From the Management Advisor Newsletter
By Liz Tahir
Business is all about the customer, and the big money isn't found as much in winning customers as it is in keeping them. Each customer's perception of your company plays a role in determining your success, and you'll leave out the most important component—the individual customer—if you put all your focus on the merchandise and services your corporation offers.
Show customers you're keeping them in mind—and increase loyalty—with these best practices:
1. Keep employees happy.
The quality of customer service can't exceed the quality of the people who provide it. If you think you can get by with paying your customer service employees the lowest wage, giving few benefits and providing the least training, it will show. Keep up employee morale and make sure they feel appreciated. Companies don't help customers—people do.
2. Set an example.
Consistently rude service is a reflection on management as much as it is on the employee. Your staff takes its behavior cues from management. Do you greet your employees enthusiastically each day? Are you polite in your dealings with them? Do you try to accommodate their requests and listen to them when they speak? Your people will treat your customers the way they are treated.
3. Know the customer.
Recognizing someone and calling them by name is a simple way to make customers feel important—and it lets them know you value them as customers. Do you know who your customers are? If a regular customer came in to your business, would you recognize them? Keep rapport with both long-time and new customers and make sure to keep a record of their business dealings so you can recall details when necessary.
4. Be publicly present.
A visible management is an asset to any company. Customers feel more connected to your products and services if they have knowledge of a name and a face. For example, the Piccadilly Cafeteria chain posts the pictures of the manager and assistant manager on a wall and it is a policy that the manager's office is in full view of the customers with the door kept open. Stay within reach of your customers and make sure to respond in a timely manner to their inquiries, comments, and messages.
5. Go the extra mile.
Keep in touch with your customers—and show appreciation—by doing a little extra. Include a signed thank-you note in a customer's package, send a birthday card or write a congratulatory note when a big client gets a promotion. There are all sorts of ways for you to build your relationship with your customers and bring them closer to you.
6. Create a welcoming atmosphere.
Your customers deserve to be acknowledged, so make sure they are greeted when they walk in the door—or at least within 30-40 seconds upon entering. This simple but important gesture is a matter of respect and tells customers that you welcome their visit.
7. The customer is always right.
Always give customers the benefit of the doubt if it doesn't impact the quality of service you offer. Proving to him why he's wrong and you're right isn't worth losing a customer over. You will never win an argument with a customer, and you should never put a customer in that position.
8. Be accommodating.
Each customer is an individual, and, as such, will have different needs. If a customer makes a request for something special, do everything you can to say yes. The fact that a customer cared enough to ask is all you need to know in trying to accommodate her. It may be an exception from your policy, but (if it isn't illegal) try to do it. Even if you can't deliver, she'll have greater loyalty for your company because you took the time to try.
9. Train and test employees periodically.
Make sure your associates are properly trained in handling customer complaints. Give them guidelines for what to say and do in every conceivable case. Also provide opportunities to refresh training and periodically evaluate performance to make sure employees' skills are at their best. The people on the frontline of a situation represent the company and play the most critical role in your customer's experience. Equip them to ensure that that experience is always a positive one.
10. Be open to feedback.
Ask you customers what they think of your company. Compose a "How Are We Doing?" card and leave it at the exit or register stand, or include it in their next statement. Keep it short and simple. Ask what they like, what they don't like, what they would change, what you could do better and about their latest experience. Have it pre-stamped for the customer to mail it in, and acknowledge receipt of the card if the customer includes his contact information.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Keeping Your Sales Force Clean
Don't let unethical dealings by individual sales reps ruin your rep
By Betsy Cummings
When Student Loan Xpress, a San Diego-based education finance lender, adopted aggressive sales tactics several years ago, the firm thought it was a stroke of genius. It would offer clients stock options and consulting opportunities, among other perks, to solidify a working relationship backed by financial rewards. Four years later, that sales strategy is backfiring, as attorneys general in several states are investigating whether the company's tactics were legal—a concern that's caused the company's clients, some of the nation's major universities, to question the ethics of their own loan officers and dismiss some of them in the process.
Unethical sales strategies delivered from the top down are hard for a sales team to ignore. But more often, sellers in the field get themselves into ethical or legal troubles all on their own when a well-intentioned message from the top gets diluted or tweaked in the field by mid-level managers or overly aggressive sellers.
"One thing that helps salespeople a lot is if a company has a very clearly stated policy," says David Hennessey, professor of marketing at Babson College, in Babson Park, Mass.
But even that message can fall on deaf ears, particularly in a marketplace where companies set high ethical standards only to "provide incentive structures that entice a sales force to go beyond the line" of ethics, says David Schmidt, professor of business ethics in the Dolan School of Business at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn.
One way to make sure sellers in the field are towing the line? Conduct surveys, suggests Richard Cellini, vice president at Integrity Interactive, an ethics and compliance training company in Boston. Online surveys can gauge how much a salesperson's ethics are slipping, whether inadvertently or not. Most salespeople who overstep ethical and illegal boundaries to close a deal, Cellini says, often do so accidentally by agreeing to bid rigging, backdating sales or even price fixing without realizing how much their actions are breaking professional and legal rules.
Many salespeople, for example, will roll in from a tradeshow boasting about a conversation they had with a counterpart at a competitive firm, gathering competitor intelligence in the process. But such meetings should be a red flag to sales managers since innocent discussions can lead to bid rigging, where competitors agree to bid on different pieces of business to ensure deals for each company. That is professional behavior that's questionable at best.
By Betsy Cummings
When Student Loan Xpress, a San Diego-based education finance lender, adopted aggressive sales tactics several years ago, the firm thought it was a stroke of genius. It would offer clients stock options and consulting opportunities, among other perks, to solidify a working relationship backed by financial rewards. Four years later, that sales strategy is backfiring, as attorneys general in several states are investigating whether the company's tactics were legal—a concern that's caused the company's clients, some of the nation's major universities, to question the ethics of their own loan officers and dismiss some of them in the process.
Unethical sales strategies delivered from the top down are hard for a sales team to ignore. But more often, sellers in the field get themselves into ethical or legal troubles all on their own when a well-intentioned message from the top gets diluted or tweaked in the field by mid-level managers or overly aggressive sellers.
"One thing that helps salespeople a lot is if a company has a very clearly stated policy," says David Hennessey, professor of marketing at Babson College, in Babson Park, Mass.
But even that message can fall on deaf ears, particularly in a marketplace where companies set high ethical standards only to "provide incentive structures that entice a sales force to go beyond the line" of ethics, says David Schmidt, professor of business ethics in the Dolan School of Business at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn.
One way to make sure sellers in the field are towing the line? Conduct surveys, suggests Richard Cellini, vice president at Integrity Interactive, an ethics and compliance training company in Boston. Online surveys can gauge how much a salesperson's ethics are slipping, whether inadvertently or not. Most salespeople who overstep ethical and illegal boundaries to close a deal, Cellini says, often do so accidentally by agreeing to bid rigging, backdating sales or even price fixing without realizing how much their actions are breaking professional and legal rules.
Many salespeople, for example, will roll in from a tradeshow boasting about a conversation they had with a counterpart at a competitive firm, gathering competitor intelligence in the process. But such meetings should be a red flag to sales managers since innocent discussions can lead to bid rigging, where competitors agree to bid on different pieces of business to ensure deals for each company. That is professional behavior that's questionable at best.
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