What
every retailer in the uniform industry learns very
quickly is that this is indeed a service business. From
the young man starting his first foray into professional
life to the corporation outfitting an entire department,
you become the face of the uniform industry. What that
face looks like depends on your customer service.
The
front line of your customer service approach may be your
sales staff, but their directions come from the top. So,
ask yourself, what kind of attitude do you project to
your team? Do you enjoy this challenge? Are you proud
and excited by your product? And are you truly motivated
to get the word out? As with dogs and small children,
false enthusiasm is quickly sniffed out by those with
whom you work. On the other hand, an excited supervisor
can produce miracles. If you find yourself counting the
minutes till quitting time, you can’t expect more
from those below you. In her article, “Create a
Positive, Upbeat, ‘Can-do’ Workforce and Dazzle
the Customer with Your Caring!” JoAnna Brandi recommends
the book “Learned Optimism” by Martin Seligman.
For the “half-empty” folks out there, it’s
nice to think one can actually learn to be more positive,
creative, flexible and fun? Ms. Brandi continues to say
that optimism can breed innovation, a requirement of any
service oriented workplace.
Your
next priority is to hire a motivated sales staff. With
your enthusiasm apparent, it should be easy to attract
and spot like-minded individuals. Birds of a feather may
flock together, and so should your team. In “Four
Ways to Motivate Service Professionals”, Mary Sandro
quotes a COO who says, “We only hire people with
‘it’. Where ‘it’ is a pathological
disease to want to serve people.” She goes on to
use as an example Disney and its parks’ world famous
cleanliness. She claims Disney will only hire street sweepers
and house cleaners who delight in cleaning. The message;
hire only people who can be as sincerely excited by your
product as you are.
With
your sales staff in place, you must create a way to measure
success and motivate. Ms. Sandro warns against measuring
individual performance, saying it “biases employees’
energy like a highlighter biases the eye on a written
page.” Instead, Ms. Sandro advises motivating employees
and measuring performances based on their individual needs.
You may have someone on your staff who is extremely competitive
and needs to be singled out. Another employee may only
compete with him or herself. And yet another may be extremely
dutiful, only wanting to concentrate on what is asked
of them. Your job is to understand their unique qualities
and treat them accordingly.
Rewards
can motivate, but it is important to make it a team effort
for a team reward. A first sales commission approach may
encourage an employee to make sales, but does nothing
to create relationships and long-term accounts. Rather,
put the focus on backend commission and team measurements.
For example, one company uses a customer satisfaction
survey, given to every customer, to measure customer satisfaction.
If they, as a team, meet or exceed a predetermined goal
of satisfaction, they all receive extra benefits.
With
the staff in place, you need to know how far you are willing
to go to create a wonderful experience for your customers?
Can your sales staff make decisions to accommodate unique
situations or do they feel it necessary to have every
move “authorized”? If you have sales people
out in the field, they may be asked to deal with the unexpected.
As “ambassadors” of your company, are they
able to represent you above and beyond the call of duty?
If your goal is customer loyalty, you’ll want to
make sure your sales staff knows they can go that extra
mile and that they should.
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Another
facet of customer service is the complaint department. Nobody’s
perfect. The best run company messes up. But the difference
between the best run company and the one running a distant
second is that the first will take complaints and learn
from them. They’re often the stepping stones to great
innovations. Mary Sandro cites studies from the Technical
Assistance Program that trace customer complaints back to
one of three areas: individual employees, the company, or
the customer, with 80% of complaints traceable to the last
two categories. Nowadays, employees have to be well educated
about their product and the company. People have high expectations
from your representatives and will go elsewhere if service
is less. Make sure your people are well informed. Often,
though, the problem is actually with the products or company
policies. A piece of merchandise might be poorly designed
or flawed. Meanwhile, your sales staff is doing their best
to enthusiastically push this product on your customer.
Of course, the ideal solution is to find this out before
the product hits the floor, but mistakes do happen. Act
quickly, efficiently, and honestly to deal with situations
that don’t work out as hoped.
You
can develop ways to collect information on customer satisfaction
and try to be proactive in the complaint department. A follow-up
questionnaire can be sent through the mail or e-mail. For
computer savvy businesses, a questionnaire may be placed
within their website soliciting feedback. Nobody likes to
hear criticism, but a business owner eager to create goodwill
and long standing customer relationships will welcome it
as another tool in building a stronger company.
There’s
a childhood saying, “Make new friends, but keep the
old…” Certainly those words are critical in
the business world. On the average, it costs a small business
10 times as much to attract a new customer as it does to
retain an existing one. Makes sense to bend over backwards
a little for your old friends, doesn’t it? Little
things like offering coffee when they walk in the door or
a gift certificate to Starbucks after a purchase go a long
way to brighten one’s perception of doing business
with you. Of course, giving your loyal customers a deal
is always a way to keep them loyal. And communication is
a must. Improve customer retention with a newsletter or
ezine. Talk about your latest products or services, seasonal
changes, upcoming events, even personal news.
On
the flip side, there is always a small percentage of customers
who aren’t “old friends”. They waste your
time, drain your energy and resources. They’re never
satisfied and they end up costing you more than you’ll
ever make serving them. It’s very hard to cut a customer
“loose” and admit that they just aren’t
worth the trouble, but there are times that this is exactly
the appropriate action. Certainly, the dishonest customer
or the company that doesn’t pay on time need to be
sent to your competitors. But even the hagglers and naggers
and extremely needy customers may end up being more trouble
than they’re worth. You need to listen to your staff
and take their complaints seriously. If you’ve hired
the wonderful people we described above, this shouldn’t
be hard to do! You don’t want bad customers to hurt
staff morale. And if a customer is identified as no longer
wanted, you need to politely tell them that they would be
better off getting your product elsewhere. You can even
give them a list of suggested suppliers.
In
short, sell a product you’re proud of. Hire a staff
you respect and enjoy. Train them well and listen to your
customers. If you do all this, providing great customer
service should not only be easy, it should be fun.
Suggested
further reading and background used for preparation of this
article may be found at http://www.ProEdgeSkills.com.
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