“Things to Think About” for the Reference Professional

#crlp Your customers’ time is as valuable as yours. Don’t waste it.

“Things to Think About” for the Reference Professional is a weekly blurb to get you thinking. You can find content here on this blog or at Twitter under the hashtag for Customer Reference and Loyalty Professionals #crlp.

How Not to Treat Customers

I’m a huge fan of HGTV and I like about 95% of the shows they have. Until last night! I was watching a real estate TV show on HGTV and it was a case study in what not to do when working with customers. I actually found myself yelling at the TV and telling the broker she was an idiot. HGTV’s “The Property Shop” features real estate broker Tatiana, who “helps” people find properties to buy and “helps” them sell property too.

Generally I wouldn’t write about a TV show, but the episode I saw “Customer Service Conundrum” was horrific to say the least. If you work with customers, you might want to check out the next episode and everything that the broker does – do the opposite!

Here are some points that I got from the episode…

If you say you’ll be there…be there. Don’t schedule a meeting for a time you know you can’t make. This goes for phone and in person meetings as well as deadlines. If you say you’ll have something to the customer by Friday, stick to it. If absolutely necessary, give the customer a heads up way before the deadline if you think you won’t make it. In general, plan accordingly. Customers’ time is as valuable as yours.

Accept blame…don’t say everyone does it. When you make a mistake, own up to it. Sure, everyone makes mistakes but don’t tell customers that. They know it and if you tell them it, you sound like an idiot who isn’t capable of taking blame.

Don’t yell. Never, never, never yell at customers. In fact, you shouldn’t yell at anyone – ever.

Don’t pass problems off to other people. You’re a grown up. If you got yourself into a situation, deal with it like a grown up. Don’t just pass your problems off to other people. There’s nothing worse then talking to someone and they then pass you off to someone else who passes you off to someone else.

Customers don’t care how busy you are. Everyone is busy. Being busy is never an excuse. . If you’re too busy to do something, don’t do it or give realistic deadlines. Manage your time and your projects. No one wants to hear someone complaining.

Maybe this was just a bad episode I saw, but if I lived in Montreal and was looking for a real estate broker, she’d be the last person I’d call. She’s rude, hypocritical, self pitying and is a horrific example of good customer service. However, she did give me something to write about today so, thank you Tatiana.

“Things to Think About” for the Reference Professional

#crlp When given the opportunity, meet face to face with customers.

“Things to Think About” for the Reference Professional is a weekly blurb to get you thinking. You can find content here on this blog or at Twitter under the hashtag for Customer Reference and Loyalty Professionals #crlp.

“Connecting with your Customers”

On the way back from a customer site visit last week, I was sitting in the airport and dropped by the news store. After searching through the magazine rack, I noticed “Connecting with your Customers“ by Harvard Business School Press. Naturally, I had to buy the book.

The book is broken up into four sections and then each section has chapters written by well known customer loyalty/marketing folk such as Fred Reichheld and Kristen Sandberg with additional thoughts and quotes from Guy Kawasaki, Patricia Seybold and Seth Godin.

The first chapter “Understanding Customers’ Needs” delves into just that, finding out what your customers want. The best way to do this is to talk to your customers, find out what they want, what they need and how they use your product. Customers don’t always use your product the way you thought they would. Although not given as an example in the book, do you think the makers of baking soda thought that it would be used for anything other than cooking? Probably not, but after witnessing consumers using it to reduce refrigerator smells, their marketing changed to encompass the new market.

One of the key quotes in the chapter is “watch what you customers do, not what they say.”

Chapter two “Identifying Customer Segments” reminds the reader that not all customers are the same. How do you segment them and why is it important? Companies need to find out who their customers are and think about business in their customers’ eyes. Who are the happy customers and what power do they have? Who are the unhappy customers and what are they doing to hurt your business?

Surveying customers is a very important part to understanding the different segments. What 20 year old women buy and think about your product could be completely different than what 50 a year old man thinks. And although you want to categorize these customers, it’s also very important to see the responses as individuals giving you their opinion. If needed, immediate attention might need to be given to unhappy customers. Companies must also stop thinking of customers just as data points and even consider creating groups within the company to support specific customer segments.

“Communicating with Customers” features Douglas Smith’s three innate psychological needs. Those include competence (enhancements in knowledge or ability), autonomy (the power to make choices without pressure from a company), and relatedness (the sense that a company genuinely cares about its customers).

One of the most interesting quotes to me in this chapter was, “In one study, cocktail-lounge customers who were approached by a server wearing a broad smile left more than twice as much in tips, on average, than customers who were greeted with minimal smiles.”

The book finished up with the chapter “Enhancing Customer Loyalty”. By finding out how much your customer is worth to you (what they’ve purchased, who they tell about their experience, what costs are associated with getting them to be a customer and keeping them) a business can change from being product-centric to customer-centric.

If you’ve got a few hours to read I’d suggest this book. There are supporting materials you can read to get more in depth coverage of most of the topics included and they are listed at the back of the book But, if you want to get a quick overview and some talking points, it’s worth the $14.95.

“Things to Think About” for the Reference Professional

#crlp An angry customer is more detrimental to your business than you first think.

“Things to Think About” for the Reference Professional is a weekly blurb to get you thinking. You can find content here on this blog or at Twitter under the hashtag for Customer Reference and Loyalty Professionals #crlp.

We All Know What Happens When You Assume!

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on ToolKing, I thought I’d share this Business Week article with you.  It’s a very interesting read on what not to assume when using social media.

Debunking Six Social Media Myths
Using social media to market your business is a good idea. Just don’t plan on getting your whiz-kid nephew to do it for free

The King of Tools Does it Right

I just found a few articles that I cut out of Internet Retailer  last month and reread them. Here are some interesting bits from ”Tool King hammers out more sales with more info and Web 2.0” in the February 2009 issue. (to read the full article go here)

“2007 was not a good year for Tool King – web sales dropped by 18.5%. So it brainstormed and decided that providing more information – much more information – along with adding Web 2.0 tools and entering the realm of social networking would capture more repeat customers and attract new ones looking to better understand tools and projects. The strategy worked. In 2008, web sales for Tool King grew by 10% to about $24.2 million from $22 million in 2007.

“We were placing too much emphasis on new customer acquisition,” says Donald Cohen. “Now ToolKing.com is focused on customer retention…”

It’s good to see yet another company focus on keeping customers. If only more companies realized that it’s more expensive to gain a new customer than it is to keep the old ones happy. That’s because the loyal customers tell others and that’s ultimately less marketing budget needed for the company to spend gaining a new customer. But at the same time, if you upset your customers, be aware that they may tell lots of other folks.

What’s the lesson in this? 1) Retaining happy customers is less expensive than gaining new ones 2) social media is a powerful tool!