Bike Lane Business Development
Small Business Development
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One of the most significant things you can do to grow your business is to keep customers happy, so they keep paying you. Customer lifetime value can not be underestimated.
Forbes has a collection of tips to help solve even the trickiest customer service issues.
Take a look here:
Photo by Johann Walter Bantz on Unsplash
file under Customer Service
Companies make all sorts of rules, some good, some bad. They are usually to keep some consistency in their product or service, or they are for safety purposes, and often n order to maximize profits.
Empowering your employees to bend or break the rules when it benefits the customer is a powerful tool to guarantee both happy customers and employees.
Shep Hyken has an excellent post with a good story about ridiculous rules:
https://hyken.com/customer-service-training/ridiculous-interpretation-of-rules/
Photo by Mark Duffel on Unsplash
File under: Customer Service
I began my professional career as a customer service rep and it was the best foundation I could have asked for. It has helped me every day of my professional career since. I believe that the best people to do business with have a customer service mindset.
HubSpot has a post here about developing those customer service skills, it’s directed at customer service reps, but it should be directed at every small business person out there.
This is one of the biggest things you need to make it big in the bike lane. Read more about it here:
https://blog.hubspot.com/service/excellent-customer-service-skills
Photo by Florian Schmaezz on Unsplash
File under: Customer Service
Has a salesperson ever answered your question, but didn’t actually tell you what you wanted to know? You are in good company.
Shep Hyken talks here about how to give your customers complete answers, not just answers.
https://hyken.com/customer-service-training/the-incomplete-answer/
file under: Customer Service
Treat customers like you would treat your mother. So write them a thank you note.
This article got me thinking. In this digital world of social media and on-demand everything, analog stands out. Old “fashioned” means that it has been “fashionable” for a long time, and probably for a good reason. I rarely get a handwritten thank you note in the mail, and when I do, it’s refreshing and memorable. I’ve received three in the last five years. I remember exactly who they were from (two were from the same person), and they have had an impact on me.
I’m guilty of not sending them either, by the way. I’m not preaching. I’m applauding the people that do. (Hello, Moo.com?)
Read more HERE:
Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash
“Are you a righty or a lefty?”
The woman at the counter at Dunkin’s Donuts looked at me expectantly. I had never been asked that when I went for coffee, and it threw me a little off guard.
“Huh?”
“Are you right-handed or left-handed?”
“I’m a righty.”
She proceeded to arrange the cover of my refill mug so that the opening was facing me when I held the handle in my right hand.
This is my favorite “customer service extras” story. One small question, a minor effort, and she guaranteed that I would return to that specific Dunkin’ Donuts the next day. Little things count. This is what we are all trying to do. Get customers to return and spend more.
In this case, it had nothing to do with the quality of the coffee, the location, or the price. This was even less convenient for me. I had recently moved offices, and I did not drive by this one on the way to work, but I went out of my way to go there the next day.
There I stood, in naught but a hospital johnny between my boxers and the world at large…for 45 minutes. Picture that, if you will (not the boxers mind you). Now picture one other patient and at least six medical staff walking in and out of the radiology rooms, frequently laughing or talking about the Netflix show they are currently binging.
What would you think if you were in my shoes? That they didn’t seem to care about me? They didn’t seem to have the word “hustle” in their vocabulary? Maybe you had traveled into the “upside-down” of that Netflix show? You would be entirely justified in thinking any of those things. They weren’t true, however. This is where they needed to improve customer perception.
I’ve worked with medical clients, and their biggest problem is customer service, and it can be yours as well. A typical customer complaint is that there seem to be employees, but no one seems willing to help them.
I’ll pull back the curtain a bit on this story to give you the medical staffs’ view of it. I was there to get an Arthrogram and a cortisone injection. This particular hospital requires an MD for the procedure. The MD was running behind. The clinic staff all had reports to be run, paperwork to finish, “work to do” in other words. These are legitimate, important things that need to get done, so the staff was doing it while they waited for the doctor.
Their mistake was not telling me the facts. They left me in limbo.
My perception was that I had inconveniently scheduled my MRI and Arthrogram during their social hour. The reality is that they were going about their business as usual. They were chatting and being good coworkers while they got their work done. A flaw in the medical world is that employees on the front lines NEVER see cash exchange hands. There is no connection between being helpful to customers and how that translates into their paycheck. If your business runs that way, you could face the same dilemma.
How could they have fixed this? It’s simple, really. Talk to me. Update me. Explain to me that the MD is running late and they can’t start without them. Tell me I can have a seat and maybe get me a blanket because a johnny has minimal insulative qualities.
You can change the perception of your customers by doing what Hollywood calls “breaking down the fourth wall.” Explain what is happening behind the scenes.
Here are some tips for doing this:
The simplest thing is, “Do your job.” Be responsive. If you have a customer that needs something, give it to them, and give it to them quickly.
If there will be a delay, you are helping another customer, for example, greet them and tell them you will be right with them. Bonus tip: You are helping “another customer” not “a customer” because they will think, “I’m a customer, why aren’t you helping me?”
Don’t let job roles get in the way. If you are an employee and you see a customer that needs attention or service, talk to them. Ask them what you can do to help. If you can’t help, explain why, and get someone who can. They won’t feel ignored.
If you cannot help them because something is out of your immediate control, explain it to them. Break down that fourth wall. “I’m sorry the MD is running behind, and we will start the second that he frees up.” “I apologize for the delay; I’m brewing a fresh pot it will be right up.” Don’t leave people in limbo.
I tell people to think of your CUSTOMER as your boss. If you were busy doing work, but you looked like you weren’t and your boss walked by, what would you do? You have a report that is running, and you can’t move forward until it is complete, but you are talking to the person next to you about the latest episode or talking about your vacation, what would you so? Keep going and let your boss think you were wasting time? No. You’d get busy with something. You’d end the conversation, or you would explain to your boss what you were doing. You’d break down the fourth wall.
I hated tomatoes as a kid.
I wouldn’t eat them on a salad. I wouldn’t put them on a burger. I wouldn’t eat tomato sauce if it were chunky. Today, I love them, because as an adult my wife seems to have more influence on me than my mother ever did when she tried to coax me with “They are delicious, just try one.” I can’t pin it down, but I think it was the texture when I first looked at the center that just turned me off. I harbor this regret for all of the salsas and bruschettas that I never had a chance to love.
Where am I going with this? Your business is just another tomato that your prospects will make a snap judgment about, regardless of your undeniable impact on Italian food.
How many times this week alone, have you called a business, walked into a coffee shop, or store and been greet with lackluster effort? More than half the time, I imagine. That’s what it is for me.
Assess how your team greets people. All the details about your first impressions are critical. You have one moment to make it successfully. You can turn people off with your very first greeting. There are too many moving parts of the First Impression Moment to cover here so I think it would be helpful to cover some universal ones. Your greeting is significant pre-customer service.
Let’s start with the phone. How fast do you pick it up? I would argue that it shouldn’t be more than three rings. If you can’t answer under three rings, then you need to find a way with technology to extend that without annoying phone trees. There are a lot of phone companies or services that can provide you a solution for this. Simple hold music is even better than just a ringing phone or a voicemail. Try an answering service or a virtual assistant.
If voicemail is inevitable, you need to get back to them promptly (I think an hour is excessive, but that is often the standard for a timely call back). Set the expectation on the voicemail, and beat that expectation. Tell callers “We will return your call within the hour” and make it a half-hour.
The actual greeting is vital because it sets up the entire interaction. The exact words will have to be tailored to your business. Say more than you feel comfortable with. Trust me; the normal instinct is to be short. Go one step further than you think you should. Here are my thoughts; always start with “hello (or hi) thanks for calling (business name), this is (your name), how can I help you today?”
Make it fun, make it original, be memorable! The most important thing is that the person calling you (or walking in) needs to know they reached the right place, feel like they matter and that you are willing to do your absolute best to help them.
The most important part of that greeting is your tone. Tone is the picture that is worth a thousand words to your actual greeting. It reveals to the person who is calling a multitude of things – whether you want to help them, whether you are bored, or harried, or whether you are having a great day. It paints an image in customers’ heads. They “see” you when they talk to you, the same way you picture the radio DJ in your head. You may later say, “that is not how I pictured her,” but you get to set the tone (pun intended) at the outset.
Be energetic, friendly, and clear. I can’t get into voice and diction classes at this point and still keep this post brief, so I would encourage you to look long and hard at the people you have answering your phones in terms of this.
In-person it’s very much the same principle, although there are many other things you need to concern yourself with, especially if you are in retail. The tone and the speed of that initial greeting should be the same.
I know this may sound like customer service 101, and it is, but it’s important. Work with your team on this; reinforce how essential it is.
Don’t let your company be a tomato.
It’s incredible when you go to hear a speaker or watch a Ted talk and think “That is so right! I have been saying that for ages!”
That happened to me last week. I went to Inbound 2018 this year. It was my fifth one, and while this is not a review of the conference, it is a recommendation of watching the Keynote address from the co-founders of Hubspot, Brian Halligan, and Dharmesh Shah.
Hubspot’s core message has always been that people buy differently today than they did before the explosion of the internet. This year they reiterated that with a bit of a twist. They are saying that there is another shift happening, similar to their Inbound Marketing shift when they launched the company.
This is what Brian Halligan said during his presentation:
“Trust in sales and marketing is at an all-time low, it’s about 5% on the trust index…this is a sign of the times, nobody trusts anyone anymore… who do they trust? They trust your customers. That’s the only people they trust these days.”
He continued that word of mouth has become a significant source of leads for new business. To maximize word of mouth, you have to make sure that you are delighting your customers.
As a result, Hubspot has added more tools to help businesses to service and communicate with their existing customers.
Dharmesh talked about the new Customer Code that they introduced as a guideline on how to build your company’s focus on “solving for the customer” and keeping your company genuinely customer service obsessed.
I have sung this song for an awfully long time. My previous sales managers would say that I was paying too much attention to existing customers and not enough time “knocking on doors.” I disagreed then, and I feel a bit of vindication now when a company like Hubspot says the same thing. I felt that my long-term success was based on people “wanting to buy” from me and that customer service was the key.
I won’t re-hash the entire presentation here because I think that you should watch it yourself.
Customer service is critical to marketing a small business in 2018 and beyond. If you need help implementing some of these in your business, we are more than happy to help.