Are You Making These Three Mistakes That
Drive Your Customers Away?
By Kristina Evey Platinum Quality Author
Business owners and leaders are often puzzled when they hear disparaging remarks about their business or discover they are losing customers. In their minds, they provide a good service or product, deliver good customer service, and have a large customer following. Yet, why are they losing customers, constantly having to market to new customers, or making business decision with no clear basis?
You haven’t set clear customer service expectations for your staff -
Most people within your company genuinely want to do a good job for your business and the customer. Yet they often times have not been told exactly what the ideal customer service environment is or how to go about achieving it. When things are not clearly stated, you are leaving your customer service standards up to chance.
One way to keep customers is to clearly explain to your staff the service expectations that you expect them to implement. It can be as simple as purposely making eye contact with customers and smiling at them, the way everyone in your company answers the phone, to the level of empowerment your staff has in working in the best interest of the customer and how to handle customer complaints.
By specifically giving them the guidelines you expect them to follow, they know and understand the way you expect the customer to be treated and how they can impact that to make it a positive customer experience.
You are treating each customer as a “One Time Transaction” -
Most businesses cannot survive on a “one-time customer” business model. Businesses prosper by growing their customer base and developing loyalty.
One important thing to remember in this process is the Lifetime Value of each customer. The lifetime value is determined by understanding the ideal and realistic length of time a customer could potentially have a need for or do business with you. For example, a supermarket could expect that an average customer spends $100 per week in that store. Over one year, that would total approximately $5,000. If that store has successfully retained that customer and that customer has not moved out of the locale of that store, the desired and realistic business relationship would be 20 years. The lifetime value of that customer would then be…
20 years X $ 5,000 = $100,000 Lifetime Value per Customer
The lifetime value will be useful when you are making decisions on how to best handle a customer situation. Instead of viewing it as a $50 return item, the way it is handled could potentially keep or drive away $100,000. When you speak with a customer, speak to and with them in a way that you understand it is $100,000 you are talking to, not someone looking for a particular product or asking a question.
Thinking you know what your customers want without even asking them -
Some businesses sell products and services and make business plans without considering the customer’s benefit or desire. They continue to sell the same product or improve on the same principles without understanding if the customer even wants it, likes it or not, or even has a need for it.
They make business decisions on how they run their business according to their master plan, but fail to consider the ideas and feedback of the customer who is keeping them in business in the first place.
It’s essential to engage with your customer base to determine what they want from you to make them want to continue doing business with you. They will tell you exactly what they want, the way they want it, and what it will take to make them continue buying it from you.
Bonus tip – Watch the video that clearly gives you the 5 most important steps of the customer service your business delivers by visiting http://www.kristinaevey.com. By clicking here you’ll start the process to develop relationships with your customers that will make them want to go out of their way to do business with you.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kristina_Evey
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