After acquiring a new customer the real work begins with managing their expectations in order to keep them happy. Although managing new customer expectations is not that difficult, it does take some time and effort by you and your employees to keep them happy.
The key to managing customer expectations begins with knowing what the customer will expect. To help you with your current—and future—customer base, your friends at Dale Carnegie Training of Central & Southern New Jersey have listed 9 key points to help you and your employees.
1. People want you to show an interest in them— You need to not only know about their business but who they are and the things they like and enjoy.
2. People want you to respond fast — Face it, your customers want their products and services yesterday, not tomorrow or 10 days from now. If you are slow, your customers will find someone else who can provide faster service.
3. People want a live person to be available — Your customers want to know they can immediately reach a live person when there is a problem or question with your products or services. Provide numerous ways for your customers to reach you, including business phone, home phone, fax, e-mail, and cell phone.
4. People want a friendly person to talk to — No matter who talks with your customers, make sure that they are smiling on the phone — and yes, a customer can tell when they in fact do.
5. Always under-promise and over-deliver — If you are over-promising and under-delivering on your products and services, we can assure you that your clients will NOT recommend you to someone they know.
6. Help your customers solve a problem — If a customer calls you with a particular problem, they want you to help solve it. When you do that consistently, you will find yourself growing a large base of customers.
7. Tell your customers “Yes, we can,” instead of “No, we can’t” — Once you empower your staff to help your customers, you will find not only are your customers happy but your employees are too.
8. Don’t nickel and dime your customers — No matter what you sell, don’t charge your customers for small or simple requests — it only makes you look cheap.
9. Thank your customers for their business — Whenever you have a chance, let your customers know how much you appreciate their business. The key is conveying it with sincerity.
How customers perceive your business is their reality, so take a step back and examine how you do business. Additionally, you may want to consider e-mailing a customer satisfaction survey to learn what you can do to improve your products and services. These surveys can also be a revenue generator for your business as they are a great venue for asking your client base this one magic question: What other products or services do you have an interest in learning more about?
This post is brought to you by the good folks at Dale Carnegie Training of Central & Southern New Jersey. We would love to connect with you on Facebookand Twitter @CarnegieJersey.
Photo credit: freedigitalphotos.net/Renjith Krishna
great stuff thanks