The Seven Habits of Customer Champions
Competition's fierce and purse strings are pulling ever tighter as the credit crunch bites. So save yourself some marketing spend and keep your customers happy.
Business guru Tom Peters said: "It is the greatest kept secret in the global economy today. If you can provide awesome care you will need new suitcases to carry all the money home."
CRM has been in fashion for a number of years, and all sorts of quality-control services come and go. But keeping customers is incredibly easy. Even better, happy customers do the selling for you.
Very few businesses have really even started to understand customer care and the millions it can make them. Here are just a few very simple tips:
- Develop a positive customer obsession from the top.
- Make every person that touches your brand an ambassador.
- Operate risk reversal -- in other words you carry the risk, not the customer -- and give a 100 per cent money back guarantee.
- Put people back onto switchboards.
- Do the thing you didn't have to do: the kindness, the follow-up phone call, a small thank you gift.
- Give absolute priority to a customer complaint -- it is a massive opportunity to develop a customer for life.
- Invest in your people, train them, inspire them and motivate them. Good training works immediately.