Tuesday Tips - You’re in business because of your customers
Be aware of what messages your customer gets about your business. You should strive for a uniform message across every point of contact between your business and your customer. If you have a small business or just getting started as an entrepreneur, do not delegate a client facing position to someone without experience in that role.
As an employee, if you have contact with a customer you are in customer service and you have become the voice of the company to that customer.
Here are two examples from the offline world.
Years ago I took a class hosted by the SBA, Small Business Administration, a government organization that helps small business owners and entrepreneurs. A major change to the itinerary was made without notice that inconvenienced a few people attending including myself. Someone with the title of Executive came in and was rude to those complaining. I was shocked, really. I’ve never been spoken to in that manner by someone in a position usually held by those who are experienced in calming situations, not escalating them. It got worse from there. To this day I tell people to stay away from the SBA. You don’t need them to start your business. If you think you do need a panel of inexperienced college students to review your business plan, good luck to you.
And now a good story.
My laptop crashed and I couldn’t get it fixed so I brought it to a Geek Squad store. They looked it over, held it for three days since they were understaffed (BTW – that’s not the customer’s problem so they really don’t want to hear it), and then said I would need a new hard drive and would lose everything. That was okay since I have backups of all the important files. So I paid for the new hard drive over the phone. The next day, they call and tell me they can’t fix it because there is a major problem with the mother board. So you’ve had my laptop for a week, have my purchase a hard drive, and now you discover the mother board doesn’t work? Yes I was upset by this, but here is where it gets good. When I arrived to pick up the laptop, the manager, a guy around 23, apologized and said the entire thing was their fault since procedure was not followed. The mother board should have been tested immediately. He refunded my money and didn’t charge for labor. He then gave me a $50 gift card. I tell everyone to go to his shop for services.
If you have a brick and mortar business, I hope the need for quality customer service is obvious. If you own an ecommerce site, think about where your client is interacting on the site and what message are they getting? What happens if something is perceived to be wrong on their end? Did you make your contact information available on the site?
When something goes wrong, how will you take care of your customers?
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