A restaurant guest asks for the wait time.
A prospect needs to know how long it will take to turn around the bid.
Your customer wants to know how long it will take to complete the project.
Ouch!
Which lie are you going to tell?
Become Your Customer’s Favorite Company To Do Business With
I love you!
The reality that customers are people with human feelings and human motivations gets lost in a lot of businesses. This especially true in the B2B world. So many companies get lost in the numbers, in operations and accounting and ROI. As organizations, they forget that at the end of the day, the services and products that they offer are solutions to very human needs.
People are habitual creatures. Think about it. Why do we always go back to the same place for groceries, gas, or fly a certain airline? Why do we use the same design firm or marketing automation software. Why do some of us dread having to learn new versions or new types of technology. As human beings, we flock to what is most comfortable, and what is comfortable generally becomes our favorite. As customer service focused organizations, our job is put things in place that help us become the favorite. This is true whether we are working towards client retention or convincing a prospect to make a change. Here are 9 ways to position your company as the favorite. *Hint! These are not mutually exclusive, so the more the merrier.
Hello! I’ve been traveling a bunch lately, but I did get to eat one of these guys.
I will be back soon.
–Scott
Traveling
April 21, 2012 in
Misc with
0 Comments
It’s Probably Not Your Fault, So Don’t Be An Enabler
Don’t let your customers boss you around.
Does this look like one of your customer relationships.
I touched on this briefly in an earlier post about communicating through conflict and again in another way in my rant about knowing your value. In the world of customer service it is so easy to get caught up in “the customer is always right” state of doing business. We have heard this phrase more that any other customer service mantra that is out there. This statement has great intentions. It says, take care of your customer, please your customer, don’t argue with your customer. All of this is true. The problem however is that sometimes this does not make sense to carry out.
I suggest a different way of thinking. Instead of operating with a “customer is always right mentality” customer service focused companies should operate with this mentality.
6 Secrets Of An Effective Customer Apology
Apologizing can be incredibly intimidating, right?
If your company is built around a culture of customer service, owning up to an error is incredibly important. Doing this correctly seems like an art form. Some companies are brilliant at leveraging a mistake into creating fans of their company while others fall short and are left picking up the pieces.
The reality is, that getting the apology right is not difficult. I want to share with you a method that I have used with great success.
4 Key Steps To Go From Chaotic Company To Ultra-Sellable
Create focus, create value, create the message, create an experience.
This guy looks stuck.
There is a lot of content out there about getting focused in your personal life, but what about your business? An unfocused business is most often a stagnate one. There is a lot of action, but not a lot of forward motion. It’s chaotic. The great thing is that there is a simple process that I have both used and seen modeled over and over again to great success. I will note that although the process is simple, the implementation is hard work, so please do not make the mistake of thinking it will be easy.
Weekend Reading # 5
You Forget Your Value And You Are Done
I can’t believe that I lost sight of this.
Down at the pawn shop.
I re-learned something over the last few days and it has radically shaped my point of view about business, customer service, and dealing with people in general. What is so frustrating to me is that this is something that I have known all along. Heck I used to practice this with power and passion, but somewhere along the way I got soft. Maybe I got lazy, who knows?
What I re-learned is that you have to stick to your guns, be able to defend your value, and let people know that you believe in what you do and you are willing to stand up for it.
Don’t Tell Your Customers The Truth
If your customers are asking for transparency, you are failing at customer service.
Sure! How close of a look to you need?
There is so much talk about transparency in the B2B world these days. Information is so free and ideas spread so rapidly that companies have begun to offer an open portal into their company’s operations and cost structure as a major part of their competitive advantage. If you are feeling the pressure to follow suit, is a symptom if a much bigger problem.
Customers are now interested in knowing about how a company does its business. They want to know how much money a company is making. More and more customers are putting “right to audit clauses” in their contracts. They want breakdowns and itemized invoices. They want receipts with invoices and backup verification. In the end, transparency is creating a race to the bottom. It is a direct result of our poor customer service efforts.
Weekend Reading # 4
# 4 means that I have kept this blog going for 4 weeks.
The start of 2012 has been one of the greatest times in my life. I feel more energized and fulfilled at this time of my life than I can ever remember. The two catalysts for this the small group that I joined with some very awesome and genuine people from my church, and the incredible Radical Mentoring Group I joined with Brian Miles from MAG. I have learned from both of these groups that I fulfilling life comes from a trusting and faith-filled relationship with God and allowing Him to grow my faith through dreaming and pursuing big dreams.
I have never been a big dreamer. Let me take that back. I have always had dreams and things that I wanted to accomplish, but I have never made them real. I never gave myself the permission to go after them. Instead I let myself get way too comfortable with simply watching and saying, “I could definitely do that,” or more often, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
