We’ve heard the mantra “The customer is always right.” In today’s tough economic times, when businesses are competing like never before to get that elusive dollar, the statement takes on new meaning.
Gone are the days when an unreasonable request by a customer to fix an issue clearly not warranted could be addressed by swallowing hard and “giving in.”
However, today’s realities require small- to midsized-businesses to consider taking a new look at how they deal with all their customers, including those that may be “not so right.”
Your company needs to consider what it gains (a continued business relationship with a less-than- agreeable customer) against what it may lose (a less-than-agreeable customer may become someone else’s problem).
So do you give in or not? The answer rests in a multitude of business decisions. One of them is in how the customer is dealt with in the first place.
First and foremost, excellent customer service and customer relations are key to a business surviving or thriving.
Customer service is the commitment to hiring and training staff in the culture and expectations of the company. The best product at the best price in the best quantities with volume discounts and other pricing incentives fail if your customer-service representative over the phone or your sales clerk at the counter or the delivery driver – or any company representative interfacing for any reason with you client—does not demonstrate good customer service.
One bad experience may become how that customer now sees your company and sets the tone for whether the customer will continue conducting business with you.
What is good customer service? Generally, it is defined as the program, function or approach that says and demonstrates the company is working to meet or exceed the needs of its customers.
What follows is good customer relations.
Customer relations is generally defined as the “establishment, maintenance, art and practice of attracting and retaining customer through successful human relations”.
Your company can do all it believes is right: effective and meaningful, but in the end the customer will determine success.
And that success is based on the overall, or often, most recent contact where they can feel the company has “delighted” them by exceeding their expectations.
If you do not already have a comprehensive customer service and customer relations program in place that is understood by your staff, continually monitored and up-dated, your business may be at risk in the day-to-day interactions your employees have with your customers.
Failure to “delight” them opens the door for your competitor(s) to step in and take the extra steps you should have been taking all along to do more than meet their needs—they may delight them enough that they take their business to your competitors.
Your human resources professional, in conjunction with your management team, should be a key player in developing, monitoring and as needed, correcting—and rewarding—your employees in your on-going customer service and customer relations efforts.
South Tempe resident Fred Cooper is a human resources consultant specializing in employment issues for small- to mid-sized businesses. Questions for future columns can be emailed to frcooper@compasshrconsulting.com or by calling 480-620-4603.
