What does great customer service mean to you?
While excellent customer service implies a high level of service to your customers, it also means showing appreciation for your customers’ business.
Basil O’Hagan, entrepreneur
Rate our service
The fastest way to find out whether your customer service is doing well is by asking your customers. You can conduct regular customer satisfaction surveys to see how you’re doing. Hand out questionnaires to customers to complete while they’re in-store or send short online surveys to all the customers in your email database.
Surveys should be short and clear—no more than four or five questions—and easy to understand, fill in and submit. The experience should be incidental for the respondent, but the information they provide to you is critical.
Ask customers to rate their most recent visit or the general quality of their various visits to your store. Once you tabulate the results, you’ll know where you stand. Are you on the right track, or do you need to up your game? Either way, knowing is power.
Play the role you’re paid to play
There are endless challenges that can arise over the course of a workday. But many of them can be foreseen and prepared for.
The best way to prepare your employees for some classic workplace situations is by roleplaying. Here’s how to do that:
- You play the role of a customer in your store
- Your staff members play themselves
- You pose an unexpected problem
- They react spontaneously as they would in that situation
This type of roleplaying simulation is as close as you can get to a real workplace problem. It’s more realistic than questioning your staff by asking, “So, what would you do if…?”
This way, you can simulate complaints about poor service, a customer losing their temper—all the way up to how they would handle load shedding.
These re-enactments aren’t merely a way to check up on your staff. They’re a form of training. Your staff get to experience what a situation is like before they encounter it for the first time in the store.
The comfy waiting room
Waiting rooms don’t have to feel like a place where your soul goes to die. I don’t know why, but they’re usually just some chairs and a table stacked with old Reader’s Digest magazines from 1997.
Why not have a computer, an iPad and some charging stations so people can charge their devices? How about free Wi-Fi? You could include a TV showing sport, movies, reality TV or news, depending on what your customers enjoy.
A sophisticated coffee machine with free coffee or a vending machine with snacks and cool drinks will keep your customers comfortable, something they’ll appreciate. This will do much for your customers’ level of satisfaction, not to mention employee morale.
There are many retail stores where part of the experience entails a short wait. This is the perfect opportunity to improve your customers’ experience of your store or office, instead of making it worse. Have waiting areas air-conditioned, avoid loud music and keep the lighting bright.
Businesses that could benefit from contemporary waiting areas include the following:
- Doctors and dentists
- Cellphone stores
- Car-repair garages
- Tyre dealerships
- Hair salons
- Any office lobby, entrance hall or reception area
The fastest ‘hello’ in the west
Why not introduce a rule in your outlet that every customer entering the premises must be greeted within 10 seconds of setting foot in the door?
That’s not even particularly fast. You could probably make sure you greet every customer within five seconds. The point is that you and your team need to welcome every customer into your place of business as quickly as humanly possible. These people have come to support you, so show them how much you appreciate them by making them feel welcome.
Imagine you were hosting a braai and one of your guests came in through the door. Would you let them loiter in your entrance hall before you go over and say hi? Of course not! You’d go right over there, shake their hand and invite them in. “What can I get you to drink?” you’d ask. “Come through to the braai area; everyone’s here!”
Also, if you’re seated when a customer enters your shop, pay them the respect of getting to your feet while you serve them.
I walked into a major bookstore the other day. The lady at the check-out point and her manager were eating lunch, sitting down and talking to me. It left a poor impression. Remember to treat your customers with warmth and hospitality. Make them feel at home.
Show your gratitude
It’s important to conclude your business dealings with a heartfelt thank-you.
If you’re lucky, you might complete dozens of transactions over the course of a day. Be careful not to develop a mantra that you repeat verbatim every time you hand someone their debit card back or give them their change:
“Thanks for coming.” “Cheers, thanks a lot.” “Have a nice day.” “Shot, drive safely.”
These all might be meaningful phrases, but if you repeat them a few hundred times, they can become meaningless, and your customer will sense it, particularly if you’re already scanning for a new customer as you hand them their change.
Instead of having a routine statement that you repeat every time you finish dealing with a customer, thank them properly. Tell them sincerely how grateful you are for their business. They’ll appreciate it, and they’ll be back.
Meanwhile, here’s a treat
Sometimes you have no alternative but to make your customers wait. Perhaps their table isn’t ready; their car is still being vacuumed, or your previous appointment is running longer than expected.
Think of novel ways of making this waiting experience as painless as possible. Even better, make it interesting. I don’t mean a pile of five-year-old magazines on a table. Try to come up with a distinctive, value-added feature that will win your customers over—even before they get to the main event.
How about a bowl of apples? Or free Wi-Fi? Or a free drink at the bar while they wait? Having a distinctive protocol to ease the wait will set you apart from your competitors. You might even be remembered for it.
In the motor industry, waiting areas are very important. I don’t think enough motor dealerships and tyre dealers realise the importance of waiting areas. One day a manufacturer is going to design a waiting area that will stun the industry, and whoever that may be will immediately gain a competitive advantage! This will be a real customer service ‘wow’!
Whatever you invest in your waiting room scheme, you will earn it back a hundredfold in repeat business.