– Lucy Glennon specializes in customer service training and recruitment and hiring. She can be reached at 866.645.2047 or lucyg@hireguru.com. www.hireguru.ca.
CUSTOMER SERVICE – A customer recently remarked to me: ”I met a former client in the mall on the weekend. When I saw him, I realized he hadn’t bought from us in over a year, yet he had been a very loyal customer at one point. We had a nice chat, but he mentioned nothing about no longer buying from us, not even a complaint. Afterwards I thought to myself: I should have asked him the ‘tough to hear’ question: why did you leave?”
Here today, gone tomorrow. Have you ever had customers drift away in silence? They did less and less business with you without warning? Or maybe they stopped doing business with you altogether? They didn’t complain; they didn’t raise a fuss; they didn’t even make demands.
They didn’t do anything; they just stopped buying from you. Customers have a tipping point. There are customers who are experiencing a problem and become very vocal, and they do so quickly, make a huge fuss about it and make demands.
They let you know exactly what it’s going to take to retain their business. Be grateful for those people. At least you know that they’ve got a problem and you’ve got an opportunity to fix it.
There are other customers who become unhappy bit by bit over time. They appear okay, and put up with problems or inconveniences until suddenly they’re no longer buying from you.
If they do say anything it’s at the very last second and by then, there’s no possibility of holding on to any of their business and if you did, it takes a mammoth effort to do so. It’s a fact of life. Most companies lose customers over time, and so will you. Accept it. But you do have some control over how many customers leave you and how quickly.
Don’t wait for customers to complain; GET your customers to complain. Make it part of your job to think of ways to get your customers to uncover their complaints before your customers reach their tipping point.
Conduct quarterly performance reviews with your customers. YOUR performance reviews, not theirs. Provide customer satisfaction surveys. Make sure your customers know exactly who to contact at your company if they have a problem with you.
Here are a few ways that may help you to get you started.
- At the close of the sale:
- “John, we want you to be happy about choosing us for a long time. Would you be okay if we had one of our customer care professionals follow up with you every three months, just to get any feedback you may have, uncover any issues or roadblocks you may be running into, or any suggestions you may have to make it easier to do business with us? Will you feel comfortable sharing any problems you’re having with that person John?”
- At the customers’ first anniversary:
- “ John, it’s been a year since we started working together. We’d really appreciate any honest feedback you could give us on anything we could be doing better to meet your companies’, and your needs. Would you be open to having our Manager, George drop in to do a year-end review? Probably take about 20 minutes, would you feel comfortable doing that?”
- After a problem occurs with a customer:
- “John, again, I’m really sorry that you had to go through the hassle of straightening out that invoice. Would you be open to sitting down with me to review the issue and see how we can work together in the future to avoid these and any issues that might come up? We often find we can avoid future problems if we have a set procedure for what happens when problems arise.”
- When we can anticipate problems with products or services:
- “John, we’ve been getting some feedback on the XYZ product you purchased last year. I wonder if it would make sense to invite our IT guys over to address this feedback with your people, so in case the issue happens to you, they’ll know exactly what to do and we can avoid any time delays or concerns? Would you be open to that?”
- With customers we haven’t spoken to in awhile:
- “John, we haven’t spoken in a while, but we always appreciate your feedback on how we’re doing as suppliers. We’ve set up both a 1-800 number and a web portal through which you can describe any issues, problems, roadblocks or challenges you’re having with either our products or services. This can also be done anonymously if you prefer by check the privacy block at the bottom of the page. We depend on our customers help us improve. We’re here to listen to you.”
- Everytime you do business with them:
- A great tool is a four or five question survey called a Likert Scale – this tracks satisfaction on a scale of 1 – 5, one being not satisfied at all, and 5 being completely satisfied. If you ask customers to rate you on a regular basis, and track their responses, you’ll give yourself a baseline for continual improvement.
- Some companies post weekly Likert survey results in the lunchroom to provide feedback on customer satisfaction to those who really need to hear it – the frontline service providers. This is a great way to track overall customer satisfaction, rather than individual satisfaction.
When you provide your customers with channels through which they get to voice their concerns and their complaints you obtain valuable feedback for their existing problems and heading off any future problems. And your customers are less likely to drift away in silence.