or articles or if you go to seminars or workshops then you know that they all talk about the same basic stuff:
You’ve heard it all before. The customer is your boss. The customer signs your paycheck. The customer’s needs and desires are paramount.
The customer is God.
We shall all bow before the holy customer and do everything to service thee.
It gets a little crazy, doesn’t it?
Can we be honest for a minute?
First of all let’s face it, you can’t please everyone. There are certain customers that just cannot be pleased. You know it and I know it, but it’s never written about in the customer service books or manuals. The basic idea is that you MUST please EVERYONE! And if you can’t or don’t, then boy are you just plain lousy at customer service!
There are customers who would complain if you gave them a bag of gold. (“It will hurt my back if I have to carry this out to the car!)
While were being honest, lets really dig deep, shall we?
It’s actually OKAY if you don’t please everyone.
I know that sounds sacrilegious. This is something that should never be said out loud. We’ve all known an employee who would immediately grab a hold of this idea and use it to write off any and all complaints. That’s why no one ever talks about it.
There are many reasons why you will never be able to please everyone.
First, not everyone likes or dislikes the same things. You may have one customer complain about your receptionist and 100 other customers say that she or he is the best they’ve ever seen. In a restaurant your most loved dish (Chicken Cordon Bleu with Béarnaise Sauce) won’t be loved by everyone. You can count on the fact that someone won’t like it at all!
Then there is the type of customers you hope to attract. Is your service or product a run of the mill sort, or is it for high-end customers? If you run a 4 star hotel some guests will complain about the price. No matter what your prices are. If you run a Motel 6 some will complain that there is no wireless Internet or valet service. So we have the fact that as soon as you try to focus on a specific type of customers you tend to make the others unhappy.
In some cases the customer just wants a fight. I have known customers who ALWAYS return their food and complain in the restaurants they visit. They feel it’s their duty. Some love the drama. Some love the new and exciting stories they can tell their friends about how they got such HORRIBLE service at such and such a place.
Some of the customers that I have bent over backwards to treat the best were the ones who complained the most.
I know customers who feel slighted if they are not really wowed and impressed. I recently read a book where the author was irate because the hotel clerk did not drive down to Wal-Mart to buy him a full sized ironing board. He was NOT happy with the small ones the hotel had, and wanted a regular sized ironing board. The idea was what louts they were for not going to buy one for him.
So where does this leave us?
When there are complaints do the usual. Go and look to see what happened and if there is something to fix, fix it.
But maybe you have been over and over everything and you just can’t see what you did wrong or what you could have done better. Then what?
My advice is simple: Don’t sweat it. Don’t get upset or feel bad. Don’t yell at your co-workers or get angry at the employees. Just smile, laugh and be happy! Recognize that you do a heck of a good job at customer service and go have fun servicing the next customer!
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Why it can be therapeutic to fire customers.
I suddenly realized the other day that I have never written an article on how to fire a customer! Or why a company would want to in the first place.
From my experience, most businesses never officially fire customers. They just muddle along trying to do their best. If the business has a very troublesome customer, the employees usually just grit their teeth and get through it and/or try to get a co-worker to deal with the problem customer.
Sometimes the employees “fire” the customer without telling the boss or asking for approval! They simply decide that this specific customer is horrible and they make things so miserable for the customer that the customer never returns. This is NOT the correct, preferred method to fire bad customers!!!!!
There is a danger of even mentioning this subject to the employees (or owners, for that matter) about “firing bad customers” for fear that they will start to fire every customer that they have (even the slightest or in some cases, imaginary) problems with!
Which customers should be fired?
There is a world of difference between a customer who is having a bad day and one who consistently chops people up. Show me a person who is always nice and never gets upset and I will show you a person from another planet!! Alien Alert!
Here are some of the reasons to fire a customer:
Everyone has different tolerance levels for this sort of thing. Any trained and competent customer service person understands the cardinal rule of the trade: Don’t take it personally. I have seen both ends of the spectrum. Once I saw a clerk in a gas station “fire” a customer simply because the customer complained that the credit card reader outside was broken. More than once, I have seen a receptionist take far too much aggravation from a customer who should have been fired on the spot.
The point is, that you have to balance being tolerant, patient and having thick skin, with knowing when keeping a destructive customer around is creating real turmoil for your company and employees.
Use your better judgment
There are no hard and fast rules for when to fire a customer. Each case has to be taken individually. The manager must look at many factors: The effect the customer has on the staff as a whole; any mitigating circumstances regarding the customer’s upset; the length of time the person has been a customer; their history as a customer, etc.
If you are an auto mechanic and you mistakenly damage a customer’s car while you are test-driving it, of course the customer will be very upset. One would use considerably more care and empathy with someone upset in these circumstances.
Sometimes, customers get incredibly upset and abusive over very minor things, I have even seen customers become upset over an imaginary error or complete misunderstanding.
There are many articles advising that your main criteria for deciding whether to fire a customer or not is to calculate how much money the customer spends at your business. The idea being that if they are high paying customers, you shouldn’t fire them. This is understandable, but I don’t agree with this viewpoint. In my view, you should weigh how much stress they bring to you and your employees.
Having several really horrible customers can cause you to lose your best staff and make working conditions for you and your employees miserable and really, no amount of money from the customer is worth that.
Employees who want to fire customers often
If I have an employee who is constantly clamoring for me to fire customers, I become very interested in what THAT employee is doing! Any employee who has a short temper and poor listening skills may think that the company needs to fire half of the customers! Rather than starting to fire customers, you are better off re-training, reposting or replacing that employee!
How do you fire a customer?
The best way to let a customer know that they are fired is to write them a letter.
The worst possible thing to do when firing a customer is to speak to them when you are angry. If there has been an upset or incident, which has convinced you to end your relationship with the customer, take a few days and collect your thoughts.
What you DO want to do is to end the customer/provider relationship as painlessly and professionally as possible without making it any more stressful for you or the customer. This should help prevent poor word-of-mouth.
Of course, once you are to the point of firing the customer, you are probably not hoping for a positive review, but on the other hand there is no sense in driving the customer to make even more bad waves for your business.
So, take some time and write a letter.
What to say?
Here is a simple outline with a few ideas, try something like this:
Dear John Doe,
I am writing to you regarding your relationship with our business. It has come to my attention that you have indicated displeasure with either our services or our team.
It appears that we are no longer able to fulfill your ________ needs to your satisfaction and, therefore, are unable to retain you as our customer/client. As an alternative, we would like to suggest that you select another ___type of business provider___ who may be better suited to meet your needs.
We thank you for your past business and wish you the best of success in finding another __type of business that will be a better fit for you.
Sincerely,
Business Owner
The above letter is simply a starting point; you can quickly fill in the blanks and mail away. There is no need to outline in the letter what you feel the customer did wrong, or explain WHY you are choosing not to do business with them anymore; it is generally a waste of time and may stir things up and make things worse. Remember, the purpose of the letter is to fire the customer, not reform them If you want to reform them, then you need a different type of letter! This letter is sent specifically to fire them, so keep it simple!
The letter should be: short; professional; non-accusatory and make it very clear that you would like the customer to go elsewhere for services/products.
Customer Responses
Don’t be surprised if you send the letter and the customer calls you back right away apologizing and wanting to make amends. This happens 30% to 40% of the time. If they do this, I would consider giving them another chance. I have seen this work out well in many cases. Of course if the customer’s bad behavior starts to happen again, I would suggest firing them again right away and make sure it is for good!
Different types of business
There are definitely types of businesses where you are more likely to get rude customers. For example, a drive-up window at McDonalds ; people working at a government office that serves the public – oftentimes people come in actually looking for a fight even before they arrive.
What happens if you don’t fire customers?
If you have a customer clearly deserving to be fired and yet you do nothing about the situation, it lowers staff morale. It will appear to your staff that you care more about the customer’s money than you do about them – your trusted employees.
The holy commandment that “the customer is always right” is not only wrong, but tends to invalidate your employees if there is a crazy customer around. I have seen many employees punished, or even fired, in situations where it should have been the customer who was fired, not the employee!
Keeping customers around after they have repeatedly created turmoil in a company has a detrimental effect on the overall atmosphere of the business. If employees have just spent time dealing with a badly behaving customer – their interaction with the next customer might also be compromised. In fact, having to deal with one really horrible customer can sour a customer service person for an entire day.
The above is related to how abusive customers affect employees. Let’s look at how an abusive customer can affect you, the business owner using the following example:
You have a consulting client who always calls and demands special service, does not respect your time, or schedule and expects you to put your other clients on hold to help them only. You have had several heart-to-heart conversations with the customer and there has been no change in their behavior. If you spend a few hours dealing with this customer’s complaining, whining, criticizing and special demands – it could have a considerable negative effect on your dealings with your next customer. In fact, burn-out can often be traced to being saddled with several of these overly demanding and unpleasant customers. After a while, you may decide to give up consulting altogether!
Part of a manager’s job is to back up and support their employees. This creates employee loyalty.
Another key manager duty is to ensure that the best level of customer service is delivered.
These duties take intelligence, diligence and understanding. And sometimes, firing “bad” customers can help you achieve both.
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Marketing efforts can be divided into two categories.
External Marketing denotes all of the actions you take to attract new customers. External marketing includes such things as your sign outside, your web site, attending Chamber meetings, all advertising and… well the list is very long! The purpose of external marketing is to let people know that you’re there, what services or products you offer and to entice them to visit your web site or come in, call or in any way reach for services/products.
Internal Marketing includes all of your actions to maintain a relationship with someone who has already purchased your product. Letting existing customers know about an upcoming sale is a common and narrow use of this type of marketing. A comprehensive internal marketing program includes such things as customer service surveys, providing educational information, showing the customer that they ARE important to your company and is simply a way for a company to maintain communication with their customer base. Of course the purpose of this is to increase sales, but effective internal marketing also improves word of mouth, increasing referrals.
Sometimes marketing actions overlap, reaching both “old” and “new” customers at the same time. For example collecting toys or food and donating them to a food bank or community center involves and interests your existing clients and if made known in your community will also attract new customers. Any internal marketing program that creates good will or educates or improves service will improve your customer’s loyalty and so increase positive word of mouth for your business.
It is a mistake to not balance these two marketing functions. Actually your external actions will bolster your internal programs and vice-versa. Focusing too heavily on one area while not developing the other can be detrimental.
One example of this is “new client packages”, where the new customer is offered a package of services at a MUCH lower rate than the existing customers receive. This often offends your existing customer base, possibly motivating them to leave your company so that they can come back and be a “new” customer!
Basics
Here are some internal marketing statistics:
Of course all of these numbers and percentages vary from industry to industry and from region to region, but the general idea is that most of the income a business receives is from existing customers and keeping them happy is of the utmost importance.
Internal Marketing targets your current or past customers. It keeps your customers connected, lets the customer know that you haven’t forgotten them and that you care about them, and provides an opportunity for you to let your customers know about new products, services, equipment and so on.
Per my own surveys with thousands of people the number one reason they are loyal customers to any provider is related to personalized service. Some one remembered their name, or their likes, or some detail about them.
An effective internal marketing program is a very effective way to create and maintain a personalized relationship with your customer base.
Keeping track of your customers
Creation and maintenance of your customer database is of HUGE value to any business. A customer database lets you keep track or people who bought from your company:
o Recently, or based on time
o Volume or frequency of purchase
o Types or selection of products
o Total yearly or lifetime purchases
o Location, city or zip code
Creation of the database is not the topic of this article, but I will make a mention about maintaining the accuracy of the contact information of your customers. Obviously having just a customers name and no contact data is not of much value. All businesses large and small MUST create and follow simple protocols to make sure that customer info is correct and up to date. Contact info can be updated on line, over the phone or when ever a customer comes into the office, store or what ever.
Regular mailings (every three to six months) ensuring that you will get back address corrections is vital if you plan to use your date base for regular mailings. Marking “Address Correction Requested” ensures that if the customer moved and filed a forwarding form with the post office that you will be able to update your files accurately.
This area is sometimes overlooked, in many businesses no one is watching to ensure that the database is up to date and being corrected regularly. Noting is a bigger waste of effort and money than to be sending your message out to no one!
In my experience there are no internal marketing actions that work for everyone or work everywhere. Every type of business is different. They have different types of customers, different needs, wants, etc. Not only that but even in a single industry, say Auto Repair, or Dentistry, so much varies from region to region that you just have to try things and see what works for you and your customers. What is workable in Mobile, Alabama may not get any results in Aberdeen, Washington.
Here is a list (in no particular order!) of some internal marketing actions that can be used.
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In the world of customer service it is said that a satisfied customer may tell 9 to 12 other people about their positive experience, but will tell 20 people (or more) if their experience was bad.
This idea is widely known and accepted. If the customer doesn’t like your company they will talk (or text, or post on social media) and tell others.
My only problem with this idea is how the word “customer” is defined.
Most business owners and managers I have met don’t seem to get that in this case “customer” is meant anyone and everyone who walks in your door or in anyway interacts with your company.
This would include, but not be limited to:
Of all these groups I can tell you for certain that the group above that will spread the most negative news about your business is former employees.
Before I describe this more thoroughly, let me ask you this:
Have you ever left employ at any business, EVER, and later made negative comments that company? Can you think of specifics?
Did you tell many people?
Now of course if you fire a person for being a poor employee you might not expect a glowing reference from them. But before we discuss an employee who is fired or laid off let’s talk about an employee who quits.
Say that there is an employee who has been working at a company for some time and has been doing a good job. In many cases when the employee gives notice the employer is suprised, agitated, frustrated, irate, angry or upset. Have you ever experienced this? I have seen employers act very badly when they receive notice that one of their employees is planning to leave. Sometimes the employer will just tell the employee to leave right this minute. As if the employee has committed a crime by wanting to leave.
I have seen and/or experienced all sorts of wild reactions. I have seen employers who feel “betrayed” by the employee, or feel that the employee is some sort of enemy for leaving! Unfortunately this is not uncommon.
Of course this is absolute insanity. If a person who works for you decides to move on the only correct response is to be excited for the person! Maybe they got a better job offer and will make more money, or have new duties, or they are in some way moving up or trying something new, or moving to a new city, or, or or…the point is that its exciting and the only sane reaction is to be excited for the person and validate them.
If the employee was productive, had been there for sometime, give them a party, buy them the gold watch and chain and thank them for their years of service. Any employer reaction other than this is not just wrong from the point of view that the employee has helped the business, but it is certain to create rancor.
The very worst thing to do is to treat them like some traitor. I have seen businesses try to gyp them out of benefits or try to make life miserable for them. Many staff, when they do give notice are worried about what the reaction will be. This is because of the bad reactions they have had in the past!
Now if you want to talk about bad word of mouth, this will take the cake!
Any person who is treated badly, as in the above examples will spread not just bad, but horrible word of mouth about your company from here to Nairobi and everywhere in between.
One reason for this outpouring of bad word of mouth is the injustice of it all. Simply quitting is NO reason to be treated badly.
Employees who do get fired will usually do LESS trash-talking about the company than the employee who quits and is treated poorly.
There are volumes to be written about how to treat employees and why this is important. It is a fact that ONLY loyal employees will deliver consistent top-shelf service to your customers.
But no matter how well you treat employees they will at some point move on.
How you react to the news and treat the employee who leaves tells volumes about your company and will, for better or worse, have a gigantic effect on your companies overall word of mouth out in the community.
Keeping accurate track of where your new customers come from is extremely valuable! Advertising is expensive. When a business advertises, through any method, they must keep track of how many new customers come in as a result. If you don’t keep track, then you’ll never know if your advertising is actually working.
Guessing about how to spend your money on advertising is not the right way to go! Your business MUST have a simple and accurate method to discover where your new customer, clients or patients come from.
Every business if different, some businesses have customers come in to purchase services, others do their business on-line. A dentist’s office, an auto repair shop, a restaurant all interact with their customers in a slightly different way. So there is not one system for collecting this information.
However here are a few ideas on which you base your system for tracking new customers:
First is to create a simple log sheet, either on a clip board or in the computer that is easy to access where you can quickly mark down how a new customer heard about you.
Here is a simple example:
NEW CUSTOMER TRACKING SHEET
| Date call received | Val Pak | Drive by or banner | Yellow pages | Web Site | ReferralFrom who? | Other | Customer Name |
The chart for your business would of course have the headings applicable to your business and marketing actions. Note the section on Referrals: If the customer says they were referred in, you should ask WHO referred them and note that persons name in this box. If you ask a new customer WHO referred them in they may ask “Why are you asking?”, and the answer is: “We always send a gift to anyone who refers new customers to our business.”
If your business receives phone calls from prospective customers then at some point the receptionist can ask the customer some variant of the question: When was the last time you visited us? If the customer says that this will be their first visit/purchase, then the next question is: That’s great! How did you hear about us?
The same basic system applies when a customer comes into the store, shop or clinic. The receptionist interacts and establishes if the person is new to the business, and if they are there for the first time, asks the “How did you hear about us” question.
In my experience the staff who deal with new customers will have to trained, drilled and reminded many, many times before they start to do this each and every time. The point is: don’t give up on collecting this info just because people tend to forget to ask: just keep reminding and insisting until they DO always ask!
Another important tip to gain support from the staff about diligently gathering this data is to simply explain in great detail WHY it is important.
Most software applications have a way to track how many new customers come in during a given time period. This will show you how many new customers you got, but not where they came from. But you can use this number to compare to the NCTL and see if there are more new customers reported than there are on the NCTL. This gives you some way to check the veracity of the NCTL. You should periodically check this number against the number of customers logged on the New Customer Tracking Chart to see how many (if any) are missed.
Any business that uses a web site to contact customers can easily have fields on their forms asking how you heard about us.
Referral Rewards:
Once you have an accurate system to track where your new customers come from you will know how many referrals you are getting, and WHO is referring these new customers in to your business.
When one of your customers refers new customers in to see you they are showing how much they appreciate you and your business. Rewarding your customers for referring new business to you is an effective and real way to show your appreciation back.
Here are a few simple ways to reward your customers who have referred in a new customer:
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It is interesting to me how companies view the subject of customer service. Most every business will tell you that customer service is important to them and that they always strive for the best service possible. If you had a group of business owners rate the relative importance of say:
I would venture to say that improving customer service wouldn’t be at the top of the list. It seems that some businesses act as if customer service is one of the things we have to do, but maybe not as vital as other things.
Of course I say this not because of what owners tell me, but based on what I see businesses do. I mean, how many companies to you encounter that have really great customer service? Not too many. That in itself tells me that not a lot of businesses take it very seriously.
I realized that maybe many business people do not see customer service as a part of marketing.
What’s missing is the idea that good customer service, by itself can increase your cash flow.
Advertising, selling, customer service, storing and shipping, are all integral facets of marketing. They cannot be separated. You cannot remove customer service from marketing any more than you can remove advertising.
Looking at customer service as one part of your marketing plan sheds a new light on things.
Any intelligent marketing plan includes customer service. Take Starbucks for example. They clearly do a lot of things right. One of those things is customer service. The entire company from upper management to baristas works hard to provide it and have good success achieving it. And consistently good customer service has become one of the main reasons for their expansion.
There is a world of difference between actually providing personal, friendly customer service and simply pretending that you care about your customers.
In this years “MSN Money: 10 Worst Customer Service Companies” Five different banks achieved the ignoble honor of horrible customer service. The banks on the “10 Worst List” are: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank and HSBC, Capital One. So let’s use banking as an example of the opposite side of the coin.
In many companies, like the above banks, customer service is simply something handled by the PR department. They SAY they have great customer service, they ADVERTISE their incredible customer service. And unfortunately that’s as far as they take it. The bank tellers in the local branches may be friendly and remember your name and smile. But that does not make up for the way the rest of the company treats its customers.
What, specifically, does great customer service entail?
Starting at the bottom or entrance to a company, it starts with the staff that deals directly with customers, either in person, on the phone or through Internet lines. How a customer is greeted, how the phone is answered, the general level of friendliness and patience of the employees to customers is part of customer service.
But customer service does NOT start and end here. In fact this is just the beginning, the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Customer service ALWAYS starts at the top levels of an organization. It starts with a commitment; this carries from founders, owners, and board directors to executives and management, on to general employees and ends with the customers themselves.
There is an entire section of customer service related to the policies and procedures established and followed in a business. What is the return policy? Does the company share customer’s private info with other companies? Are there any hidden costs? Is there any confusing fine print?
It really doesn’t matter that you have friendly people answering the phone if your company policies and methods of doing business are not customer friendly.
Advertising is also part of this equation. If a company is exaggerating in its advertising with half truths or even untruths to gain customers it will eventually alienate its customer base. Have you ever seen or heard an advertisement that you think stretched the truth?
Another large factor in customer service is internal atmosphere. How do the staff like working at the company? Do they get along with each other? Is there interdepartmental bickering and finger-pointing? Employees who are happy with their job will always provide better customer service than those who aren’t.
Here is the basic customer service equation:
Dedicated, alert management plus Loyal employees plus Teamwork through out the entire company plus Customer-friendly procedures and policies plus Staff training and education equals Great customer service.
Omit any part of the equation and customer service suffers.
The most obvious connection between customer service and marketing is word of mouth. The better the word of mouth about a company the more business they will garner. Good word of mouth means more referrals, higher staff morale (and better staff retention) and more repeat sales. Great word of mouth also makes all of a company’s other advertising and marketing efforts more effective.
Where to go from here? It seems unfair of me to end with out offering some sound advice to get started with.
I am not going to call this a customer service program, or even a teamwork program, I am going to call it a marketing program. Then maybe some of you will actually try to implement it!
Marketing program
1. Establish several avenues to receive feed back from your customers. Have surveys to pass out, email out, have a feed back form on your web site and most importantly have customer comment log books all over your business so the employees can jot down any customer comments when they hear them.
2. Hold weekly employee staff meetings. At each meeting do the following:
3. Set aside time each week to educate staff on some aspect of improving service. A few ideas are:
4. Work out with all your staff exactly what is the procedure for compensating customers if you do screw up. Buy $100 worth of $5 coffee cards and give them to customers who have to wait. Get $20 movie passes and have them on hand if you really mess up bad. Make sure ALL employees are empowered to compensate customers for any mistakes you make.
5. Write a policy for your company that that says griping, gossiping and complaining are grounds for dismissal. Pass out the written policy. Go over the policy in all job interviews. Add it to the employee manual. Insert the policy in the employee agreement. Go over it at the weekly staff meeting. Enforce the policy. If the griping/gossiping/complaining continues, find your most vocal griper/gossiper/complainer and fire them.
If you do these 5 points and keep doing them you will gradually build a team of loyal employees. Your customer service will improve. Your word of mouth will improve. You will get more new customers. Your staff turnover will decrease. The level of drama and stress in the office will decrease! Of course there may be a few bumps along the road, you may lose a few staff along the way. But if you just keep going all will come out better than you expect!
Best of luck and many happy returns!
Click here for more information about WelcomeTeam Training!
Word of mouth is widely recognized as the single most effective form of advertising. Yet at the same time it is commonly under utilized as a distinct marketing avenue and taken for granted.
Conversations with management about Word of Mouth marketing often go like this: “Yeah, I know word of mouth is the best form of advertising, heard it a million times…okay, but what I want to talk about is how to move our web site up in the Google rankings…!”
If you survey owners or managers as to what is important to fix or improve in their business you always get a big hit on “attracting lots of new customers’ or “increasing sales” and a much smaller hit on “improving customer service”.
A major reason for this is that it’s generally thought that it’s easier to get more new customers than it is to improve the quality of service.
One can rather simply create some advertising or marketing materials and get them sent out. Whether it is via email, letters, signage, radio, TV, or whatever medium, creating a message and getting it out there is not very difficult. If an owner cannot do it himself or herself, or they can always hire someone to do it for them.
Creating really great word of mouth for a company takes a LOT more work. It demands that every level of management become intimately involved in every nook and cranny of what happens at every level of the company. From hiring to staff training, from staff benefits to employee discipline, from every phone call answered to every letter or email sent out, every possible point of contact between your company and the “outside world” AND every interaction between owners, managers and employees sets your level of customer service and word of mouth promotion of your business.
Those are a LOT of areas to work on! Maybe it IS easier to just focus on getting lots of NEW customers! This is EXACTLY what a lot of larger companies do. Cell phone companies and banks, to name two examples, more often than not fit into this example, they have given up any real pretense of taking care of their customers, and their MAIN focus is to attract an ever-expanding influx of new customers.
The illogic of what they’re doing never seems to sink in: If they looked to improve their performance for their existing customer base, word of mouth would bring in new business; and then they wouldn’t NEED such an inflow of new people.
Perhaps these large companies with lousy service have had their accountants crunch the numbers and it turned out it was cheaper to get floods of new customers than to spend the time, money and effort to actually improve customer service and garner really great word of mouth from their existing customers.
Smaller businesses have a much greater necessity to ensure that their word of mouth is good. Actually not just good, but great! The smaller the community, the more competition the more important word of mouth becomes.
So, where to start?
Word of Mouth Marketing Basics:
For starters there are actually several different types of word of mouth promotion.
The way MOST word of mouth goes is like this: Your friend just got a new puppy and asks you if you know a good veterinarian. You tell them about Dr. Tim down the street. This is called Solicited Word of Mouth Promotion. This follows the sequence, they ask, you answer.
This is good. BUT if you own or manage a business what you really need and want is UN-solicited Word of Mouth Promotion.
UN-solicited word of mouth promotion is when one of your customers tells other people GREAT THINGS about your company BEFORE they were asked. In this case your customer starts talking you up to people who NEVER asked them for a recommendation. In the case of the veterinary hospital, the happy customer tells their friends and acquaintances how great you are EVEN IF THESE PEOPLE DONT HAVE PETS! This follows a DIFFERENT sequence; the customer loves you, and starts telling everyone.
People who provide unsolicited word of mouth promotion about your business are LOYAL CUSTOMERS. They will tell people (friends, relatives, people at work, etc) about you. They will write about how great you are on their Facebook page (or My Space, or Twitter, any other form of social media).
Another angle on un-solicited word of mouth promotion is that whenever a customer hears or sees an ad for a company that they liked very much (or disliked very much!) they will comment on it to whom ever they are with at the time. If you’re sitting with a friend watching a game or show on TV and see an ad for an insurance company that gave you the most horrible run-around service recently you will probably comment about it to your friend. “That company is HORRIBLE!”
On the other hand if your service from the insurance company was fast and you were quite happy with the result then the TV ad might move you to make a positive comment to your friend.
It is quite interesting to see how your overall word of mouth status affects your other marketing actions. There is actually a magnification factor, plus or minus, good or bad, of your advertising efforts al based upon the word of mouth out there about your company.
(By the way, are YOU a loyal customer of any local business? Have YOU ever provided unsolicited word of mouth promotion for a local business??)
Of course any positive word of mouth promotion about your business is wonderful. But as an owner or manager what you are really after is the un-solicited variety.
Here are a few important questions that you are probably asking yourself right now:
And here are some of the specific points that MUST be addressed fully to answer the above questions:
DO THIS EXERCISE RIGHT NOW Give your company a grade on each of the 6 areas above. Grade each point like in school: A, B, C, D, and F. Write the grades on the left side of the page. If applicable, grade your department on the right in the same manner.
How did you do? Are you interested in tools to improve any of these areas?
These bullet points make up the contents of our management training program “Customer Service Boot Camp for Owners and Managers”.
Our next open-enrollment full day seminar is scheduled for Thursday, September 30th.
The Boot Camp will be held at the Calico Cupboard Café; 121-B Freeway Drive, Mount Vernon, WA
The event starts at 8am and will end at 4pm. A detailed work book and lunch at the Calico Cupboard are included in the fee, which is $150.00 per person.
To visit our web site click here: www.customerservicebootcamp.com/
To register click here: http://www.customerservicebootcamp.com/CSBCForm.pdf
To read more articles click here: http://customerservicebootcamp.wordpress.com/
The purpose of a customer service survey is to get your customers to tell YOU if there was anything they didn’t like.
The general rule is that only 1 in 25 customers will tell you what they didn’t like. This is not good! A customer who leaves unhappy may or may not come back to see you, or they may start to look for a new service provider. They will almost always tell other people what they didn’t like about your business. It’s always better for them to tell you, and the sooner the better, so something can be done.
From my view, I always want to know what went wrong, why did the customer leave? Maybe you can fix things and the customer stays, maybe you can’t. But even if the unhappy customer does leave, if you know why, you can make changes and prevent other customers from leaving as well.
Have you ever gotten lousy service or product and yet you didn’t complain? Why didn’t you say anything? The most common reasons are that the customer:
My philosophy is that pointed questions are more likely to get a response. Have you ever seen one of those never-ending multiple choice questions that some businesses use?
What are the things that your customers are most likely to get irate about? Here are a few possible categories:
Based on this list create your questions. If the questions on your survey almost make you nervous asking them, then you are on the right track!
I recommend that you list all your questions and have one box for the customer to answer. Below is a sample of a customer service survey from a web site:
How are we doing?
Your input is valuable and helps us in our never ending quest to improve our levels of customer service. Please take a moment and let us know how we did.
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You can leave your contact data if you like, but it is not required.
Your Name: ____________________________
Date of service: _________________________
Is word of mouth really the best form of advertising?
Word of mouth is the best form of advertising. If you haven’t heard that a billion times you must be only 5 years old. It’s one of those things that “everyone knows”. Well if “everyone knows” this gem of knowledge, then why are so few companies actually DOING the things that create great word of mouth for their company?
Attracting new customers is always important. A healthy flow of new customers to a business keeps the business alive. Our current economic condition magnifies this need. So, recognizing that there IS an overall awareness of the constant need for new customers it could simply be that the apparent lack of effort in customer service is due to a lack of understanding, by both management and staff, as to what is considered great customer service and how, exactly, to provide it.
If a business is providing adequate, normal, regular run-of-the-mill service they will get SOME word of mouth referrals. The way this works is that if, for instance, someone asks you where to go for dry cleaning or computer repair you will most likely want to give some recommendation. People generally want to be helpful and we all like to give advice, so we will give some answer, we will often refer someone to a place where we received simply mediocre service. The point is that if you are providing what is considered to be good, or acceptable service you can only expect a few referrals.
On the other hand great word of mouth comes from a remarkable or memorable experience. Lets say that you have been in to your local veterinary hospital, or Thai restaurant and the experience was memorable you very possibly will not wait until some asks you for a good vet clinic or Thai place before you tell people about it. Your word of mouth becomes unsolicited. Have you ever done this or seen it done? I have seen people talking up their hair stylist or espresso stand to people who are bald or don’t even like coffee!
Let there be no mistake, unsolicited word of mouth is what will really drive in more new customers. This is (or should be) the goal of any company.
Unsolicited word of mouth DEFINITELY applies for bad service! Customers who are irate with a business will sometimes tell as many as 20, 30, maybe up to 50 people about their bad experience, with out ever being asked directly about the business.
Why IS word of mouth the most effective form of advertising?
Well, the first answer is that word of mouth means that someone, probably someone who you know, is telling you that Olympic Pizza has the best pizza, or that Fred’s Auto Repair does fantastic and reasonable work. You’re hearing it from a person, someone that you know and (probably!) trust.
Compare this with normal advertising: TV, Radio, news papers, magazines, web, direct mail, etc. Let me ask you this, as a consumer, do you BELIEVE what you see advertised? I mean really, if you get a flyer in the mail offering you a “low cost mortgage”, do you believe it? If you see an ad for a cheap airline ticket to Florida, are you suspicious that it may be a scam? Do you wonder if the quoted price for the ticket actually includes things like airport fees, taxes and that your baggage actually gets to go with you?
By far the majority of consumers, when they hear any advertisement, wonder: “What’s the catch?” We look for the fine print. We think, “If it sounds too good to be true, then it is!” We have all heard the pat phrase, “new and improved” so many times that the words don’t have meaning to us. The point is the very few people completely believe ANY regular advertisement. We know that ads all too often contain exaggerations, half truths, gimmicks and sometimes even complete fabrications. In case you haven’t noticed, this trend is getting worse, not better.
But if someone you know, or better, someone you like, or even better, someone whose taste or opinion you respect, tells you that the Mocha’s Espresso stand on 4th and Main is awesome, or that the North Cascade Veterinary Hospital is the best around you will listen. If you have a connection with the person telling you about a business it becomes much more believable. Another reason for this believability is that the person has no reason to mislead you. The person telling you about the fantastic service North Cascade Veterinary Hospital probably doesn’t work there, or get commissions from them, so we reason that they don’t have any reason to mislead us.
There is also a common statement that not only is word of mouth the best form of advertising, but it’s the cheapest. This brings up the question of how to determine how much it costs to attract a new customer, client or patient. Most businesses I see are sorely lacking in any effective method to track where their new customers come from, but at least they can say how many new clients they had in a month. Calculating the “cost of each new customer” is not too difficult, simply add up your entire expenses for advertising and marketing for a month and divide this by the number of new customers, and there you have it, you can now see how much you “paid” for each new customer. This is a great exercise, by the way and I highly recommend not only doing the calculations but sharing the results with ALL of your staff.
Of course if you are really on the ball and can track not only how many new clients you got in a month but HOW each new client heard of you, it is possible to calculate the cost-effectiveness of each form of marketing you use. (Look for a new blog entry coming soon on tracking new clients.) For example you can see how much your yellow page ad cost, and how many new clients it brought you and do the math. This is a very enlightening exercise and the most intelligent way to make decisions about where you spend your advertising dollars.
In either case I bet you will be surprised to see how much one new client “costs”. In a later article we will revisit the idea that word of mouth is the cheapest form of advertising, so stay tuned!
Great word of mouth about your company makes all of your other marketing efforts much more effective.
The above statement should be in huge bold CAPS. This is one of most important and grossly overlooked laws in all of advertising and marketing.
Let’s say that you have a spa. You are sending out all sorts of marketing messages; yellow page ads, a web site with search engine marketing, you’re in lots of travel guides, you attend chamber meetings, maybe you use billboards, you are using a whole host of avenues to get your name out there.
Now let’s look at this from two possibilities, let’s say first that the overall word of mouth about your spa is awesome. If someone has already heard from a friend that the spa is great and then they see one of your ads, or maybe a special offer you are currently running, they are much more likely to respond. Positive word of mouth makes your other marketing more believable, more effective, more productive. A business will get a MUCH bigger bang for their advertising buck when they have great word of mouth.
Once in a while I have heard people talking positively about an ad they saw or heard for a business or product. Your friend tells you about the great experience she had at a clothing store recently. A little later your with a different friend and you see or hear an advertisement for that same store, and you say: “Hey, isn’t that’s the place Sally went last week where she bought those cute new dresses?!”
The effect of great word of mouth on your other marketing efforts cannot be overstated!
A person may hear some good word of mouth about a company and at that time not need the service or product, but later when the need arises and they are searching or when they get exposure to an ad, they will TRY to remember what they heard and will respond.
On the other hand, if the word of mouth about your spa is poor, then the money you spend on marketing will get LESS response. If a potential new customer has already heard some negative feedback from someone about the Bayside Spa and then they see an ad somewhere promoting the Spa, their tendency will be to discount it, or ignore it. They won’t listen to your message, their mind is already turned away from the business.
Have you ever experienced this? If you have heard bad word of mouth about a company and THEN hear an advertisement for the company, what’s the first thing that flashes in your mind? The negative story you heard before, that’s what!
How about this example, lets say you yourself had a very bad experience with a company (think telephone service provider, or maybe bank…). Now you’re sitting with a friend watching TV and an ad comes on for the company that you feel wronged you. What happens? In many cases just seeing the ad will elicit a negative comment from you to your friend! “That’s the bank that ripped me off!” “I used to have that cell phone service and I’ll NEVER go back to them!!!”
Have you ever seen this, or done this yourself?
What can be done to improve your word of mouth?
Here are two of the most effective (and rarely done!) things to do:
Follow up.
Calling a client, customer, patient, back to see how they are doing is an AWESOME way to improve word of mouth. Has your doctor ever called you back to see how you were feeling? If they did, did it impress you? Have you ever been to a restaurant where the chef (or cook) came out into the dining area and asked the customers how they liked the food? This can be done in auto repair, chiropractic clinics, schools, nail salons, cleaning companies; really, the list of businesses that can make use of follow up contacts is endless. It does take some basic communication skills so that your follow up doesn’t make the customer angry, but it’s pretty simple. And the higher up the person doing the follow ups is, the more wow factor it imparts. Anyone who is doing follow up calls MUST be interested in what ever the customer has to say, positive or negative. I think that one reason that follow up calls are NOT done is because there is trepidation that the response will be less than positive. Who ever makes the calls has to be equally happy to receive positive or negative response, and be prepared with what to say and do if the response is negative.
There’s an infinity of questions that you can ask.
Follow up calls, done correctly, show the customer that you genuinely care about the product or service that was provided, that you care about the customer and that their complete satisfaction is important.
Follow up calls can give you valuable feed back from your customers that you can use right now to make your product or service better.
Remember that statistics show that only 1 in 25 unsatisfied customer will ever say anything to you about what they don’t like. (Although they may tell 25 other people what they didn’t like about you!) Asking them in a way that shows that you WANT them to tell what they liked or didn’t like REALLY works.
Compensation when things go wrong.
Every company has things go wrong with clients from time to time. Customers get shipped the wrong thing, or someone’s steak is cooked wrong, or there is WAY too little chocolate in their mocha. How you handle it when things go wrong is HUGE. If a customer has to wait, or a client came in to pick up a product (which you forgot to order for them), or what ever you did wrong, be sure to have on hand some form of compensation ready. I recommend buying $100 worth of $5 coffee cards, and also movie tickets, or restaurant gift cards and have them on hand to give out. I say have three types and values for the various levels of how badly you may have messed up (or how irate the customer is!)
Your company should have a set system for compensating irate customers. Create “tiers” of compensation, start with the coffee card, then the movie tickets, then the restaurant gift card. If the client has to wait more than a short time, use the coffee card: “Mr. Thompson, we are very sorry you had to wait so long today, here is a gift card for the “Mochas” espresso stand over on Fir Street, thanks for hanging in there with us today!”
You may not think that a $5 coffee card is going to make any impact, but it DOES. Your customers will feel appreciated, acknowledged, validated and recognized.
I have gone over this idea with many businesses and everyone thinks it a great idea, but implementing it is not always a snap. From my experience the hardest thing is to get the staff to hand them out as much as I would like! Sometimes employees will get a little stingy with them, “Well, she only had to wait half an hour, and it wasn’t our fault she had to wait, so no card for her”. “I don’t want to waste the card on that person, or why give away five dollars…” are some of the things I have heard. Some times you get busy and just forget to hand them out…
Let’s go back to an earlier article: Why IS word of mouth the most effective form of advertising?
This was where we discussed the cost of a new customer, and if you did the calculations in that article you probably saw that a new customer may “cost” $50, $80, $100 or possibly a lot more.
Well, how many people will your customer talk to about you if they receive a coffee card or movie tickets? Do you think that they’ll tell anyone? If you give out a $5 coffee card and the customer tells 7 people about it, how does that work out? You get the idea, giving out a $5 coffee card that results in even one new client is easily the “cheapest” form of advertisement ever! So, give the cards out when there is any even slight problem.
Back to our tiered system of compensation, the coffee card is for a small upset or inconvenience, the movie tickets for a bigger screw up on your part, the restaurant gift certificate is used for…you get the idea, figure out your own system and tiers. If you don’t like coffee cards you can use discounts for future services at your business, you can credit money to the clients account, give out free items, the list is endless. The stuff you give out does not need to be expensive to create a powerful effect.
This is NOT only for irate customers!
Do you have awesome customers or clients who you love? Give them coffee cards or what ever you decide for “compensation” once in a while! “Julia, I just wanted to say that you are the most awesome customer! Here, have a coffee card (or movie tickets, or what ever).” There doesn’t have to be any set system for this (like giving a gift card on a special holiday, etc), in fact random and unexpected tends to create more of a memorable experience.
Two more short footnotes:
So, here is my challenge for you: What are YOU going to do at your business to improve your word of mouth marketing? There is no doubt that working out a program based on these ideas will improve your marketing effectiveness and that will make everyone happy! Good Luck!
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