Lets make this simple. Who would you rather do business with, the company that makes sure that every interaction you have is simple, easy, painless, positive and memorable OR the company that stifles their staff and employees with policy and procedure for customer satisfaction?
You order a meal in a restaurant and there is a problem, you buy something and it fails to live up to your expectations, you have service done and there is a problem with it after the fact. How the situation is handled in the very first interaction is what will make or break the customer relationship. We all have off days, make mistakes, slip up. It is how you handle it that counts.
Your staff should not have to cite policy and procedure, they should be able to make it right immediately.
I remember in one of my first career jobs over 30 years ago, I was an assistant manager for a national automotive repair and retail company. My manager told me that when there was a customer complaint I was to take it first and quote policy and gently fight them on making it right. I would then tell them when they were persistent that they needed to talk to the boss. He would right away give them what was needed to make them happy and be the hero. He believed this made people appreciate the satisfaction more because they had to fight for it.
It never made sense to me and when I was given an opportunity to manage the same location when my boss moved on, I did the opposite. I empowered every member of my staff to make it right on the spot.
I had four years in a row of sales growth over 20% each year, the best at 35.6%. I learned early on that to be successful in business you needed to make it simple and pleasurable to do business, even when it came to a service most people dread, automotive repair.
Are you making it easy for your customers or killing your business with policy?
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