To have a business, you need two things: a product or service that meets a need and people or organizations that are willing to pay you for that product or service (i.e. customers).
These two ingredients form the basis for any business, but the more essential of the two is customers.
That’s because creating a viable product or service, as hard as it may be, is actually the easier part of building a business.
Every day millions of new products or services enter the market, but only a few make it past their first year. The majority of them disappear because they couldn’t persuade sufficient numbers of people to buy.
Customers are the lifeblood of any business. Winning new customers and retaining old ones is the heart and soul of running a successful business, says IPM, a property management company in Chico. If a business masters the act of making customers happy, it is almost guaranteed to keep succeeding indefinitely.
But what is the key to making customers happy?
Business owners like to think that a good product or service is the key to customer satisfaction.
This is not entirely true. While having a good product or service certainly helps, the key to making customers happy lies in how you treat those customers.
Customers who feel valued do not need much persuasion to buy from your business again and again.
To keep customers happy, your business needs phenomenal customer service. If you have that, it is possible to do what the title of this article says: double your business’ revenue.
Making money is the reason your business exists. But if you take the direct route in your quest for more money, your business will fail. One of the supreme ironies of life is that you must focus less on money and more on people to make more money. How do you do this?
How to create outstanding customer service that can double business’ revenue
When it comes to customer service, business owners often think they can get away with deploying the latest gimmicks. Another problem you find with businesses’ approach to customer service is the belief that customer service is the responsibility of the sales team or customer service department.
But great customer service must infuse the entire culture of your organization. It must underline every interaction of your employees with the customer. It must be the guiding principle behind every decision that goes into how products are created or services are delivered. Amazing customer service is about actually caring for your customer and not just appearing to care.
What are the steps for building this kind of customer service?
· Understand your customers
Businesses create their products or services based on what they think customers need, but customers buy based on what they actually need. A business that closes the gap between what it thinks customers want and what customers really want will find it easier to satisfy customers.
There are two aspects to what the customers actually need. One aspect deals with the problems they are trying to solve by buying a product or service. The other is about how they want to be treated.
· Prioritize customer feedback
To get a handle on what customers expect from your business, you must create opportunities to talk to your customers. Customers want to talk, but most businesses do not have anyone to listen to them. When the business does provide a platform for the customer to speak, it is not robust enough to let the customer express themselves freely. Furthermore, many businesses do not do anything with the feedback they get from customers; it is simply filed away and forgotten.
· Don’t always try to sell, build relationships
If you only talk to customers or prospects when you want them to buy something, they will soon start to perceive you as a parasite. Your customers don’t want to spend their money; they want to solve their problems.
If the process of solving the problem means spending some money, then they will spend that money. But you must be by their side as a business trying to help them solve the problem versus one trying to get them to spend money.
· Develop your customer service skills
To do the above, your customer service team and the entire organization must be up-to-date with the right customer service skills. These skills include empathy and patience when talking to customers, excellent communication, time management, and flexibility.
It also means responding with speed to customer inquiries and complaints. A quick way to introduce quality customer service into your organization is to outsource this function to a business that is equipped to handle it.
· Get the right tools
It is impossible to deliver amazing customer service today if you don’t have access to the right tools and systems. That is because, in addition to meeting the elevated expectations of modern customers, you are competing on a global scale.
Even if you are a small business, your customers expect the kind of service they would get from a multinational. The only way to do this – that is, look big even when you are small – is to get the right tools and learn how to use them effectively.