When I start working with new clients, one of the 1st questions I ask them is what is their vision and I always get an answer along the lines of looking to double profits in the coming year etc.. Unfortunately that tells me nothing about how they value their customers and what customer service they provide. That’s a trap I see companies fall into on a regular basis and having goals like that have an impact of operational and business behaviours.
See the goal of your business is to continually learn how to better service your customers and when you achieve that, the consequence will be more profits. With that, one of the 1st areas I like to work on with my clients is their customer service.
This may sound straight forward but it rarely is as it takes multiple workshops, intense digging to really understand what is their USPs, what their customers value, and do the customer actually feel valued. And again, this is based on hard data, not perception, as I keep saying. Along with this, is that you truly need to know that you are delivering exceptional customer service ONLY with exceptional clients. There has to be the Win Win – that is win for your customer, as they love your product and customer service that comes with it, and win for you as they treat you as you would like to be treated. This is the ONLY way to build a truly successful business.
When it comes to customer service the big question is always how can you consistently exceed their expectations that won’t cost you that much money, however will mean everything to them. While I give some examples in the video of good and bad, delivering exceptional customer service can be broken into a process comprising of 3 main steps
- How you can add value pre delivery – that is before the sale
- How do you exceed their expectation during delivery of service / product
- How do you add value post delivery – that is after the sale
This all leads to building strong partnerships with strong clients, who will then become your best advocates and essentially form part of your extended sales team, so as you can see, the value of strong customer service can extend well past the act of getting another sale.
