Providing Great Customer Service

In your last Radical Marketing Strategy email we spoke about the
three ways of making money; increasing the number of customers,
increasing the size of each transaction and increasing the length
of time a customer does business with you.

Today I want to talk about providing great customer service. Of
all the marketing methods you can use, this is by far the most
powerful.

In fact people don't talk in terms of customer service anymore
but in terms of the 'customer experience.' This means that the
whole experience a customer has with you, from first contact to
purchase to post-purchase, should be enjoyable and memorable for
him.

Provide your customers with a great customer experience and you
will be greatly rewarded. Your customer will want to come back
to you over and over again and bring his or her friends too.

Be warned however, providing a great customer experience is not
something that is implemented easily. This should be seen as a
long term strategy, not just a gimmick that is tried and
forgotten. Here are the steps to implementing an amazing
customer experience.

Step One is to make the decision and commitment to customer
excellence. Do not make this decision lightly, think about the
consequences of such a big commitment. You might have to re-
engineer your business and make many changes. You might also get
a lot of resistance from staff and/or business partners. This is
not an easy thing to do.

The next step is to analyse your current business process. Break
down everything you do into steps. Develop a flow chart of your
whole business process. Breakdown every step from when a
customer first contacts you, to his first purchase to post-
purchase follow up.

Step Three is to make the necessary changes to improve all
customer contacts. Be it by phone, email, post or face to face.
Come up with a better way of doing each customer contact.

Step Five is to get everyone else on board. All your efforts
will be wasted if you do not get your staff on board. Explain to
them the importance of what you are trying to do and how it will
benefit them too in the long run.

Step Six is to train yourself and your staff on the new customer
contact procedures. Train and retrain. Play out customer
contact scenarios on a regular basis.

Step Seven is implement, measure and re-evaluate. Focus and
improve constantly. Remember, your new found customer experience
approach is a long term strategy and philosophy, not a short term
tactic.

Next week we'll talk about Specific Customer Experience
Strategies that you can implement in your business.

Until then.

Dedicated to your success,

Suhail G. Algosaibi, MBA, MCMI, AP
http://www.RadicalMarketing.com