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It’s a well known fact that no business can exist without customers. Because it’s critical that you form a close working relationship with your client, customer service is of vital importance. One of the indicators of a company’s health, customer satisfaction, can be found through market analysis. Satisfied customers usually lead to more sales and profit, making it a strong indicator of company performance. Can you honestly say that your company is committed to customer satisfaction? Really and truly committed? Let me ask you this, are you doing everything you can to ensure customer satisfaction? What, then, are the secrets to customer retention and winning back an angry customer so that the situation becomes an outstanding customer service experience? What follows are a selection of tips that will make your clients feel valued, wanted and loved. 1. Start with a Positive Attitude – Look at any customer service situation as a challenge and an opportunity to learn and grow, and take care of the customer’s needs. Start with a positive attitude that says, “I want to help you and, together, we will find a solution.” I always say, “You never know who is watching you, so always give them your best face.” 2. Be Friendly and Approachable-- This is very true. It’s very important to be friendly, courteous and to make your clients feel like you’re their friend and you’re there to help them out. There will be times when you want to beat your clients over the head repeatedly with a blunt object – it happens to all of us. It’s vital that you keep a clear head, respond to your clients’ wishes as best you can, and at all times remain polite and courteous. 3. Listen with Empathy – Put yourself in the customer’s shoes, experience his/her pain, and communicate to the customer you understand the pain. 4. Communicate Your Plan of Action – Sometimes this is easier said than done! However, achieving this supreme level of understanding with your clients will do wonders for your working relationship. Let the customer know what you are willing to do to take care of his/her concerns. Ask for the customer’s commitment to the plan before proceeding with the action. 5. Take Action – The most important customer service secret is taking action. You can go through all the other customer service secrets and if you don’t take action, all your actions and credibility are lost 6. Honour Your Promises – During the customer service challenge, I expressed several times that I valued and wanted her business. It’s possible this is the most important point in this article. The simple message: when you promise something, deliver. The most common example here is project delivery dates. This let’s the customer know that you don’t take his/her business for granted. It’s even more important that you express to the customer that you want his/her business after the customer service situation is resolved. You can also give an extra incentive to the customer for acting now to continue giving you the business. It can be as simple as a discount coupon or some other special offering. So, what do YOU think. Is it possible to guarantee customer satisfaction or are we kidding ourselves? Even if we can't guarantee it, shouldn't we set that as our goal so we have a reasonable chance of coming close to it? Tell me, and the rest of your peers, what you think. Customer satisfaction guarantees are not only achievable, they are essential to creating the proper attitude within a company. Unless an organization is prepared to guarantee that its customers will be satisfied, that organization will not put the policies and procedures in place, will not empower the employees, will not reinforce the enabling behaviors needed to make its customer the number one priority as it should. Apply these customer service secrets with your customers and you will increase customer satisfaction and customer retention and win back customers to increase your bottom line.
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Customer service, Business, Customer, Customer satisfaction, Customer retention, Company, Customer Management, Jonathan Munsell, Restaurant Success S,
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