outstanding customer service
How Mobile Friendly is Your Brand?
How can you get customers to share your brand?
So what’s your story? We’ve been talking about all the great qualities that mobile technologies possess, but haven’t gotten down to the most important factor to consider when looking at what mobile can do for you as a business. Mobile provides a great opportunity to tell your story. It allows your brand to stand out from your peers by leveraging your brand’s unique connection through a new platform. I’ve recently had several discussions with clients on the East Coast about getting their businesses ready for sale and our discussions have come back to the same challenges. What is their brand worth and, if we plan to sell over the next several years, what must they do to begin sharing their brand on a mobile platform? I share with you what I shared with them.
Mobile branding is a different media. Because it’s a different media we need to adapt their story to fit mobile’s unique strengths and weaknesses. Mobile messaging provides an exceptional opportunity to connect with your clients in real time. For a smaller business, mobile offers the ability to connect with others in a more immediate and cost effective way.
Review your story and determine how you connect to clients and customers. Every brand has its own set of unique qualities and connectedness. Take time to understand your brand before trying to transfer it to the mobile platform. For more traditional brands, it may mean that you have to begin tying your brand to an experience your customers have with your brand. Is your brand cool, irreverent, dependable, or conservative? Consider the people who use your brand and decide what qualities your brand has that appeals to them. Mobile offers an incredible opportunity to target market your products and services to smaller groups of clients more likely to buy your products and services than other traditional media. Each of your target segments can receive a different message from you and probably should. You will see how target marketing and mobile work well together. Many large organizations continue to think it’s all about the large numbers and message saturation. Many have failed to build connections with their best clients.
Mobile requires you to be brief in your message. People check their mobile messages more frequently than traditional email. Many younger mobile customers are used to Twitter. If you can’t make your point brief and interesting, you’ll lose their attention fast. You must get their attention quickly if you hope to avoid the dreaded delete button.
Consider using images to help tell your story better. A picture is worth a thousand words and a great image can stop people in their tracks. A great image can also be shared quickly with others. Consider developing graphics that are easy to read on smartphones. You can do serial storytelling by sharing images over several messages to keep your customers interested in the story. The other thing you might consider is letting your best clients and customers help tell your story. Smartphones allow others to tell your story in real time. Create your campaigns to allow your customers to participate in the marketing of your brand. Create campaigns that have more edge than traditional advertising.
Create better content. Learn how to create material that can help educate your client during their down time. Many people commute to work and would love to use that time more effectively. People working out often listen to audio programs to occupy their minds while using the treadmill or stationary bike. Consider creating podcasts for listening to during workouts. When you create content, consider designing it so it gets passed around your community.
Be aware Mobile is more than just smartphones. Your audience might be usingNook and KindleTablets, iPads, and larger mobile phones. Your content appears differently on different devices. Your message needs to be designed for these many platforms. It’s really not as hard as it sounds. Make sure that your designers consider all these platforms when designing your solution. There’s nothing worse that creating a great message, involving your customers and communities, and then discovering it doesn’t transfer to larger or smaller platforms well.
Going mobile is more than just shrinking the font size of your website. Take the time to review your story and how it connects with your customers and clients. Creating a strategy to build your brand to go mobile increases the value of both the brand and your company, so it’s well worth the time and effort.
How Much is Good Customer Service Worth to Your Business?
How well informed are your front-line people?
How much money do you invest to get a new customer? Like many business owners, you make a significant investment in bringing in new customers. If you read business magazines you are always seeing articles about marketing, target marketing, and lead generation. These topics are getting a lot of press these days. Do a search on Google for lead generation, you get over 13 million results. I work with software and technology companies to get the most out of their marketing, so I know how much emphasis there is on getting the customers or clients to take the first step and contacting them.
That’s why I’m constantly amazed by the experience most people encounter when they finally approach some companies. I recently went into a very large chain bookstore. Two of the clerks were standing at the Customer Service desk, deep in conversation about an issue one of them seemed to be having. I waited politely for several minutes, waiting for one of them to acknowledge me, before I finally broke up their conversation asking for help. After finding the book I was looking for in the computer, I was waved vaguely in the general direction of business books and then the two went back to their conversation I so rudely interrupted. I won’t say the name of the bookstore because on another occasion, in another branch of the same store, the clerk bent over backward to help me out. She looked the book up on the computer, took me to the section of the store, checked for the title, and when she couldn’t find it on the shelves, checked the back room. Ultimately, she found that book for me.
And it’s not limited to one or two service businesses. Just the other day, I took my wife out to dinner at another chain restaurant. We were the only two people in the restaurant and they seated us in the bar area. Our server was not more than 10 feet away, chatting to the bartender. I drained my soft drink and was trying to figure out how to get the server’s attention without sounding like my dad (he would knock the salt and pepper shakers off the table to get the servers’ attention). Finally, my wife suggested shaking the ice cubes, that trick worked. My question is why did I have to do anything? The server just had to turn her head to check our table. The bartender was looking right at us, why couldn’t she say something?
This blog sounds like a rant, but that’s really not my intention. I’m sure anyone reading this has their own personal customer service stories from hell. The point I’m trying to make is that both of these chains spent a LOT of money on marketing and advertising. They are essentially generating thousands of leads, by encouraging people across their markets to come in and spend money with them. The marketing may be working to get people to take the first step, but the experience is so bad once they’re there, the marketing spend is wasted, because they’re not getting repeat business. Unhappy customers are also much less likely to refer other customers, so they’re losing word of mouth sales. For many of my technology clients, the marketing investment can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, when you include the many professionals required to service a prospect before they become a paying client.
Is your customer service sabotaging your marketing? I’m not suggesting that you stop marketing and start stressing customer service. But I am saying that you have to do both. Because just getting the client isn’t enough. You have to follow through to give clients a great experience every time they deal with your company.
Next week we are start a series of blogs focusing on customers and how to better understand them. We start the series talking about Big Data and what you as a market leader need to know to leverage information in a your business environment. See you here next week.
How to Take Care of the Ridiculous Customer
Previously, I’ve talked about the L.E.A.R. method for helping upset customers.
L – Listen and don’t interrupt
E – Empathize with something like, “I can understand why you’re upset. I would be upset too.”
A – Ask – What can I do to make you happy?
R – Resolve – Unless it’s ridiculous – do it
The question came back to me, “How should this empowered manager handle the ridiculous request?”
Here’s my reply.
As the owner or general manager of the business you’ll need to decide just how much empowerment you’ll give each person in your management structure.
Let’s assume you have 3 levels of personnel in your business. Front Line, Manager, and You. You may give the front line person the authority to give a $100 (or whatever) credit as long as the customer isn’t ridiculous – and up to a $50 credit if the customer is ridiculous.
You may give the manager the authority to give up to a $300 credit even if the customer is ridiculous – and a $1,000 credit otherwise.
And for credits over this, you may need to give personal approval. You’ll need to determine where these levels are and put them in writing. But as important as where the levels are, is how everyone is trained to handle the ridiculous customer.
In our company NO ONE is authorized to say NO to a client other than me – and I never have. If our people think the client is ridiculous, or the amount is more than they are comfortable with, they are trained to pleasantly stall for time and refer it to me with something like, “I’m sorry, I’ll need to talk with Keith, the owner, about this. I’m sure he’ll be getting back to you beforenoon tomorrow. And if he can’t I’ll be sure to call you. Can I get your phone number?” Then be absolutely certain to get back to the client before your associate said you would.
So the next question is, where do you draw the line?
Again that’s up to you. My line is very, very high – as I said, I haven’t reached it yet.
In my advertising – especially to prospective clients, I love to talk about our “Make-You-Happy” Guarantee.
Here it is: “If we ever let you down we’ll ask, ‘What can I do to make you happy?’ In 34 years we’ve never refused a clients request to make it right.”
This is why no-one at TMS is authorized to say no to a client. If a client ever asks for something so unreasonable that I’m willing to give up my guarantee statement in future advertising – I will make that decision – no one else!
So what about that customer that is unreasonable? Do you let them come back time after time to steal from you? Here’s our plan for handling that situation. We’ve only gone through the entire plan one time at TMS.
We find that customers are very seldom unreasonable. If someone is unreasonable, we do what they ask and then we put a code into the computer that says “we fulfilled client’s unreasonable request.” Then, if the client is unreasonable again we do what they want – we Make Them Happy. And then I send them a letter telling them that we don’t seem to be able to give them the service they need and that we therefore won’t be able to sell to them any more.
With this I am still able to say “we have never refused a clients request to make it right” in our advertising. Again, in 25 years, I have only had to do this once.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Keith Lee is the creator of the “Don’t Let Your Business Ruin your Life – Yes, You Can Have It All, Make-You-Happy Management System.” Keith developed the system in 1991 when he was burnt out from all of the stresses and time issues involved with running his business. The system creates happy customers, happy employees, but most of all gives you back you life. To get a FREE DVD of the “Don’t Let Your Business Ruin your Life – Yes, You Can Have It All, Make-You-Happy Management System” call 800-426-5708.
Now That’s Customer Service
For a lot of people, fountain pens are a thing of the past, old fashioned and out of date. For many more, they are the preferred writing utensil. And, then there are those who just don’t know because they’ve never had the privilege of writing with a really nice fountain pen.
A few years ago my best friend bought me my first fountain pen as a gift. It was beautiful and love at the first instance of putting pen to paper. There was just one problem . . . if the pen wasn’t used for more than a few hours, the ink would dry up and unless it was put through a complete cleaning process it was not useable. That quickly became more hassle than it was worth.
After checking online and with several regular users of fountain pens, and investing in other fountain pens, it became obvious that the first fountain pen had something wrong with it, because none of the other pens were a problem. Instead, they were a joy to write with, and pretty soon, a fountain pen was just about the only pen that could be found on my desk.
The first fountain pen had very special meaning since it was the first and more importantly a gift from someone very special. I simply put the pen up and sort of forgot about it until one day I opened my pen case and saw it there.
Some 18 months had passed by now, but I decided to call the company and explain the situation to see what would happen.
Surprise, surprise, the customer service person on the other end of the phone was clearly listening to the challenge and offered a brand new pen. Well, being not only shocked and surprised, but now the sentimental side kicked in and I questioned whether or not to take her up on the generous offer.
Finally, after deciding it was silly to keep a nice fountain pen I couldn’t use laying around due to sentimental reasons, I agreed to let them send me a new pen.
No sending the old one back before they would send the new one, no hassle, no fuss, no muss, no nothing. Just a nice, apologetic lady on the other end of the phone who wanted to replace the pen with a new one, totally at the company’s expense. All I had to do was get the new pen, put the old one in the box, attach the label they were sending and call to have the box picked up or drop it off at the local shipping store.
Thrilled doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling of elation!
Unfortunately, the new pen ended up doing the same thing as the original one. So, it’s now sitting on the shelf, looking pretty, but not really functional.
Still shocked at the great customer service I got when I called the first time, I just don’t have the heart to tell them I’m having the same problem with this one. Since the customer service is so good, I do buy other things from this company – just not their fountain pens.
Can you do things so well in your company that your clients will forgive you just because you do other things so well and they love you for those? My bet is you can, and should – after all we all make mistakes at one time or another and somebody is going to get upset with us. Hopefully, we can all have great customer service . . . and outstanding products to match.
For more great marketing & business strategies and your free CD “The 9 Key Building Blocks To Building Your Business” go to http://www.CompleteMarketingSystems.com or call (866) 293-0589.
31 Days And Counting…Still No Candles
Customer service is an important part of every business.
Being a business owner gives most of us a whole different perspective on how things the way things work inside a business and can sometimes make us more understanding and sometimes a little less so.
Recently, an offer came through from one of my favorite candle companies for a buy one get one free offer and because I enjoy having candles burning so much, I simply couldn’t refuse. I placed my order and waited for the arrival of the candles, thinking I might even use a couple of them for gifts for upcoming occasions.
Time passes, and after two weeks, my order hadn’t arrived so I sent an email to the company and was told their warehouse was behind in processing orders but that they would have my order to me shortly.
Another week, still no candles, and after another inquiry, I’m told the order will ship by the end of the week or the first part of the following week. At this point, I’m a little amazed that it could possibly take so long to go to the warehouse, get the candles that have been ordered, place them in the pre-made box, put a shipping label on them and send them, but I’m trying to be patient.
Shortly thereafter, I indeed get notification that the candles have been shipped, so I wait a few days and go check the tracking information that I was sent only to find that nothing seems to have changed on it since the day it was sent to me.
I sent another email to see if the candle company can help me. One week later I get what seems to be a standard template type email response telling me I need to call their customer service line for assistance with my inquiry. Did it really need to take a week to tell me to call them?
When I call to check on my order as requested in the email, I’m told the shipping company has lost my order and the candle company will now put in a new order for my candles. They are very sorry for the inconvenience.
Oh, but then, they are out of stock on one of the candles I ordered so would I like to have something else in its place? The customer service rep didn’t make a suggestion for a replacement of the item that they no longer had in stock, but instead, just expected me to know off the top of my head, from all the choices they have, which one I wanted to replace it. A bit frustrated, I asked him to just include two of one of my original choices.
He very politely thanked me for my new order and informed me he was going to be sending this new order overnight since my original order had gotten lost.
It’s always amazing to me to see how empowered, or not empowered, people are when it comes to correcting these kinds of situations and what they will and won’t do to make things right.
In this instance, I just didn’t quite feel like complimentary overnight shipping on an order I waited over 30 days for was quite sufficient. How about you?
For more great marketing & business strategies and your free CD “The 9 Key Building Blocks To Building Your Business” go to www.CompleteMarketingSystems.com or call (866) 293-0589.
Does Your Training Support You Goals?
This is an excerpt from the book “WAYMISH Why Are You Making It So Hard For Me To Give You My Money?”
We introduce a supermarket cashier to her job by showing her how to scan, how to handle change, checks, credit cards, returns and other necessary basic routines. We teach a new salesperson about the products, prices, terms, forms to fill out, commission and expense routines.
Managers spend their time on the phone, writing and reading memos and reports, dealing with personnel and customer problems, going to meetings and occasionally thinking and planning.
All of these activities are necessary. But if we are concerned with extraordinary service, we have to put them in the context of the primary purpose of every employee, at every level – to create and maintain positive customer relationships.
Peter Drucker said it forty years ago -The purpose of BUSINESS is to create a customer.
Start your orientation, training and performance measurements not with activities but with customer relationships.
With this approach of creating customer relationships as your base, the activities fall into their proper place – as TOOLS, not end in themselves.
Teach people to smile, be cordial, when dealing with customers before you teach them to scan.
Teach people to listen and acknowledge feelings of others before they become product experts. Feelings come first.
Teach people to ask questions before they give advice.
Investigate how an employee who is working on a report, straightening inventory, counting cash, or handling a personnel matter treats an encounter with a customer.
If the answer is; the customer is interrupting the REAL work or is a distraction from the REAL job – prepare for the invasion of the WAYMISH!
And to improve the probability that your training will be used by the right people, spend a lot of time hiring people who feel comfortable with a service attitude.
The Email Only Special of the Week
The above excerpt is from the book “WAYMISH Why Are You Making It So Hard for me to give you my money?” Every person at TMS has their own copy of W.A.Y.M.I.S.H.
Maybe that’s why Fife United Drug inTacoma,Washingtonrecently wrote, “I can’t begin to tell you how happy I was with the service I received today from your customer service rep named Angela… Angela is, by far, the most helpful salesperson I have ever dealt with.” Should everyone at your store have a copy of W.A.Y.M.I.S.H.? Call 800-426-5708.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Keith Lee is the creator of the “Don’t Let Your Business Ruin your Life – Yes, You Can Have It All, Make-You-Happy Management System.” Keith developed the system in 1991 when he was burnt out from all of the stresses and time issues involved with running his business. The system creates happy customers, happy employees, but most of all gives you back you life. To get a FREE DVD of the “Don’t Let Your Business Ruin your Life – Yes, You Can Have It All, Make-You-Happy Management System” call 800-426-5708.
To Increase Word-of-Mouth…Give’em Something to Talk About!
In a recent issue Prospecting Weekly, I dared you to become “legendary.” To be legendary is to become the “stuff that tales are made from.”
This is a theme that warrants further attention. In my book Prospect & Flourish, I devote an entire chapter to the subject of outstanding service. I talk about it in my workshops as well, and at first, some people will scratch their chin at the topic.
Many of them are wondering, “Okay, it’s important. Sure. I get it. But can’t we talk more about how to prospect instead of how to provide outstanding service?”
The answer you will get here as well as from every sales pro in the world is this: without outstanding service, the best prospecting skills in the world are worthless.
We have already established that one of the most important means to prospecting is through referrals and word of mouth. But to get people to talk, you have to give them something to talk about! You have to provide a level of service that goes beyond what your clients would normally expect!
Case in point: Two partners of an investment advisory firm–I’ll call them Rick and Bob–had among their clients a married couple, John and Susan. Then, one day, John experienced a heart attack.
While John survived the incident and was expected to recover well, Rick and Bob wasted no time in making sure that everything was taken care of from a financial standpoint. Their goal was to reduce the stress of this time as much as they could.
Rick and Bob spent several days at John and Susan’s house making sure that certain financial matters were in order and on track–particularly those related to upcoming taxes, health insurance, and medical bills.
While this may have been outside the letter of what many would consider Rick and Bob’s job description, it was by no means outside its spirit. This was the dedication of Rick and Bob–the truth of how much they cared about their clients.
In fact, I did not learn about this event from Rick and Bob, who are friends of mine. I learned about it from a friend of their family…who had heard it from another mutual friend!
Now, that is word of mouth! That is giving people something to talk about. Even further, Rick and Bob did not do what they did simply so Susan would start telling all her family and friends. They did it because when they learned of John’s health crisis, they were presented with what we have called a moment of truth.
It is at moments such as these that our choices reveal the truth that lies within us: the truth of how deeply we care about our clients. Each of these moments—and their outcomes—can be divided into three parts:
1. The moment (the stimulus)
2. The choice (our response)
3. The truth revealed (the message we send to the client–what I also refer to as showing your true colors).
So, consider this. Want to encourage goodwill, and good word, in your favor? Seek out moments to go beyond the expected, and become the stuff that stories are made of.
Keith F. Luscher (Google Search) is the author of five books, including Prospect & Flourish and Don’t Wait Until You Graduate. He is also a recruiting director for The Money Foundation /H. Beck, Inc. Prior to this work, he served professionals in the insurance and financial services industries as a management consultant. In that role, he advised producers on issues related to marketing and prospecting, and developed groundbreaking educational curriculum. Luscher previously worked in capital fund raising for eleven years, serving nonprofit organizations around the country. In addition, he is also a nationally known author, speaker, and expert in media, interpersonal communication and marketing.
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