May, 2009

True Job Security

If you keep your customers happy, guess what? You keep your customers.

By Tom Fife

It is so pleasant to see many companies and associations seeing the light turned back on when the topic is customer service. I recently did a presentation for a company with five locations. They brought the entire team together for the first time in their history on a Saturday to involve everyone in learning the importance of customer service. The day was terrific, and they reported that in just three days a noticeable, positive difference had been made within the organization. Closing down to learn the same information together is such a powerful message to all.

The great people in Texas and the LAT chose to have a keynote on “Creating a Culture of Customer Service” at their convention in April. I applaud those who see customer service as the only real job security. Truly, without customers we can’t realize our goal of making money. I urge you to bring customer service to the forefront of your training topics within your companies. Understanding that everyone has to be involved is essential to building a culture of exemplary service.

It’s a common statistic that 68% of lost customers leave because of an attitude of indifference from employees. In simple terms, this means that a bad attitude by our teammates is far and away the leading cause of lost customers. Most untrained people believe that customers always leave due to high price or poor quality. It is important to help your people recognize the role they play in customer service.

I see three types of customers that generally get differing service depending on how they are viewed from a business perspective:

NEW CUSTOMERS: We may have prospected these people for months, and they are the growth in our business. We often promise the sun and the moon to entice a customer to give us a shot. Quite often the new customer is offered “superior” or “special” service. Have you ever had a salesperson write down on the order for a new customer “Please send GOOD material— this is a NEW CUSTOMER.” I guess they think we send junk to our others.

EXISTING CUSTOMERS: They’re the base that allows us to have a measure of security in our operation. We can count them in our fold. They have increased importance when we factor in that it takes six times as much effort to attract a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. We treat our existing customer with a “taken for granted” attitude (an attitude of indifference?) that can lead them away from our door. We all have an existing customer or two that comes in without getting proper paperwork and then proceeds to load themselves because we all know them and are sure they are getting the service they need.

I’ve even heard workers say they would summarily ship damaged goods to their existing customers because they were large volume and wouldn’t make a fuss. Guard against the attitude that existing customers can be given an inferior level of service and last forever. They won’t. Even though they have had problems solved in the past or have experienced our superior service in the past, today they may be the most overlooked and under-serviced customer we have. To our competition, they are a potential new customer.

INTERNAL CUSTOMERS: Being human, it is difficult to give exemplary service to our external customers while being given poor service by our co-workers. The Internal Customers— everyone in our organization—can directly effect our bottom line profits. With our industry relying on such tight margins, the internal customer is critical to our bottom line. They need to be experencing superior service on a daily basis in order to accomplish the high levels of service that our other customers demand and deserve.

Make customer service a topic at every meeting to keep it in the forefront. Recognize and reward exceptional service to reinforce its value to your company. However you decide to do it, make an effort to teach and train the benefits, expectations, importance and bottom line value of exceptional customer service.

If you keep your customers happy, guess what? You keep your customers.

I can help, just holler.

TOM FIFE is a 20-year veteran of the construction supply business and president of Unionville, Ind.-based Challenges Inc., a speaking, training and consulting firm. Seminar topics include employee motivation and retention, customer service, management skills and yard foreman skills. For additional information, call at 812.330.1640, e-mail tom@tomfife.com, or visit www.tomfife.com.