Customer service is a form of marketing? Why yes, yes it is. It’s no less a marketing tool than the end caps on your aisles and the displays around your register. Customer service is marketing that happens once the customer has already made contact either by walking in, calling or emailing, and that makes it invaluable to not only ensure you get that customer’s business on the front end but keep it on the back-end! And we all know it’s just as important, if not more so, to keep the customers you have as it is to attract new ones.
Training
Customer service is not something that most of your employees are going to be proficient with when they walk in the door unless they have previous experience and sometimes not even then. I’ve been told that there was a mythical time, long, long ago, when it seemed that every employee understood the day they were hired how customers wanted to be treated and acted accordingly. It’s necessary to understand that those days, if they ever truly existed at all, are gone. In today’s world, it is necessary to train your people.
Clear Expectations
Make it clear to your employees what you want from them as regards customer service. Make it clear that they are to greet the customer before the customer greets them, that they need to maintain the 10-foot, 5 foot rule (acknowledge the customer with a facial expression such as a smile at 10 feet and verbally at 5 feet), etc. And remember, you’re not only training them on the basics of good customer service but also those aspects of customer service that are specific to your company.
What do I mean? Well, perhaps there is something that you expect every employee to do or say when a customer walks in or when they answer the phone. This is a tenet specific to you and your business. For example: a popular pizza chain asks every employee in the restaurant to say, “Hi, welcome to CiCi’s,” when a customer walks in the door. It’s effective marketing, it’s customer service and it’s specific to that chain. Such things may seem hokie, and they certainly can be, but it can also stick in your customer’s mind.
Supervision
All the training and expectations in the world mean nothing if you’re not randomly listening to customer interactions. It’s important to hear how your employees treat customers, not because you distrust them but because it’s your job to ensure that your customers are receiving the absolute best care you can provide. You never know what you might need to tweak or change until you hear how your people perform and how customers react.
Customer service is an important tool for any business, and can be the difference between success or failure. You may carry the best products in town, but if your employees are not providing your customers with quality customer service, no one will return to your store. It requires the right training to cultivate the right attitudes, clear expectations so that your employees know what you want, and a little supervision to ensure that things are running smoothly. Do these three things, and you will see some big results!
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