Ahhh…. customer service.  You elusive Siren of the business seas; your beauty is as ravishing as your song.  How I hear your call like Odysseus did and I too beg to be taken to your rocky shores.  Beat me.  Abuse me. Make me feel as if it is my own fault.  How foolish I was to hand over my wealth my meager earnings in the pursuit of your false benefits, it is obvious that I am to blame!  Oh, customer service! How I would give my kingdom for you!

Odysseus Seeks Customer Service

In mocking the loss of great – heck even adequate would suffice – customer service it has become increasingly common that consumers are no longer putting up with it.  The economy cannot always be the fall guy for poor service.  Even in booming economies customer service stunk (certain cell phone providers and airlines come to mind.)  It is becoming more and more evident that businesses forget that buying decisions are emotional decisions – not rational or logical.  Customer service is an expectation that is not limited to developed economies; it is part of any business transaction across the globe.

Your business can make huge gains if it invests in delivering exceptional customer service.  They way most business stink at customer service; the bar to exceptional is not that high!

Three things cannot be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. – Buddha

The Hard Truth

Recent surveys have demonstrated that 50% of customers will leave a business after the first poor experience.  48% percent of customers will leave after being wronged a second time.  The majority of customers, 63%, believe that customer service has not improved and gotten worse.

Here is some additional information for you to devour:

• 91% of customers believe service is an important factor in making a purchase.

• 81% of customer will cease doing business after bad customer service.

• 70% will want an apology coupled with a form of reimbursement.

• 65% will let their friends, colleagues, and family know of their troubles.

• 50% will now post something about it online.

• 24% of customers believe the companies they conduct business with work to keep it.

The simple truth is that your brand, your image, and your business will suffer.  The most profitable customer to any business is the repeat customer. They too are not willing suffer poor customer service lightly.

Have you checked the status of your customer service lately?

You can start right where you stand and apply the habit of going the extra mile by rendering more service and better service than you are now being paid for. –

Napoleon Hill

The 5 Steps To Exceptional Customer Service

The great news is that with all that bad customer service out there you can wipe your competition’s clock.  You simply need to establish what excellent looks like and then shoot to achieve it!

That sounds simple, and it is.  Here is what your should do immediately to keep your current customers happy and grow your business:

• Have a formal declaration of what your customer service is. This will set the floor for expectations.  In the famous – if not urban legend – story about Nordstroms is that they will take anything back, even if they do not sell it.  As the story goes they took back snow tires; they do not sell snow tires.  One thing that is not legend is that at Nordstroms they do not close the store until the last customer leaves.  Even if it is after the store’s posted hours.  They understand that some customers need time to make a decision and no one likes to be rushed.

• Acknowledge failure when it happens and provide solutions. I know some companies will not do that for the fear of a dreaded lawsuit. Yet people are fallible, products fail, and mistakes happen.  Most customers just want the acknowledgement that something went wrong and are looking for solutions.  They have made an investment of wealth and emotion to buy your product – help them when it fails.

• Remove the “guilty until proven otherwise” mentality from your company. If you do not remove this mentality from your business you will always have an underlying us versus the customer feeling to every interaction.  Yes, some people are trying to scam the system – or any system – more times than not these individuals are not repeat customers anyway.  If you kill them with kindness they tend to go away.

• Talk to your customers and ask them what they desire. I might as well kick a dead horse along with everyone else: have the airlines actually asked their customers what they want?  Talk about poor service they might as well make everything self-serve on the flight, since it practically feels that way.  Companies cannot exist without customers willing to buy their products and services.  Your best bet in beating expectations is to ask your customers what they expect.

• Never rest on your laurels. Customer service is always evolving.  How you change with the tastes and desires of your customers will determine if you maintain an exceptional level of customer service or not.  Promote successful customer service interactions internally and externally with the mindset of seeking to improve on what was accomplished.  Continue to deliver service even after the sale has long been concluded.

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward. – Kahil Gibran

If You Made It This Far…

Customers will increase spending by 10% or more when they experience quality customer service.  This goes for repeat customers as well as new ones.  Why?  They feel great about the decision they made to purchase and they want to reward your business.

Success Is Measured Through Purchases

Never forget that every buying decision is an emotional one.  If you provide exceptional customer service you will win more business than your account can handle.  Customers will flock to you in order to avoid the dangerous rocks were countless consumers have drowned from the false allure of the Sirens’ call.

Don’t promise exceptional customer service. Deliver it!

Who purchases your products and services?

What do they look like?

How do they interact in your marketplace?

These are just some of the questions you need to know the answers to when you seek out your ideal customer.  For the small business or niche business, your ideal customer is not everyone that walks through your door.  In fact, even for the larger companies, their ideal customer is not the everyman.  Instead it is a very specific person/demographic.

Does that mean you are chasing away dollars?  Not necessarily.  If you do not have an identified ideal customer you are more than likely to attract customers that are actually a drain on your business.  You know who these customers are.  They are the loudest complainers and hog your valuable time and resources.  These “service hogs” take up so much of your time that they destroy your profit margin and make you lose opportunities with customers that actually appreciate your products/services.

How can you identify your ideal customer?

Get a pen and paper and start writing out what they look like.  Review your customer files and find out who provides 80% of your revenues.  Conduct surveys with your best customers asking them about their business and decision making process. (Hint: ask them why they chose you!) Conduct market research and utilize free databases to add more meat to the sketch you have your ideal customer.

Without an ideal customer, you will never achieve your goals for your business.

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Are you prepared to close the sale?

Any sales book worth its salt will tell you that you have to prepare before you make the call.  Yeah, I know that.  We all know that.  Yet it is amazing how many sales people just wing it when comes to the sales call.  That attitude means leaving either money on the table or losing the sale.

What does simple preparation look like?

Researching Online

With the abundance of free information on the web, and there is a ton, you do not have to look far to prepare before the call.  If it is a business-to-business sales call you can find whom the key leaders of the company are.  Every company loves to brag about themselves so there are plenty of press releases out there as well.  Public traded companies have even more information just out there for you to stumble upon.  That is the simple technique that right now a majority of your competition does not even use.

To prepare even further and take yourself into the top 5% of sales people, you can use LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media outlets to get the pulse on what people think about your customer.  That is still simple and yet again not used by a majority of sales people.

What does the top 1% do to prepare?

They perform the above and then they take all that information and apply it to the sales call.   That does not mean that they “puke-up” all the data they have learned to impress the prospect or customer.  They use the information to anticipate objections, to give their presentation in the language of the customer, and they apply this data to find hidden needs that even the customer may not be aware about.  They use this information to formulate thoughtful and insightful questions.  They use this information to anticipate answers to these questions.

The top 1% also practice, practice, practice, practice, and practice their sales presentations and answers to objections.  Like the best athletes, the top 1% also visualize what they call will be like.  They visualize the close.

The sales call may only last five minutes, and yet the top 1% put all the effort in before the call.  That is why it looks so easy for them.

Are you prepared?

If not, what are you afraid of?  Winning a sale?