 |
||||
 |
||||
|
------------------------------------------- I
noticed that you had difficulty placing I invite
you to use our discount page since I also
noticed that you ordered Make Your I thank
you for your attempts to order MYWS! Best
regards, -----SIDEBAR------ So what did Janice do? Sure, she picked up a failed order and encouraged the customer to try again, after being sure that the glitch was fixed. She's supposed to do that. But then she went way above and beyond... She noticed that the customer had earlier incorrectly overpaid for a different product. She automatically credited the difference. Would the customer ever have noticed? Not likely. If he had, would he have blamed us? No. So why bother? Because it's the natural thing to do, if you are totally consumed with your customer's well being. And that's the "takeaway lesson" here... You, and
every one in your company (including your
spouse, if s/he's involved!), has to be infused
with a passion for customer delight, not
mere satisfaction. Not just your support
staff, either... You'll know you've got it when you go out of your way to find and fix problems. And you know what happens when you embrace this "delight your customers" attitude? Good things happen. Here's how Paul replied... ------------------------------------------ For
years, I was an out-of-print and rare "So
what?" You say. "What has that got to do You see,
a bookdealer handles hundreds of That ability has never left me. In all
that I do, I'm a seeker of excellence. Ken, I'm
a hard buyer. I pass up buying Money is
not an obstacle to buying. I will Ken,
your marketing is hype. Brilliant hype I BOY, DID YOU DELIVER! Only
those who experience the worst can So now
to the matter at hand. I was a bit I WOULD
HAVE PUNCHED THAT DAMN Thank
you, Ken, for your precious gift. No, Paul
Bynum Did Janice win a customer for us? Nope. Seems he would have bought the next day anyway. (Of course, if this was a customer who was peeved, she certainly would have "won one.") Did she make us any money? Actually, she cost us a few dollars (plus her time) in the short term. Did she make a customer delighted? Absolutely. And that,
dear reader, results in a lifetime customer. One
who'll tell several friends, who in turn will
become lifetime customers. What Janice did does
not show up in this quarter's P&L statement
or balance sheet. But chalk up one more big
asset I
happened to think about that incident because
I'm reading an excellent book right now. Written
by Ron Zemke and Tom Connellan, it's called
"e-service"... "Customer loyalty measured in repeat purchases and referrals is the key driver of profitability for online businesses." But what's the key to "customer loyalty?" No, it's not customer satisfaction! They show some fascinating data that proves "satisfied customers" are "at risk" of defecting to competitors. In other words, mere satisfaction falls short. The key is to delight the customer. Score 10 out of 10 on customer satisfaction surveys. Because loyalty, as measured by the likelihood of repeat business, shoots up exponentially among "highly satisfied" customers. So... delight your customers. But here's the critical point... Don't delight your customers because you'll make more money. Yes, that *is* the end result. Only one problem though... you can't fake this. You have to build delight from the ground up. The foundation must be your attitude... Care. Be obsessed with your customer's success and happiness. That attitude creates situations like the one above, over and over. Here's the twist, though... This "ground up" approach has to come from the "top down." The #1 person at your company must infuse everyone with this attitude. Or it simply sputters. In the
article at the URL just below, Dick Lee talks
about "adopting customer-centric values" and
"instilling customer-centric values throughout
the organization"... The author is a CRM consultant to large companies. Some firms literally spend hundreds of thousands on outside consultants and specialized software to manage customers. Yet most fail to develop customer delight (that's why you always see the same companies (ex., DELL) used as positive examples over and over). For example... High-powered, super-expensive semi-intelligent software continues to spit back useless, off-target answers to customer questions. And that gets them mad. Why? Why would big companies do that? Because the "ground up" has not been built from the "top down." There's no true commitment to the customer. If there were, someone would take the time to check what their customers are seeing, and how they're feeling about the responses they get. And why would they do that? Why should they do that? Because they care! Instead, they look for quick solutions to "handle the CRM issue. Hey, if it costs $100,000, we must care, right?" Nope. Follow
this simple advice... care. Soon, you'll
be "looking for trouble." When that happens,
you'll be ahead of those high-budgeted dotcoms.
You'll be building lifetime customers who love
what you do, and how you do it. =======================================
SEARCH THIS SITE OR THE WEB: |