8 Ways to Get Close to Your Customers

Want to add more value to your customers? Be sure you know what to add! Here are eight proven ways to get close to your customers and find out what they value, what they care about, what they really want:

Connect to Your Customers Through Your Customers

We all live and work in a constellation of relationships based on service. You can see this with the customers you serve and the suppliers who serve you. But this is also true with colleagues, employees, managers, family, friends, government agencies and community members.

Computer Service Contracts - Moving From Customer to Client

Computer service contracts are the butter of a computer services business. Your ultimate goal is to get as many people as you can on a computer service contract.

In Your Best Interest

Customers may become confused or frustrated by your policies and procedures. This is especially common in large organizations. But it’s not productive to blame your customers or your colleagues – that only makes things worse. What is effective is to resolve the situation permanently by improving the clarity and consistency of your communications.

How To Lose a Customer for Life

Occasionally things do go sour. When it happens to you, fix the problem fast. Make it your speed, generosity and concern that gets remembered. Not the trouble, or the tofu.

Customer Recovery First, System Recovery Second!

When something goes wrong for your customer, you may know right away what needs to be done. But before you fix or change the system, set your precious customer at ease. Remember, there is a personal side to every breakdown. It's the side your customer feels first.

Are You Referable?

Being technically competent is not enough to build a growing business. You may be a terrific lawyer, doctor, accountant, broker, supplier, programmer, manufacturer or car mechanic, but if you don't keep your promises in every way, you just won't be referred.

Push Into the White Space

The next time your structure or system says 'no', 'cannot', or 'we don't do it that way', take another look. Think outside the box. Push into the white spaces that surround you. Don't be content just doing it right - find a way to do it better!

Overcoming the Nasty Pirate

Put positive emotion and a personal touch in your service recovery efforts. Customers will remember and cherish you forever.

Information as a Competitive Advantage – Part 2: Creation of Customer Value

Information which: contributes to the understanding of the customer profile, the market segmentation and the focused provisioning of products and services on selected Customer groups

Service Encounters of the Third Kind

What makes a company successful over the long, long term? What characterizes the service relationship between companies and customers who do business together for decades, even generations? How can your company stay close to your ...

The Playful Policy Review

Point Frontline staff are taught to follow policies and procedures. Often they are hesitant to `break the rules'. Yet some rules should be broken, or changed, or at least seriously bent from time to time. Are your staff bound by rules they cannot change? If those rules are outdated or problematic, will they tell you?

Customer Satisfaction is a Rearview Mirror

What is the difference between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty? One package delivery company uses a regular survey to measure customer satisfaction...

I Want to Speak to a Supervisor, Part 2

Empowerment is intelligent fuel for creating self-motivated staff who will love the customers, love their jobs – and love working with you!

Personal Diamond Awards

What would the Olympics be like if we officially included the Personal Diamond Awards? Imagine an athlete who wins the bronze medal as well as a Personal Diamond. How would that athlete react? How might the audience respond? Would the bronze medalist begrudge the...