You hope all of your customer interactions go smoothly and with little trouble. You’ve wisely trained your employees, tested them, and retrained them again and again to develop a consistent customer experience, one that is unimpeded by needless bureaucracy, surprises, or other nuisances. And you use customer feedback tools, including surveys and mystery shopping, to uncover where the pain points are in your sales and service processes. You correct them and improve. Rinse and repeat.
That’s what separates you from the competition. That’s why your customers want to do business with you and not a faceless big-box or online store.
As with the rest of life, however, Murphy’s Law applies. Problems will happen, despite your best efforts, and it’s important to not live in fear of these moments. In fact, we should choose to see these complications as opportunities to really dazzle our customers.
Going Above and Beyond Selectively
Many in the business world like to talk about above-and-beyond service and how you should always deliver it, but the truth is that’s impossible. The extra effort—the bending over backwards part of it—is unsustainable long term, and your business would suffer if you were taxing your resources beyond their normal capacity all the time. It is far better to be consistently good rather than occasionally great, so be careful.
But when a situation presents itself, be it a customer who has a frustrating problem (whether your business’s fault or not) or just someone who’s been so loyal that you want to do something special for him or her, then you should consider going for it. The occasional big gesture can create good word-of-mouth, especially if it is built upon a foundation of consistently good service.
Keeping an Eye Out Proactively
Spotting these opportunities requires attention to detail and thoughtfulness. If you want your employees to keep an eye out, you should make sure you inculcate how important delivering a great customer experience is. A well-trained staff that isn’t overburdened with distractions from understaffing or restricted by overly restrictive policies can accomplish this.
To make this happen, you need highly motivated people in leadership positions, and you have to pay close attention to staff development. That’s why you should encourage your managers to take leadership courses, and why you should use those customer feedback tools, like surveys and mystery shops.
Earning Customer Loyalty Consistently
By focusing on delivering a great customer experience every time, by being consistently good rather than mediocre with occasional bouts of greatness, you will earn customer loyalty even before you double down and selectively go above-and-beyond. Long term success is a bit like running a long race: you want to maintain a good pace, and you want to save your energy to sprint only when it is expedient and not going to sabotage you.
The Brandt Group can help you figure this out. If you’re not already engaging our services for leadership development, feedback surveys, and mystery shopping, we humbly request you take a closer look at our website to read about what we do. We’d also love to hear from you so we can start a conversation about what your business does and what you hope to accomplish going forward. Together, we have the opportunity to build a customer-oriented culture enriched by our customer experience expertise and spearheaded by your expertly trained staff.
Now’s the best time to inspect what you expect!
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