Customer Service Mistakes: How a Clients Advice Saved My A$$ and Changed My Business
Doing the Actions of Business is What Really Tests the Business Owner
Running a business that helps other business has been and continues to be an incredible learning experience. I read a lot about how to run and develop a business, about better ways to integrate marketing technologies, about management, customer service, and more. It is through actions and doing the business that really tests me as a business owner. Here is an example.
Failure to Communicate
One of the areas in which I have missed repeatedly is in customer service–specifically, client communication. On a number of small projects, I have let clients slip onto the communications back burner once they stopped calling regularly. I don’t know why–whether it was some sign that they weren’t in a hurry, or that they didn’t care so much–it certainly doesn’t matter.
Why should you as a client or any of your customers have to first, wonder what is going on and second, have to be the one to initiate a contact. They are paying me for a service and that service is my responsibility to deliver. I personally get pissed off when people don’t call me when they say they are going to (maybe my peeve is connected to my behaviour). The solution is so simple.
A Client Gave Me the Best Advice I Could Have Ever Asked For
He said, "When you need to keep yourself in line, tell the client or customer that if they don’t hear from you by [Wednesday] they should call you."
By creating an external motivator, such as a client having to go to the trouble of calling, I or you, don’t need to be as disciplined. We just need to have enough pride to make sure that we beat them to it. If the client ends up calling, that is embarrassing. Who wants to be embarrassed?
The ideal scenario is that a policy gets created that every client be contacted within a particular time-frame regardless of progress. It is better to call a client and tell them what hasn’t happened and when it will be done rather than not call. So this is my solution.
How About You?
How have you failed your customers? What have you done to fix these problems?
Tags: customer service, communications, advice, clients, mistakes