In a competitive world, it’s vital that your customers love you and love dealing with you more than they do with anyone else. Here are three small changes to make to boost your customer experience offering. And don’t be fooled by their simplicity because it’s small changes that makes big differences.
Respond instantly
How often have you stood in a store waiting for someone to at least recognise you? How many times have you sent an email enquiry waiting to know if it was at least received and when they’ll get back to you? Here’s an easy way to get one up on your competitors – respond quickly. Even when you’re too busy make the effort and let your customers know you appreciate them. The world moves fast, and people want quick responses and if you don’t give that to them, you might find your customers quickly moving elsewhere. Set up an autoresponder or write a quick email stating you got their enquiry and will get back within a specified time frame. Train your staff to pause briefly, lift their heads, nod and acknowledge someone is there. Simple but so often missed.
Smile more
Try this. Next time you’re out shopping take note of how many people are actually smiling when they deal with you, or when they see you coming. Smiling isn’t just acknowledging someone, it’s acknowledging them with genuine warmth and connection. Smiling actually changes your posture and attitude. When someone smiles at you (genuinely) it makes you feel good and people just want to feel good, so give them a smile. And not just when you meet them face to face either, try smiling when you’re on the phone because you’ll be amazed at how it changes your tone, your voice and your wording, and the difference that will make to the person on the other end.
Don’t whaffle
Like you people are busy, really busy. So when they call or walk into your business they just want you to solve their issue and get out of there. Everything else eats into their valuable time and will just annoy them. Think about, everyone is just too busy to have their time wasted. Just cut to the chase, fix their problem and fix it fast. It’s a fine line but don’t confuse being friendly and being customer focused with wasting their time. I’m not saying rush or take shortcuts because everyone wants and deserves the time needed to solve their problem and make them happy. What I am saying is what they don’t want is unnecessary time wasting.
Nigel Collin, Business Coach and Author of “Game of Inches”
