Remember when business books about customer service were all the rage? When companies built cultures that were focused on “Total Quality Management,” “Raving Fans”, “Customer Focused Quality” for instance?
A quick look at the top 15 Business and Investing books on Amazon.com reveals not a single title that even hints at customer service. Is it still important? You bet it is.
Consider your own experience if you think otherwise. How often do you find yourself complaining about your treatment at your favorite restaurant, dry cleaner, or big box store. Have you stopped going to that restaurant because “they just don’t get it?” Have you dropped your dry cleaner for another one because they lose your shirts and don’t seem to care to find them? When you return the big box store item that doesn’t work, are you ready to go back when they make it as difficult as possible to accept the return?
The same is true for your business. Whatever business you are in, just getting the product or service right isn’t going to overcome the customer’s experience with your business. If your sales people, customer service team, or anyone else who comes in contact with your customer offends or treats them poorly you’ll likely never know why you lost them, but you will lose them. Customer’s will find an objective reason to justify their subjective reason for no longer doing business with you, but you can bet they will go elsewhere.
Now is the time to make sure that your business culture emphasises customer service. Its tough enough to find new customers. You can’t afford to lose your existing customers. I find one of the best ways to emphasize this culture is to practice it yourself internally.
A good way to start is to reward behavior that you want to see repeated by your employees. Try starting an organic “caught doing it right” campaign where employees and managers nominate others for behavior that is recognized as consistent with the customer focused culture you have outlined to your staff. Each month, select one individual to recognize and provide a nominal reward as well as the public recognition. It goes a long was and it will save you customers and sales!
