Failing customer service is a death knell for any business — there’s no surer guarantee of decline. Spotting those early signs is critical, and it’s not always as obvious as seeing bad reviews on Facebook or Yelp.
Employee Satisfaction
If your employees are unhappy, your customers will be too. Employee satisfaction is complex, comprising compensation, recognition, training, and trust. You must make sure your employees have all the tools necessary to do their jobs, including product and service knowledge and the authority to make the right decisions. If you handicap your employees, that dissatisfaction will take root in your customers too.
Blaming Customers
Even though there are definitely customers who will make you resist the phrase, “The customer is always right,” your business must take ownership of problems. It would be foolish for a struggling business to blame its customers for being difficult or unsupportive. It’s on your business to earn that patronage—again and again. And if customer expectations or needs transform over time, your business must be malleable enough to change with the times as well.
Service Calls
A surprising consideration you might not have thought about is how much post-sale service your customers need. Making sure customers are happy with their purchases should be a no brainer because it satisfaction does so much to guarantee repeat business. However, if your product or service consistently requires follow-up aid, it has probably failed in some way already. Identifying and correcting these problems will lessen the overload on your employees’ resources and reduce call-wait times and clogged stores.
Valuing Acquisition Over Retention
How often have you seen a great promotion for a cable or phone company that you wanted to take advantage of, only to find out that it’s only good for new customers? Those kinds of programs only serve to tell your customers that you don’t value them as much as you do future customers. A business should never forget to reward loyalty. That can take the form of discounts and special deals, but most importantly, it should be about reaching out to make sure your customers’ satisfaction is sustained. Reminding your customers that you still care long after you have their money is crucial.
Avoiding Feedback
The biggest sign of trouble is when a business doesn’t think it needs help, when it’s so self-assured it doesn’t find feedback useful. Smart businesses know that the most critical piece of intelligence you can glean is the information about yourself. You must self-scout. Talk to your employees, read those online reviews, send out customer satisfaction surveys, and sign up for regular mystery shops. A business can always do a better job, and the worst injury you can inflict on your business is ignorance.
To sum it all up, the most important things your business can do is, one, pay attention and, two, take ownership. To learn more about streamlining your business, providing your employees with training and incentive programs, gauging your business’s health with surveys and mystery shops, and more, contact us at The Brandt Group.
