Customer service is a matter of personal choice.

The kind of experience your customers have depends on the choices you make.

Companies do not set out to provide their customers with bad experiences,  but the people running these companies often make choices that result in customers having a bad experience. Senior managers, for example,  make a choice to provide no service rather than customer service (and make no mistake, self-service is no service). They have chosen to reduce the money they spend looking after you and to spend it on advertisements convincing you to spend your money with them. These people have chosen to say, in effect, to their customers, “Do it yourself, mate. We are not hiring people to do it for you.”

The issue is not confined to senior managers, of course. The same applies to front-line team members who choose to say, “I don’t know,” rather than “I’ll find out and get back to you.” Or who choose to make life easy for themselves by doing as little as possible rather than helping their customers by going the extra mile. Or who choose to be unfriendly, or even surly, rather than to act pleasantly. Or who choose to make excuses when something goes wrong rather than say, sorry. Or who choose to disrespect their customers by not saying please or thank you.

 

Customer service is a matter of personal choice.

When you touch your customers, at what Jan Carlsson called moments of truth over 30 years ago, whether your customer has a good or bad experience depends on how you behave and how you behave is based on the choices you make. You choose to look after your customer or you choose to look after yourself. You choose to go the extra mile or to do as little as possible. Whether your customer gets a good or bad experience depends on the choices you make.

What choices are you making and how do these affect your customers?

Now, here’s an interesting thought.

 Imagine there was someone in your life who liked you so much that every month they deposited a sum of money into your bank account that was equal to what you and your partner are currently earning. And imagine if this went on month after month. Eventually, you might start to believe this money would always come in and so you would retire from work and spend all of your time socialising with your friends and enjoying your hobbies.

One day, this person rings you up and says they would be in your neighbourhood the following week and would like to visit you. What would your response be? I don’t imagine you would tell them you were busy next week and, in fact, for the rest of the month so would next month be OK? I don’t even think you say next week would be OK as long as it was Wednesday afternoon because you had things planned for the rest of the week. I think you’d say, “You bet! I’d love to see you. What time would suit you?”

What would you do between the time you’d talked to them on the telephone and when they were due to visit? I suspect you’d clean the house, sweep the paths, mow the lawns and wash the car. On the day of the visit, you’d probably put the kids in the bath tub, scrub them red, towel them dry, dress them in their best clothes and line them up and say, “On your best behaviour or on your bikes!”

When it came time for the person to come, would you be at the other end of the house with the TV cranked up so loud it was hard to hear the doorbell? And when you finally did hear it ring, would you shout out, “Your visit is important to us but we’re kind of busy right now. Please wait, you are No 1 in the queue?”

I don’t think so. I think you’d be right behind the door and when you heard their footsteps on the path, you would open the door before they could ring the bell. There would be a big smile on your face and you’d say, “How nice to see you!” And you would mean it. You would invite them into the house, offer to hang up their coat, suggest they sit in the most comfortable chair in the room and offer them something to eat and drink.

You would ask them how they were and you would be really pleased when they said they were fine because you want the money to continue! You would be very interested in what they had to say and you would show that you were listening. You would ask questions and pay attention to the answers. If they said something you did not agree with, you wouldn’t say, “Well that’s not right!” You would just smile and nod. And if they asked you what you thought, you would be very tactful and polite.

Your customers are your benefactors!

In fact, you would do absolutely everything in your power to give this person a great experience because you know this person is your benefactor. And that’s what customers are. They are your benefactors. They pay your wages and 100% of your company's profits come from your customers. In fact, unless you are losing money, every dollar needed to keep your business going and you in a job comes from your customers.

I wonder what effect it would have on your business if you treated your customers as if they were guests in your home?