Hi. Today’s topic is, “Don’t go to sleep tonight until you can answer this one question about your customer service that your business offers.”
Customer service, we all hear about it, we all talk about it all the time. We want to treat our customers like royalty, etc. Our customer’s are our most important part of our business. You’ll see a lot of businesses say that. It’s pretty normal, and expected.
What I want to do is ask you a question:
If you actually asked your customers, surveyed them, or had us send a survey or something, what would they say about your customer service?
Would they say it was no-frills, bare bones type of stuff? You go in, you ask for a hamburger, you get a hamburger. That’s what you get. You don’t get ketchup, you get a hamburger. You don’t get a bun, you asked for a hamburger. You know, no-frills.
Would it be a OK service? “Yeah, it was OK, nothing great. I was hungry, I got some food to eat,” etc.?
Was it really something that they wished for? “This is what I was dying for.” I know some people, they love some particular restaurants. When they go in there, they get that wished-for feeling of going in there. It’s not just the food, but it’s this desired outcome that they feel good, and that’s why they come back more often than not.
The fourth level of service is, “Wow!” Did you wow them? Did you do something that they didn’t expect? That’s the level of service that you really want, especially for somebody who’s a first-time customer or client, assuming that that’s what your business is about.
If you say, “Listen, my business is about offering no-frills service to people who want that,” then that’s fine. They’re going to expect no-frills service. They don’t want to spend a lot of money.
But if you’re in a business, and a small business particularly, sometimes you really have to step out of the comfort zone and think about, how are you offering that level of service where people didn’t expect it, and by not expecting it, they’re happy?
I will say, once you deliver that level of exceptional service where you wow them, you need to deliver that all the time, because that will become their new wished for expectation, so to speak, about the business.
Why is all of this important?
I’ve said this time and time again. Your existing customer base is so much more profitable to you, than trying to acquire new customers. I know, as small business owners, because I come across a lot of small businesses, the focus often is on getting new business, getting new business, getting new business.
Because of that, they neglect their current clients; not intentionally, but it just happens. This can be very detrimental to the business. According to the Rockefeller Institute study — which I read about in a book — if you can check out the study, every year, for example, you’ll lose customers.
The primary reasons are, one percent of people will die. Three percent of people will move, five percent of people won’t need the product or service anymore. Nine percent are attracted by the competitors, which you can make it easy for them to do, if you offer horrible service.
Fourteen percent leave because they are dissatisfied, so they’re unhappy. I left my insurance company of eight years because of that. I was dissatisfied with what they did, and if you want to look at the blog or podcast I wrote about that experience, you can.
Here’s the key point: 68 percent of the people leave because the company doesn’t care about them. Your most profitable source of revenue for your business is your existing clients and customers. Wouldn’t it make sense that once you have a sizable customer base, that you take care of them?
To get that sizable customer base you obviously have to take care of them, but that’s where, as time goes on, you really have to spend your time and energy doing it. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. I do want to reference those of you a book. It’s called “Kick-Ass Business and Marketing Secrets,” by Bob Pritchard.
It’s a great book, and we pulled some of the stats from that book. If you get a chance, read it. If you don’t have the time or energy to read marketing books and study marketing things, then certainly you can give me a call at 321-613-8476, or email me at brad@justsmallbiz.com.
We can put all the reading and knowledge we’ve acquired over the 20 plus years, and put it into good use to help you grow your business, so you can focus on delivering that “wow” customer service and experience that will continue to bring the customers and clients back to you. Thanks, have a good day.
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