50 Powerful Ideas You Can Use to Keep Your Customers, Third Edition

Paul R. Timm

• Publisher: Career Press
• Year: 2002
• Print ISBN: 9781564145994
• eBook ISBN: 9781601637024
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

50 Simple Yet Effective Ways to Keep Customers Happy and Coming Back for More

Ultimately, every successful enterprise must attract, serve, and win the loyalty of customers by providing worthwhile products and delivering excellent service. Getting and maintaining loyal customers affect an organization's bottom line more than any ad campaign, marketing program, or PR effort.

This book is designed to get all managers and employees thinking about the little things that can make all the difference. It's a quick read—you can finish it in less time than it takes to deal with one customer complaint. And if you put the information within this book into action, you will be able to decrease customer complaints considerably. It's packed with practical, applicable suggestions that can be put to work immediately, such as how to:

• Turn angry customers into lifelong clients
• Use a simple gesture to immediately put customers at ease
• Listen with more than your ears
• Easily give customers more than they expect

Use negative feedback for positive action

Managers and staff members alike can use this little manual to avoid the devastating ripple effects that turned-off customers can produce. It will easily show how everyone in a business, large or small, can creatively apply a constant flow of small, customer-centered innovations to create a consistent and persistent strengthening of your customer base.

PART I

POWERFUL IDEAS
THAT GET YOU FOCUSED

Too many organizations pay lip service to the need for great customer service but fail to get a clear focus on what is needed to build ongoing loyalty. Customer loyalty should be the major goal. In this section, we will discuss ideas about getting a clear focus.

IDEA 1.
UNDERSTAND THE GOAL OF CUSTOMER LOYALTY.

Everyone in the organization needs to be clear about the goal of customer loyalty. Excellent service leads to customer satisfaction and that satisfaction is a critical element in creating customer loyalty. Loyalty is the ultimate goal.

Is loyalty the same thing as customer satisfaction or service? Not quite. Loyalty is a broader concept.

Customer loyalty is a concept that includes five factors:

1. The overall satisfaction customers experience when doing business with you.

2. The willingness to build a relationship with you and your company.

3. The willingness to be a repeat buyer.

4. The willingness to recommend you to others.

5. A resistance to switching to a competitor.

Customer loyalty is not the same as:

Customer satisfaction alone. Although an important part of loyalty, today’s satisfaction alone is no guarantee of future loyalty.

A response to some trial offer or incentive. You cannot buy loyalty; you must earn it over time.

A large share of the market. You may have a big customer base only because your competitors are weak or your pricing is better. These alone will not create loyalty.

Repeat buying alone. Some people buy out of habit, convenience, or price but would be quick to defect to an alternative.

Be sure that you and all employees understand what it means to create a loyal customer. If we fail to have goal clarity, its achievement is unlikely.

IDEA 2.
RECOGNIZE WHAT TURNS OFF YOUR CUSTOMERS

Research in customer service repeatedly indicates that 60-70 percent of lost customers leave because of problems other than product quality or price. They get frustrated by the experience of doing business with the company; they feel they are not valued.

Get a few people together and ask them to describe some pet peeves about their experiences as customers and you’ll get some very emotional reactions. Everyone can recall situations where they were treated poorly, inconvenienced, or bought products that just didn’t measure up.

THREE CATEGORIES OF CUSTOMER TURNOFFS

The customer turnoffs that trigger negative emotions and cause dissatisfaction arise from three categories: value, systems, and people.

Value Turnoffs

Customers are turned off when they receive poor value from a shoddy product or sloppy work.

Value is defined as quality relative to price paid. If you purchase an inexpensive, throw-away item at a discount store— say a 79-cent pen—you may not be upset if it doesn’t last very long. But buy a $79 fountain pen that leaks in your shirt pocket and you’re furious. The purchase of an automobile, appliance, or professional service that quits working or fails to meet your needs will create a value turnoff.

Systems Turnoffs

The term systems is used to describe any process, procedure, or policy used to “deliver” the product or service to the customer. Systems are the way we get the value to the customer. Systems will include such things as:

Employee training and staffing.

Company location, layout, parking facilities, and phone lines.

Record keeping (including computer systems for handling customer transactions).

Policies regarding guarantees, returns, and so forth.

Delivery or pick-up services.

Marketing and sales policies.

Customer follow-up procedures, and so on.

When a company does a poor job in any of these system areas it creates unhappy customers.

People Turnoffs

People turnoffs arise when employees fail to communicate well, both verbally (with words) and non-verbally (without words). Some examples of people turnoffs are:

Failure to greet or even smile at a customer.

Inaccurate information given or lack of knowledge conveyed.

Talking to another employee or allowing telephone interruptions while ignoring a customer.

Rude or uncaring attitude.

High-pressure sales tactics.

Inappropriate, dirty, or sloppy appearance (of the employee or the work location).

Any communicated message that causes the customer to feel uncomfortable.

IDEA 3.
GATHER FEEDBACK AND APPLY SERVICE RECOVERY SKILLS.

Knowing the sources of customer turnoffs is helpful as we try to minimize them. But, realistically, we can’t always predict customer reactions.

Any company can give adequate customer service when everything goes well. A smooth transaction is easy. But when glitches occur—when customers have problems or are even a little bit disappointed—the great companies quickly distinguish themselves.

Customers react to you on the basis of their individual perceptions. What turns one customer off may have no effect on others. So, despite the best efforts of customer-savvy people, turnoffs inevitably arise. Problem situations should not be viewed as tragic, but as opportunities to further solidify customer loyalty.

Service recovery, of course, requires that we know when a customer is unhappy, and that requires feedback. We can receive a steady flow of customer feedback if we create a receptive relationship. But if you ask for feedback, be ready to act upon. Keep in mind these key facts about the feedback process:

1. When you ask people for their input (including comments and complaints), you increase their expectation that you will change in positive ways.

2. If you receive feedback and then fail to change for the better, you will cause customers to perceive you more negatively than if you had not received the feedback.

3. You can safely assume that all perceptions are real, at least to those who own them.

4. You will tend to be defensive. You might interpret some comments as insulting or abusive. In those cases, you will tend to denounce not only what was said but those who say it.

5. You will get more benefit from negative feedback than from receiving no feedback at all.¹

Ignoring customers is a formula for disaster. Instead, focus on knowing how to discover and recover (win back) the unhappy customer. The payoff for recovering a potentially lost customer is actually an increased likelihood that he or she will be loyal to you. It sounds strange, but here is what researchers have found.

SURPRISING FACTS ABOUT DISSATISFIED CUSTOMERS

Surveys by the U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs reveal these interesting facts:

One customer in four is dissatisfied with some aspect of a typical transaction.

Only 5 percent of dissatisfied customers complain to the company. The vast silent majority would rather switch than fight. They simply take their business elsewhere.

A dissatisfied customer will tell 10 to 20 other people (12 is the average) about a company that provided poor service. Some people will tell hundreds or even thousands.

Let’s think about these statistics. If 25 percent of customers are unhappy with a company’s service but only 5 percent of that 25 percent bother to complain (yet each unhappy customer tells a dozen others) the impact can be devastating. For simplicity, let’s say a company serves 100 customers per day. Twenty-five of them are dissatisfied but the company hears only one or two complaints. That may sound good to management until they realize that the 23 quiet ones are likely to tell 274 other people about the unsatisfactory service!

Employees who recover one or two complaining customers may be saving a dozen others. Handling complaints from two or three dissatisfied people can save 30 or 40 possible defections. And it can teach the company what it needs to know to improve.

Further good news for companies that learn to effectively solicit and handle complaints is that such companies can charge an average of 8 to 15 percent more than their competitors, even in bus...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I. Powerful Ideas that Get You Focused
• Part II. Powerful Ideas for Projecting Your Personality to Customers
• Part III. Powerful Ideas for Solidifying Repeat Customers
• Part IV. Powerful Ideas for Saving Possible Lost Customers
• PART V. Powerful Ideas Managers Can Use to Get Employee Involvement
• Part VI. The 50 Powerful Ideas Summarized
• Appendix Bonus Section: A Step-By-Step Process For Creating A Customer Loyalty Strategy
• Endnotes
• Index
• About The Author