Starting a new small business - Customer Service

Melvin's buddy Doug on his first day as a Customer Service Representative

Before we even open our new businesses, we must develop and embrace our commitment to our customers, especially those customers who experience challenges with our products and services.  Every business depends upon customers for its livelihood; yet, many businesses see Customer Care (aka Customer Service) as nothing more than a complaint center.  The reality of Customer Care is that it is vital to a company’s success in more ways than one.

A successful business treats its customers as royalty but knows that the limitations of good will have to be brought to bear at some point.  The key elements are to recognize and pro-actively seek resolutions that (a) satisfy the customers and (b) ensure that the relationships are profitable.

The “given” is that a dissatisfied customer will tell seven people about the bad experience he’s had with our company while the satisfied customer will tell only three people about his good relationship.  In other words, by not making at least 70% of our customers happy, we’ll begin to lose our customer base through attrition and lost referrals.

Setting the benchmark at 70% is completely unacceptable, because it means, in essence, that we’re satisfied with a business that has zero growth potential; however, many small businesses don’t even monitor that statistic.

What is a realistic goal, then, for a customer satisfaction index?  The naïve will say “100%” because it’s the best.  Getting a perfect score is a great ambition, but there are also costs associated with it that create unnecessary hardship on our businesses.   While the old saying is that “the customer is always right,” sometimes the customer is absolutely wrong.  Successfully managing those instances doesn’t mean that we automatically give the customer what he/she wants; rather, we give the customer what he has earned.  If we give away too much, we’ve lost more than the dollars we’ve given away.  We’ve also conditioned a customer to push the envelope the next time something comes up. The technique for negotiating a satisfactory ending to a situation means everything to our businesses, and technique is, unfortunately, not necessarily instinctive (but can be learned).

Another fact of life in many businesses is that they tend to put so little emphasis on customer care that their hiring decisions reflect that.  Customer Service representatives are sometimes very low on the company food-chain and are often looked upon as a “necessary evil” that represents nothing but cost to a company.  How wrong they are!

Among the most critical (but not the ONLY) basic ingredients in the successful Customer Care recipe are:
   1.  Knowledge
   2.  Common Sense
   3.  Pro-activity
   4.  Diligence
   5.  Diplomacy
   6.  Communication skills
   7.  Empowerment
   8.  Attitude
   9.  Aptitude
 10.  Optimism

Any customer service representative that does not have all these traits/skills is bound to be less than effective in difficult situations.   A truly successful customer care representative has all this and more – and loves his/her job.

Regrettably, many customer service representatives fail through no fault of their own and lose their jobs for “failure to perform” when it’s the business that has failed them.  Another group of customer service workers are “short-timers” because they are frustrated by the situation and are dissatisfied enough with the job that they seek other employment.  This is not good news for a business.  There is no departmental growth when customer care is a continuous cycle of hiring, losing and rehiring, and it is infectious, affecting every other segment of the business in one way or another.

Customer Care is not limited to the Customer Care department, either.  It must be a natural and evident extension of the roles and responsibilities of every department in the company.  Too often, the Sales, Finance and Logistics departments fall short and rely upon the Customer Care department to resolve the issues instead of taking a positive stance in supporting customer needs.  A good friend and former boss of mine once said it best:  "Sales is Service, and Service is Sales."  Thanks, Cliff!  It is that singular message that we must convey every day to ourselves and our employees.  We depend upon customers for our livelihood - are we as involved in the care of these customers as we should be?  

Think about it, and have a great, productive and profitable day; and, as always, I'd love to hear from you by email or through my website.