A loyal customer is your key to success!
Posted by Celia Couture on Wed, Jun 16, 2010 @ 09:36 PM
In order to succeed as a business owner, you must determine whether you are meeting customer expectations. If you are fortunate, you will have customers comfortable enough to let you know how you are doing. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. We can become complacent and just assume that if we hear nothing then we must be meeting requirements, but this is not always the case.
Many customers or prospective customers are not sure what they should expect, and many will not tell you because they expect you to know. In your customers' eyes, you are the expert at what you do, and you are in the best position to assess whether you are meeting the minimums for your customers.
We take for granted that all customers want to be treated with dignity and respect. Unfortunately, this behavior is not always what we receive from our customer service experts. We may think it is not important to focus on the basics, but a constant reminder about what is important to sustaining customer loyalty over the long-term is the responsibility of every business owner.
The Disney Company prides themselves in achieving customer loyalty through a very specific and sincere value. If something goes wrong with a customer your response needs to be immediate, local and sincere. The Disney Company places accountability for sustaining customer loyalty at the lowest levels in their organization. Employees are taught to act immediately if something is upsetting a customer. The Disney Company insists that the issue be resolved at the point of origin and not passed of to the next level up in the organization and finally the Company expects sincerity in providing a solution for a customer.
It really comes down to total accountability: See IT, Own IT, Solve IT, Do IT!
Follow these simple tips and you will achieve customer loyalty:
- Ownership -Be Approachable
- Listening and responding to the need
- Live interaction and empathy
- Professional image
- Service responsiveness
Test your business. Call and pretend you are an outside customer. How are you treated on the phone? How are you treated when you ask to speak to a mid level manager to help resolve a problem. Are you immediatly passed off to someone else or does the person answering the call take responsibility for resolving the issue.
By practiciing common sense managment, your business will achieve a stronger workforce whose mission becomes keeping the customer satisfied at all costs. We can't afford not to!