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One would think that the way to win a customer's repeat business is intuitively obvious. For instance, at the January 8, 2008 Pasadena Art of Small Business Survival workshop, Glenn Rowe broke the audience into five groups to discuss customer satisfaction.
The fascinating thing to me was that everyone seemed to agree on what makes up good customer service as well as what bad service looks and feels like. Excellent customer service is intuitively obvious to virtually everyone – when they are customers. Often, though, business owners and managers seem to forget everything they know when they are now responsible for profits and efficiency.
The wonderful thing about heart-centered, soft sell sales and marketing is that they naturally focus on what needs to be done to give customers exceptional service. Your attention simply needs to be on what your customer really wants and needs. When it comes to bad service, faulty products or missed delivery dates, the customer first wants someone to care. You show this by listening, asking questions to understand, and doing something to repair the situation.
In a Yelp.com review of Slater’s 50/50, David L. revealed how Scott Slater handled an earlier negative review he gave Slater’s 50/50. When he read David L’s December 20, 2009 review, Slater took responsibility to discuss the problem. As a result, on December 26th, this same customer wrote another review, this time giving Slater’s four stars (out of five possible) and retracting his last one, all because “Mr. Scott Slater himself messaged me with my concerns and addressed them accordingly. With that alone made me want to come back and try their food again. Which I did.. a few days ago.”
Whether you apply a heart-centered, soft sell approach or not to your sales and marketing, the way to win a customers’ repeat business is to ensure an exceptional experience. Surprisingly, just like Scott Slater did with his Slater’s 50/50 customer, you can turn a negative experience into a positive by fixing the problem as best as possible as quickly as possible. Excellent customer service means using empathy and listening closely, asking questions as needed to learn what this negative experience means to them – and how can you make them happier? Finally, take action.
Take time today to say thank you to someone who’s provided you exceptional service.
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