Good Customer Service is the Minimum Customers Want and Expect

Good customer service is what customers want; and in today’s competitive environment, it’s also the minimum you need to deliver.

Customers want to be treated well. And it’s your primary function as a small business owner to make sure they are treated well, throughout your organization.

Some owners have told me that they need to keep costs in mind, that customers will always try to take advantage of them, that they need to make a profit and can’t give all the money back to the customer. But bad customer service will result in a loss of customers. (Pretty logical outcome.)

And my response to that is yes, that’s true. To some degree. But, if you want your business to grow, the customer always needs to come first, even at a price. It is your job to find ways to deliver that service efficiently and economically.

Some Customer Service Tips:

• First, how are you defining. ‘what is customer service’? Without a definition it is difficult for you to recognize what needs to be done. This will be different for every organization.
• Second, recognize that customer service is related to every action or interaction on behalf of the customer. To deliver good customer service you have to have a staff and a culture that has outstanding customer service skills.
• Third, the quality of your customer service is directly related to the quality of the organization you have developed. It is not possible to deliver outstanding customer service if you have hired people who are satisfied with delivering only average performance.
• Fourth, as a small business owner, get involved in customer service complaints. This will enable you to better understand where the customer is coming from and where, when, why, and what you need to change in your organization.
• Fifth, recognize that outsourcing customer service elements is perfectly acceptable and probably a smart thing to do when you are a small, growing business (at some point you will likely grow to a size where your business can manage it effectively).

  You could for example, outsource the support desk or the warranty claims or even the order taking (via call center). But be careful in your outsourcing selection – you want to be sure they have the same value on delivering good customer service that you do and that they understand what you want (not a slick and superficial service; not a bored and reading-from-a-script service; but a genuine, thoughtful, intelligent service).

• Finally, always believe that a customer who complains is doing you a favour – it’s the ones that don’t complain who are not giving you the opportunity to improve – they will simply not come back.

If, as a small business owner, you deliver outstanding service, and grow your customers and your sales, you will be able to gain economies and efficiencies of scale that help you you’re your costs down and earn a profit.

If you have customers who are trying to take advantage of you, fire them or charge them accordingly. But don’t make all your customers – good and bad – pay for the bad behavior of a very few.

Good customer service needs to be the rule, not the exception, for all small businesses.

As a small business owner, you cannot control all the customer interactions for your business but you can manage them. Set up excellent programs and procedures to enable good customer service. Train your staff to provide the best customer service possible. And then make sure that your customer service management program supports your staff.

You want your customers to be more than satisfied; research shows that satisfaction will not keep customers with you ... service experiences that delight, amaze, astonish (you get the idea - it's more than satisfaction, much more) will keep, and gain, customers.

Recent research also shows that small businesses that focus on delivering good customer service (I like exceptional even better) have a higher survival and success rate than those who don’t think it’s important.

If you have customers who are delighted with the experience of buying from you, you will not only have them return for more but they will become great referrers of new business and new customers.

Delivering good customer service has become a competitive strategy: competitors can take away your customers not only on price, but also on service.

If your competition manages to amaze and delight and you simply satisfy (or worse), they have an advantage over you that will be hard to overcome.

Effectively running a small business means that you need to build a business operations plan, business plan outline, a strategic plan, and a marketing plan outline; do not forget to build a plan for good customer service management. And then execute your plans!

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