You Provide Customer Service!

No matter who you are, or in what industry you work, you provide customer service, good or bad, whether you want to or not. It’s not just for those answering phones in a call server, or serving dinner at a restaurant. All businesses, institutions, and organizations have customers, and must provide a certain level of service in order to retain those customers.

Want to be better than your competitors? Provide better customer service. How? By understanding and managing your customers’ expectations.

Customers’ form expectations in a variety of ways: marketing, word of mouth, personal experience, etc. Be aware that customer service starts with the very first interaction a potential customer has with your brand, product, or service.

What does your marketing tell your customers?

Ever seen an add for a sandwich or salad that looked enormous, only to have it placed in front of you and think “this looks nothing like the ad”? Ever visit a website for a business that looked like Fortune 500 company, only to find out the firm should really be marketed as a home-based business (not that there is anything wrong with home-based businesses). Is your business card, website, or print ad setting your customers up for disappointment? If you can’t live up to your marketing, you either need to improve your offering, or change your presentation.

Several years ago I stopped at a certain fast food chain while traveling. It was around the time they started adding the second drive up window (which apparently failed badly because no one ever uses them now), and the restaurant had a big sign in the window that said “60 seconds or less”. They were apparently advertising the fact that you could get in and out of the drive thru in less than a minute. You know where this is going. Three minutes later I get my food and drive away.

What are you telling your customers?

Communicate, especially in service-based businesses. Tell your potential clients, what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it, how you’ll deal with issues, how much participation you expect from them, and so forth. Once they sign on, follow through and continue to stay in touch. Be in control, be honest, and communicate well. Even if things go wrong, you’ll be able to provide excellent customer service and retain your customers. Trust me, we’ve made plenty of mistakes. When we do a great job of managing expectations, our clients are happy and sing our praises. But even if the end result is great, if we’ve done a poor job of communicating with a client, their satisfaction suffers.

Not too long ago I had my car at the repair shop for some minor work. I made an appointment and dropped it off on time. It was to be ready by 3pm; my wife and I had plans to leave the area for dinner with friends at 5pm. At 4:45pm, with no word from the shop, I called to inquire if the car was ready. I was told they were “just getting to it” and it would be ready by 5:30pm. I told them not to bother, that I was on my way to pick it up. I understand that things don’t always go as planned and in this case, other repairs took longer than expected. If the shop had called at 2:30pm to let me know it would be later in the day I probably could have altered my plans with no problem. The failure was in the lack of communication with me, the customer – it was absent, and I was extremely frustrated.

What’s the takeaway?

The bottom line is that unrealistic expectations will always, always lead to poor customer service. Therefore, do everything in your power to set and meet or exceed those expectations every step of the way.