Book Summary Preview : When Your Customer Wins, You Can’t Lose

The Big Idea
The only real potential a business has is in its customers. Products, services, location and knowledge are all important, but limited and fairly short term in potential. The potential of customers, however, is only limited by the imagination and expectations of businesspeople and customers.

The people that businesspeople need to build their businesses are out there and waiting to be influenced into becoming customers; they are waiting to experience the good feelings that go with having expectations met. They are constantly searching for satisfaction and recognition of their worth as customers.

True success as businesspeople would result from removing the blinkers preventing us from realizing the enormous potential for growth and increased profits that is within the grasp of those who can focus all their decisions, activities and energies on satisfying their customers.

---

Why You Need This Book
The solutions to this problem are not that easy, but they are not that hard to discover and implement either. This book is all about the ‘how to’, the ‘can do’, and most especially the ‘will do’ of what needs to be done to tap the limitless potential of customer satisfaction.

This book is all about worthwhile choices; it is filled with practical, easy to implement strategies, techniques and tactics for readers to implement, and explores the attitudes that help and hinder people in their dealings with customers. It will help you take the ‘war’ out of customer relationships and create peace and harmony while increasing productivity and profit – by teaching you to focus on the customer.

Creating Satisfied Customers

Why customer care is sweeping the world
The major test of all businesses is the need to deal effectively with the human element.This consists of those inside the business who manage and run it, and those outside it who are its customers and make profits – and thus the business itself – possible.

Of these two facets, the customer is the more important one. Even if the management is less than optimal, if the business has customers it will survive and even thrive. This will not be the case if the reverse is true.

Customer service is sweeping the world today because it is a key issue in business survival. Other facets of business that were once seen as key – location, special or unique products, finance – are key no longer, as modern transport, communication, shipping, and other factors have negated these advantages.

Businesspeople have to decide that the customer really is ‘king’ and treat them as such if their businesses are to survive and prosper over the long run. Those who serve the customer well have a greater chance of succeeding; those who ignore them will either have only limited success or will fail.

The great opportunity today is the opportunity to give the type of customer service that ensures customer satisfaction. The greatest unsatisfied need in the community today is the need for satisfaction.

Why customers quit
Here are some points to ponder:

• Of all dissatisfied customers, 4% are moved to complain, the other 96% generally go away, and 91% will never return.
• It gets worse – a typically dissatisfied customer tells eight to 10 people of his dissatisfaction.
• Of those who leave and don’t come back, a whopping 68% say that they do so because they did not feel valued – they felt that indifference was being shown to them.
• Seven out of 10 complaining customers will do business with you again – if you resolve the complaint in their favor. 95% will do business with you again if you resolve the complaint on the spot. Satisfied customers will very often tell others about the outcome of the complaint – advertising for you!

Five tips to keep customers:

1. Keep in touch with your customers and constantly let them know they are valued.
2. Turn them on to your business by making it a pleasure for them to do business with you.
3. Make sure all your people are turned on to customer service.
4. Resolve complaints quickly and in favor of the customer.
5. Do more than you promise and on time.

Why customers complain
Customers communicate with a business in many ways, but the majority of these communications are carried out by phone, by letter or face-to-face. So businesspeople could benefit by looking at what customers say that causes them dissatisfaction in these three areas.

Complaints about phone contact with businesses include:

1. Finding the number is constantly busy.
2. Being placed on hold without anyone getting back to let the caller know what is happening.
3. Being transferred from place to place without receiving any sort of meaningful assistance.
4. A rude manner on the telephone, described as being ‘abrupt’ and ‘not friendly at all’.
5. Encountering an employee who does not want to get involved in the matter, or who does not want to resolve the complaint.

Complaints about contact in writing with businesses include:

1. Not having received a prompt answer to their communication.
2. Incorrect spelling of names in the reply letter.
3. The letter being sent to the wrong address.
4. Unclear or hard to understand information in the letter.
5. The letter was written in a rude, brusque, or threatening manner, or did not acknowledge the worth of the customer.

Complaints about face-to-face contact with business representatives include:

1. No one being present to attend to customers.
2. Customers being ignored while staff continue to work or talk.
3. Staff continuing their conversations with other staff while serving customers.
4. Staff neither being able to help nor offering alternatives.
5. Staff not knowing about products or services.

To avoid complaints, then:

1. Train your staff in first-class telephone techniques and make sure your phone system is effective.
2. Answer all written complaints or queries promptly and effectively.
3. Insist that customers be dealt with quickly and effectively. Do not let staff socialize at the expense of consumers.
4. Make regular checks to ensure your customer-service standards are met.
5. Run regular training sessions to keep the skill level of your staff high.

 

Want to read the rest of this summary? click here >>