A Dozen Ways to Build Customer Devotion
1. |
Help your customers become the world’s smartest buyer. Hardwire learning into every
customer’s encounter. Become your customers’ key source for market information. |
|
2. |
Learn
as much about your customers’ hopes and aspirations as you do about their needs and
expectations. Ask questions that help customers problem solve, not just report. |
|
3. |
Staying
in touch is not just sending a birthday card. Follow up by phone, newsletter, fax, and
e-mail always with a personal ("Thought you’d enjoy page three") type note. |
|
4. |
Access
says you care about customer communication. Make it super easy for customers to reach you
anytime and any way. If the Publisher’s Prize Patrol were calling you about your
check, you wouldn’t put them into voice mail! |
|
5. |
Let
your customers customize your processes. Build your systems and procedures around what
works for your customers. |
|
6. |
Make
every part of your customers’ experience totally consistent with how you want your
organization to be remembered. DisneyWorld doesn’t do "partial" magic; they
try to make magical everything from the parking lot to the attractions. |
|
7. |
Identify
ways to get your customers involved in your operation. Sometimes asking customers for
assistance says you value them and see them as much more than a paycheck. |
|
8. |
Never
stop learning from customers about ways you can improve. Forget surveys as a listening
tool. They just give you data; not relationships. Plead for face-to-face candor and thank
clients for what they teach you. |
|
9. |
Customers
like to be remembered. Tailor-make your thoughtfulness around what you learn that your
customers value. |
|
10. |
Never,
ever break a promise or commitment. Keep it or renegotiate it early. |
|
11. |
When
you make a mistake, acknowledge it quickly, honestly and with a sincere apology. Then,
make service recovery something your customers tell others about. |
|
12. |
Great
service to customers starts with great service between employees. Eliminate silos. Be
famous for awesome handoffs, seamless systems and people who enjoy serving each other as
much as serving customers. |
More questions on this for John?
Contact him via john@johnrpatterson.com
10 Considerations Before You Begin a
Customer Survey Initiative
|
1. |
What
are the main reasons the company wants to undertake this customer feedback initiative? |
|
2. |
What
will your customers expect from you after they have provided you with their feedback? |
|
3. |
What
will you tell your employees about what you are about to ask your customers? Why do they
need to know? |
|
4. |
What
do you want to learn from your customers? |
|
5. |
Who
will be on the project team? |
|
6. |
Which
customers do you want to reach out to? |
|
7. |
How
will you ask them about their perceptions of your service? |
|
8. |
What
will you have to do to really listen to them and to really learn from what they tell you? |
|
9. |
How
will you use the information that you gather? |
|
10. |
When
will you check back with your customers? |
More questions on this for John?
Contact him via john@johnrpatterson.com
Top to Do's after the Customer Survey
Results Are In
 |
Shortly
after receiving the results of the customer survey, formally communicate with all
customers surveyed. |
|
Once
an in-depth understanding of the survey results has been developed at the senior team
level, develop an action plan to communicate the information through out the organization,
and to address the top good and bad issues raised by customers. |
|
Customers
telegraph in an intelligence gathering effort what they value most and what they dislike
about what the organization does (process, procedures, decisions, policies, etc.). This
provides an ideal opportunity to reexamine and reaffirm or revise the company’s
service vision, corporate standards, and behavioral norms. |
|
Customer
intelligence is not about knowing, it is about changing. Survey results make is smarter
about what customers expect and experience so future organizational performance can be
effectively aligned with present customer assessment. Take the time to:
| - |
Revise
all employees’ performance objectives to reflect customer intelligence information. |
| - |
Communicate
a six, twelve and eighteen months out target for improvement of overall customer
satisfaction. |
| - |
Announce
changes in the compensation system but make the effective date after the organization has
had a chance to implement change and "practice" with the revised system |
| - |
Revise
recruiting, hiring, training and performance criteria to reflect what customers say is
important. |
|
More questions on this for John?
Contact him via john@johnrpatterson.com
Things to Think about When Developing a
Service Vision
|
How
will you communicate the organization’s precise customer focus? |
|
What
will you identify as the ways your company will be unique and distinguished in the eyes of
customers? |
|
Which
service quality features are most important to your customers and are the features
your customers most want to experience with consistency and reliability? |
|
What
service standards, measures, and practices will be required to ensure that your customers
consistently experience the unique experience you have designed for them? |
More questions on this for John?
Contact him via john@johnrpatterson.com
Is your Service Vision in Alignment with
your Corporate Standards, Behavioral Norms and "Anchor" systems (hiring,
performance management, compensation, and recognition)?
|
Steps
to Aligning Key Business Practices, Policies, Procedures, Processes and "Rules of
Engagement" with the Service Vision, Corporate Standards and Norms Format: Microsoft Word Size: 57kb
To open the document in your web browser - click
here. If you would like to download the document to your desktop or another known
location, right-click on the same hyperlink and choose "Save Target As." |
|
