Customer care

How often do you ask yourself these questions about your customer care strategy?

• Do your customers feel important?
• Do your customers feel that you are interested in them and what they want and need?
• How do you show that you value them?
• Do you tell them what's in it for them, how they will benefit from your products and/or service?
• Do you show empathy with their point of view?
• Do your customers feel special?

How good is your customer care? Customer care is about caring for your customers and also caring about them after all people don't just buy the product or service they buy-into you and your business. In almost all sectors of business you face competition often quite intense competition so why do your customers chose you? The answer is that a customer buys a complete product that includes not only the item or service, but a number of emotional factors as well.

Customer care is a developed over time and all the members of your organisation need to be committed  to  the concept.  You need to:

• Define your standards;
• Determine how you will measure performance;
• Train staff;
• Monitor and measure performance;
• Retrain as necessary; and
• Show that the organisation appreciates the effort made by the staff to meet customer expectations.

So what are you waiting for? Have you asked your customers how you can improve your performance, what standards they expect and whether internal company standards meet or exceed their requirements? Customer care is a team activity everyone in the business needs to get involved and sing from the same hymn sheet. Sam Walton is reputed to have said “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” Right on the nail, I feel!