Customer Service – 3 Facts to Keep In Mind

This past week I entered a discussion with a “coaching” company about which should be the first priority, income or customer service. The question was posed, “What does it matter if you have raving fans if you can’t leverage them to make money?”

There are times in business where I fall back in my chair, put hand to forehead and sigh… this was one of those moments. First and foremost we have to understand the “coaches” end goal, which is to get the business owner or exec to believe that the “coach” can make them more money.

And truth be told, when talking to most business owners, making more money is at the top of the list. What gets me though, was the idea that we should exploit our fans (if a company is so lucky to have them) for our further gain AND that this is a good business practice to teach. Seriously!?

So, lets clear up a few things in regards to customer service, making money, leveraging our fans and most importantly, which order to put these concepts in…

FACT #1

People (customers / clients) do not become fans often, especially the raving kind. There are few companies that can boast such a thing in the corporate world. Don’t get me wrong, it’s in everyones BS mission statements, but actually pulling it off… that is another story. There are three names that jump to mind as an example here:

• Zappos
• Apple
• Google

These three giants are superstars when it comes to customer service. And drop the whole, “Well ya, but thats X company and they are huge.” What does being big have to do with being good with handling customers? Google, “Dell Sucks!” Dell is a HUGE company that has HUGE customer service issues.

Granted, they are getting better, but lets not make this a size thing. . .  bigger isn’t always the answer.

The Point —–> You aren’t going to end up with Raving Fans if you are focused on milking them, ignoring them or taking out right advantage of them. If you see them as dollar signs, you won’t see them again.

FACT #2

You should only have one agenda when it comes to customer service, make the client feel unique. When our customers feel like a number or statistic, they lose “buy-in” to our company. Imagine this scenerio. An athlete goes on camera and says, “It isn’t the fans I play for, it’s the money!”

What happens to that athletes, fan-base? It quickly goes away, and that is if the athlete is lucky. If the fans are really hurt, they revolt!

Our customers want to believe that we play, that we produce and that we live as a company/brand to make their life better. Enter Zappos. This online shoe company, or rather I should say, THE online shoe company, lives for customer service. The repeat business and the word of mouth marketing have made this company the force it is.

And all of it started with the CEO’s focus the end customer. The employees are empowered to be creative and to solve the customers problems when they arise.

The Point —–> Is it the cheapest way to operate? No! Does it create long term stability and income, yes… but only as a by product of true customer service.

FACT #3

Where every you go, there you are. In life, as in business, if you’re full of crap, everyone will know. We business owners can say the right things when on the spot or print the right things on our company materials, but if it isn’t the real thing, it will only go so far or last so long.

If you don’t care about the customer and you’re out for the almighty dollar, do your thing; run the marketing campaigns, jot down your mission statement with all the jargon you can fit in a paragraph and grin your way through customer interactions.

Just remember this, the customer has a larger megaphone than ever before. It use to be if you ticked off a customer, well at least you got their money once. Now days, if you tick of a person, they can take that megaphone (Twitter, Blogs, FaceBook) and so on and cost you ten fold.

The Point —–> So if doing the right thing wasn’t enough reason to offer first rate customer service, perhaps avoiding hash tags like #dontgohere on Twitter will be.

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