The only good thing that may have come out of this entire economic meltdown is that organizations and businesses have started valuing their customers. ‘Big or small I will be super nice to you to get your business’ that’s the motto most organizations are adopting now. I have seen a completely new attitude emerge in the service industry in this market environment. Cab drivers, hair dressers, waiters, money changers, service providers, bankers, brokers, retailers, doctors all now realize that if they need to survive they need to build relationships with their customers and keep them happy. Now is a good time to analyze your customer service practices and eliminate anything that is turning off your customers and forcing them to search for options and running to your competition.Some things we all can do ……
- Get in touch your old clients who have stopped giving you business. Find out why? And see how you can turn them around.
- Get in touch with all your existing customers and see if they are happy with things.
- Build relations with your customers, be personal wherever you can.
- Give them great deals but try and lock them in for longer tenures. It’s more important right now to cover cost than focus on making a lot of money.
- Retrain your customer service staff and enforce high standards. ‘If you guys do a bad job we may all loose our jobs’ that should clearly send a strong signal to employees.
- Don’t make it difficult for customers to reach you. Don’t make them wait for response and action.
- Empower your staff to make quick decisions and reduce red tape.
- Finally use technology to achieve your customer service goals. Build forums, corporate blogs, social media accounts that build relationships with customers.
It’s clearly a buyers market and may stay like this for sometime. Let’s get our act together or we may be all forced to close shop.