Contents of the free course 
- Introduction
- Why your business needs customer care
- Part of the firm’s image
- Happy or the Opposite?
- Who are the easiest people to sell to?
Have you also considered these aspects of the course?
Why You Must Care About Customer Care
Your Plan of Campaign
- for a 1 or 2 person business
- for a larger business
Customer Care Skills
Handling Complaints
Your Personal Action Plan
Answers to Exercises
Increase your earnings! Take the full course and receive nationally recognised qualification or call us free at 08000-75-8000 for further information
Introduction
The course is designed to show you how you can make customers feel that you are genuinely interested in them - interested in them as people, not merely as accounts.
By the end of this course, you will:
• recognise why you need a customer care programme.
• have an action plan to install a customer care programme in your business.
• understand customer care skills and how to use them.
• develop a complaints handling procedure that strengthens the bond between your business and your customers.
Continued overleaf
The Library Experiment
Library staff were asked to adopt particular types of behaviour when customers were checking out books.
Part 1 Staff paid scant attention to customers: no greeting, no eye contact, no smile, no physical contact. The customers were interviewed at the exit: very few mentioned the staff; they complained about the service, the lighting, how difficult it was to find books etc.
Part 2 Staff greeted the customer, established eye contact, smiled, used the customer’s name (printed on the card) and casually touched the customer’s hand as they passed the books across the counter. Again, customers were interviewed at the exit. Again, very few mentioned the staff; but this time they were complimentary about the service, the lighting and the ease of finding books.
Now, presumably, you are not running a library. Nevertheless, the knowledge gleaned from the above experiment has an intrinsic part to play in the running of any business - no matter how large or small. This experiment shows how staff behaviour influences customers’ perceptions of the business.
What do Your Customers Expect of You?
They want to feel they are important - so they demand respect and manners.
They want to feel that you are interested in them - so they expect you to show that you really are interested.
They want to know what is in it for them - how they will benefit from your product or service. So, they expect you to show empathy and discuss things from their point of view. In short, they expect good customer care.
Customer Care Provides a Challenge and an Opportunity.
A challenge . . . because customers expect more care - if you don’t look after your customers, someone else will.
An opportunity . . . for you to steal a march on your competitors - you will be setting the pace and they will have to work harder to catch up.
What is Customer Care?
Is it caring for customers or caring about them?
It’s both.
Increase your earnings! Take the full course and receive nationally recognised qualification or call us free at 08000-75-8000 for further information
Why Your Business Needs Customer Care ?
Getting customers and keeping them are the only parts of your business which create income. All other activities create costs.
Customer Care has become a high profile activity. Many factors have contributed to this heightened awareness.
People don’t Just Buy the ‘Product’ or ‘Service’
The Hairdresser Story
Chris was the top stylist at the best ladies’ hairdressing salon in the city centre. She left to have her family and then started up as a self-employed mobile hairdresser.
One particular lady became a regular and very satisfied customer. Each time Chris visited her, she would book the next appointment. This continued for several months but one time, when Chris had done her hair, the lady did not book another appointment. Chris drove away wondering what she had done wrong.
Some weeks later the lady phoned to book another appointment.
On meeting the lady again, Chris noticed some changes. Her hair had been cut - rather badly - and restyled . . . in a way that didn’t suit her face.
Chris was intrigued, but got down to work. Eventually, she could not contain herself any longer. She asked where the lady had been to for the restyling. The lady gave the name of an expensive well-known salon in the city centre.
“What did you think of them?” asked Chris.
“Oh they’re not as good as you, dear. But I’m not surprised. And they charge far more.”
Chris continued to deftly use her scissors but the question was burning inside her. Finally she took a deep breath and asked it.
“Well, why did you go there?”
“It was my birthday”, came the reply. “And I wanted to treat myself’.
Question: Why did the lady feel that going to the expensive, well-known salon in the city centre would be a treat?
Intense competition often means that customers have a choice between many suppliers of identical or very similar products and services.
How do they make that choice?
Increasingly, on the basis of emotional factors (like after-sales service, speed of delivery, and attitude of staff) that surround the product itself. Customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction comes more and more from the way the person is treated. That is customer care.
The customer buys a package that includes not just the product but a lot of emotional factors as well
So, better customer care gives your business the opportunity to be ‘special’ . It provides the means whereby you can stand head and shoulders above your competitors in the marketplace. You can win more customers and keep them loyal.
Increase your earnings! Take the full course and receive nationally recognised qualification or call us free at 08000-75-8000 for further information
It’s Part of the Firm’s Image
Whether your business is large or small, it’s worth nothing that ‘customer care’ has contributed to Marks and Spencer becoming a legend. Woolworths too became a legend - though in a different way. Now Woolworths give all their counter staff customer care training.
Whenever a customer comes into contact with a business - face to face, by phone or in writing - their image of the firm is being established. Your staff are perceived as representing not just themselves . . . but the entire organisation.
Exercise
a) How many customers does your business get in a year?
b) How many of your staff does each customer have contact with: (in person, by letter or by phone?)
c) Multiply a) by b)
This is the number of times a year that your business image is being created/destroyed by your staff.
Customers’ perceptions are emotional, idiosyncratic and sometimes irrational. Often they are based upon a narrow observation - “If that’s a swallow, it must be summer” or “You can always tell a good guest house by whether the curtains are clean”. But it’s customer perceptions that determine your success or failure.
So, in the supermarket, the woman on the cheese counter, for example, sets the image - and, when she studiously ignores you whilst she chats to her colleague about where she went last night, she sets the wrong image. She’s declaring that not only she, but the supermarket also, does not care enough - we judge everything through her.
Sometimes a hotel receptionist greets you by smiling and remembering your name. You don’t just think she cares, you think that the hotel cares - and maybe the hotel chain as well.
Once a business meeting spanned lunchtime and I’ d had nothing to eat. About 2.45pm I was walking back to my car and stopped at a baker’s shop owned by a regional bakery chain. I went inside. The shop was empty. I scanned the list of sandwiches on the wall. Eventually a woman sauntered out of the back room and stood behind the counter facing me. She didn’t speak.
“Afternoon. Have you got any cheese sandwiches left?” I asked.
“No”, she said and walked off into the back room. I stood open-mouthed. Annoyed, frustrated, humbled, I walked out of the shop and back to my car. I resolved then never to deal with that bakery chain again - and I never will.
They can spend thousands advertising just how good their products are. I don’t care - that one little incident had a far greater impact than their adverts ever could.
Customers’ decisions are based upon perception - and perception is an idiosyncratic thing.
Happy - Happy - Happy... . or the Opposite
If you or your staff treat your customers badly, it will make them unhappy. The customers will retaliate and make your staff unhappy. And it won’t do your profits a lot of good either!
Where do you start putting it right? How about with care and attention to the customer?
If your staff make your customers happy, they will respond in kind. That will make your profits happy. And on it will go because, if your firm is successful, your staff are much more likely to be happy and get satisfaction from their contribution.
Increase your earnings! Take the full course and receive nationally recognised qualification or call us free at 08000-75-8000 for further information
Unhappy Staff
Unhappy Profits
Unhappy Customers
Unhappy customers, unhappy profits and unhappy staff go together
The choice is yours.
Happy customers, happy profits and happy staff go together
Disneyworld at Orlando, Florida has more that 20 million visitors a year. They drop tons of litter and ask millions of questions. (Or, more accurately, they ask the same few questions millions of times.)
That’s why Disneyworld’s ‘Custodial Crews’ are so important. They are the people who sweep up the litter - but because they are so visible, they are also the people who are asked most of the questions. So they are dressed impeccably and trained in customer care - consequently, this helps them to appreciate what an important role they play in Disneyworld’s success.
Happy staff - happy customers - enormous profits
It’s interesting to note that the local authority in Birmingham have trained refuse collectors to help visitors to the city in a similar way.
Customers’ Expectations of Service are Rising
Improved technology is providing instant information; more affluence; greater foreign travel. They may all have played their part but, whatever the causes, customers now are more conscious of the way they are being treated and expect a better level of service.
Who are the Easiest People to Sell to?
For most firms it is existing customers. They know the firm. They trust it. They will buy again - provided that they continue to receive distinctive service. Is that true for your customers and your business?
Which is the next easiest group of people to sell to?
Surely it’s the people those customers recommend - their friends, relatives or colleagues.
Your existing customers are crucial to your future success - so, doesn’t it follow that they are worthy of exceptional care?
Increase your earnings! Take the full course and receive nationally recognised qualification or call us free at 08000-75-8000 for further information |
