 The
Boomerang Effect In Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty
By Ed Rigsbee, CSP
(1658 Words)
Like the boomerang,
getting customers to return, takes skill and practice. Today, your
customers want more than just service. They want to be satisfied that
they received a great total value package from you. This idea applies to
all levels of the distribution channel from procuring raw materials to
purchases by consumers and end-users. Do this, and you’ll earn their
sustained loyalty. By employing my P.A.R.T.N.E.R.S. model, you
too can create customer satisfaction at such distinguished levels that
loyalty will be the natural outcropping of your efforts. Essentially, you
want to become your customer’s partner. This is because vendors are
merely a dime-a-dozen, while partners are precious.
P
is for Performance Standards; this is the underpinning of the
model. You must identify, describe and express to your staff exactly
what you expect of them. You must not just communicate by word that
which you want from your employees, but also in deed. You must first
model the high level of customer service by living the performance
standards you demand of your team. Along with the need to establish
performance standards, there is the need to measure the level of service
rendered to your customers is equally important. If you measure it, you
most likely will manage it.
A
is for Anticipating Customer Needs. This is crucial to delivering
the kind of service and value that keeps customers returning regularly.
To create customer satisfaction, you must know what your customers want
before they themselves know they want it. You can do this through
customer focus groups, attending trade shows, and reading those trade
journals that are piling up in your office. This is also the area where
your superior product knowledge will serve you well. Additionally, spend
the time to train your staff well in the features and benefits of that
which you sell. Great salespeople are those that do an unsurpassed job
of assisting their customers to obtain all the goods and services that
their customers need, want, and desire. These salespeople are also the
ones that are so appreciated by their customers that they are rewarded
with repeat business.
R
is for your Rules to Distinguished Customer Service. First,
always give value-added service. The idea of giving more than is
expected or always giving a little extra at no charge has proven
successful to many over the ages. In fact, the baker's dozen, 13 rather
than 12—giving one free, when a customer purchases a dozen is the
result of this idea and is an excellent customer retention method.
Second, everyone in your business must understand and subscribe to the
belief that a customer has earned the right to your respect simply by
virtue of walking in your front door, calling on the telephone or
e-mailing an order. Third, everything you do has a stone-in-the-water
effect. All your actions as an owner, manager, or executive will have an
effect on your customers. This applies to actions toward customers and
employees alike—if you treat employees poorly, they will similarly
treat your customers poorly. Additionally, remember that happy customers
tell a friend or two, conversely, unhappy customers tell anybody that
will listen just how poorly you deliver value, or the lack there of.
Fourth, Never promise that which you know you or your company cannot
deliver. Over-promising is the surest way to anger and lose a loyal
customer.
T
is for Transitioning Your Angry Customers into Happy Campers. You
can generally accomplish this through a simple four-step model: First,
you must intently listen to the customer's complaint or gripe without
getting defensive. Listen completely; take care not to be like the
one-minute doctor who offers a prescription before doing some sort of
diagnoses. You do not want to be guilty of customer service
malpractice. Second, you defuse their anger through the process of
asking open-ended questions. These are the questions where your customer
must talk rather than grunt an angry yes or no. Get them explaining the
situation rather than just complaining. Third, clarify the problem
through responses. Feed back to the customer what you understand is the
problem. If you did not understand or they did not explain it well, this
is an opportunity to better understand. Fourth, offer a solution only
after you are completely clear on what the real problem happens to be.
If you do not clearly understand your customer's problem you will most
likely offer an incorrect solution and further anger your valued
customer.
N
is for the Need to learn about Neuro-Linguistic Programming
(NLP). This is today's forefront science in serving and selling to
others. Whether you like it or not, selling is part of customer service.
NLP is the science of how your brain learns. Everybody has a basic
preferred learning strategy: Visual (seeing), Auditory (hearing), or
Kinesthetic (feeling). Each learning strategy is used in various
situations yet; most people do in fact favor one strategy. Detect your
customers preferred strategy by listening to the kind of words they use.
Do they use seeing, hearing or feeling type words? Communicate with them
in their favored strategy. As an example, the customer who says things
like, "I wonder how this will look on me?" Might this person
be a visual? The key word is look. Talk to that person in visual or
seeing terms. Say something like, "Just picture yourself . . .
" This method of communication is called direct or matched
communication. You are mirroring the other person’s learning style.
Had you said, "Feel this fabric . . . " You would have had a
mismatch.
Like the construction
company digging a tunnel from both sides of the mountain—If their
communication between the two crews were poor, instead of digging one
tunnel, they would most likely dig two! Rather than building two
different tunnels, or levels of communication, you want to build a
communication bridge with your customers. If you do this, your
customer's brain will simply say, "This person is like me—I like
me—I like this person." Now you are on the way to building the
kind of high-level rapport that keeps your customers coming back. Two
great books on NLP for business are: NPL At Work by Sue Knight
and The Power of Business Rapport by Dr. Michael Brooks.
E
- Empower Your Staff to deliver on the expectations of your customers.
Cutting a special deal, resolving conflict, and smoothing ruffled
customer feathers should be among the powers your employees should have.
Customer expectations must be understood, and delivered upon for your
business to survive. The behavior in your employees that you chose to
reward is the behavior that they will likely repeat. If you tell your
team, "You are now empowered!" but then rip their head off for
making a decision you didn’t like, they will surely not take that risk
again. My grandfather was an electrician in the 1950s and 1960s, working
at a shipyard in San Pedro, CA. He would repeatedly say this about life
at the shipyard, "There's the right way to do things, there's the
wrong way to do things, and there's the Navy's way. We do things the
Navy's way!" Take caution not to play "Navy" with your
employees. If you would like more information about rewarding your team
for taking risks, please visit http://www.rigsbee.com/ma9.htm.
R
is for Reward Customer Loyalty. Loyalty is a double-edged sword.
If you want your customers to be loyal to you, then you must be loyal to
them first. Giving deals to new customers only, and not to
established ones, can easily offend. Actually, this mocks your valuable
customers who have been loyal to you. I’m sure you would agree that it
costs much less to keep a customer than to bring a new one in the door.
If you are experiencing the "Turnstile" effect in customer
loyalty, take a close look at your customer retention policies and
practices. Don't be lured by the erroneous belief of unlimited
customers. In reality, competition today is more brutal than ever before
in our history and getting more so daily. Your customers have more
choice than ever before. Today, the secret to success is to retain every
customer and serve them so well that they truly become your best
advertisements. Frequent consumer programs are a much better strategy
for sustained success than are new customer introduction offers.
S
– is for the Satisfied and Blissful state in which you want
your customers when they think or talk about you, your staff, and your
company. Your customers must believe that value and satisfaction is
always Job One at your company. Customer service is the means,
not the goal. You must stay focused, like a laser, on your necessary
goal of customer satisfaction through perceived value. Just because a
customer is served, it doesn't necessarily mean they are satisfied. Have
you found yourself in a similar situation lately where you were served,
but not to the level of your expectations? You may very well have left
the situation dissatisfied. Keep in mind that more customers will just
simply walk away with their expectations, realistic or otherwise, not
met and will never say a word to you. What they will do is become the
squeaky wheel and voice their complaints only to their friends and
colleagues—the kiss of death to any business.
Now you have all the
pieces of the P.A.R.T.N.E.R.S. model—quite easy to understand
it at an intellectually level, but at the crucial emotionally
level—that’s another story. Like learning the necessary skills to
make the boomerang return, you too must use the pieces of the above
model to help your customers become loyal and always return. The
challenge here is for you and your team to emotionally own the ideas and
live them daily. Your actions are speaking so loudly that your customers
cannot hear a word that you are saying. Let your actions show that you
truly desire to become a precious partner to your customer.
To
access helpful additional information from Ed Rigsbee at no charge,
please visit www.rigsbee.com/downloadaccess.htm.
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Ed Rigsbee, CSP is the
author of PartnerShift, Developing
Strategic Alliances and The
Art of Partnering. Rigsbee has over 1,000 published articles to his
credit and is a regular keynote presenter at corporate and association
conferences across North America. He can be reached at 800-839-1520 or EdRigsbee@aol.com.
For a treasure trove of additional information and ideas, visit his
Partnering University Web Site at www.rigsbee.com.
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