2. Take Time To Know Your Customers. The fast pace of modern living together with advances in technology have together put a non-human face on much of our customer service. If you can find a way to re-connect with your customers one-on-one, you’ll strike a chord with your customers that will be like a streak of gold. Kathy Burns remembers a time when people took time to care and listen. “Some of you may remember, and others may have heard stories about, a time in life when the doctor would come to your home to check on you if you were ill. Or maybe you’ve heard about going down to your local pharmacy and having the owner greet you by name and ask how you’re doing. Not only did they ask, but they really wanted to know the answer and they took the time to listen to what you had to say. That’s customer service – taking the time to know your customers, really caring about how they feel, and wanting to go the extra mile to make sure they’re happy.”

3. Be Easy To Do Business With. One of the problems with modern businesses is that the systems we use to save time and money are often devised for the company’s benefit and not the customers. As a result, the customer experience is frustrating and difficult. Tracey Lowrance says this needs to be reversed. “Customers expect single source service. Customers don’t want to be transferred to every unit of your business to have their problems solved. They want to be able to do business with you with the slightest amount of discomfort. You must be easy to do business with.”

4. Go Out Of Your Way To Make Sure They’re Happy. One of the most important things your customers want from you is a guarantee that your product or service will work. So move heaven and earth to make sure it does. Bob Leduc suggests you shouldn’t make people pay until they are fully happy. “Instead of offering a money back guarantee, a service business can provide a guarantee to solve the customer’s problem. For example, a plumber can guarantee to come back without charge as often as necessary to stop the leak. A landscaper can replace without charge any plants that don’t survive for at least 6 months. A sales consultant can continue working without charge until the promised sales results are achieved.”

5. Notice What Customers See. A big part of what customers think about you comes from what they see and believe. Personal Selling Power noticed the following difference in two candy stores. “Although two competing candy stores had the same prices, neighbourhood kids preferred one store to the other. When asked why, they said, “Because the person in the good store always gives us more candy. The girl in the other store takes candy away.” True? Not really. In the good store the owner would always make sure to put a small amount of candy on the scale and then keep adding to it. In the bad store, the owner would pile a heaping amount of candy on the scale, and then take it off until it hit the right weight. The same amount of candy was sold, but perception is everything.”

6. Work On Everything The Customer Experiences. The customer experience isn’t just receiving the service or buying the goods. It’s about all the other little bits and pieces in-between. Such as the manner of the receptionist, the state of the floors and tables, the attitude of other staff, the ease of parking, the tone of the notices, the smile or lack of it on the face of the checkout team. Be like the Mirage hotel in Las Vegas who have a slogan that says: “We spend 600 hours a week pampering the plants. Imagine what we’ll do for our guests.”

7. Believe In Customer Service From The Bottom Of Your Soul To become a great service organization, you have to believe in customer service from the bottom of your soul. It has to be part of the way you work. Anita Roddick, founder of retail cosmetic franchise group Body Shop puts it like this: “I am still looking for the modern equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses, made money because they offered honest products and treated people decently, worked hard, spent honestly, saved honestly, gave honest value for money, put back more than they took out and told no lies. This business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten.”

If you take time to look, there are many examples of great customer service around you. Follow these 7 laws of unbeatable customer service and you’ll join them.

Eric Garner, ManageTrainLearn.com For instant solutions to all your management training needs, visit www.managetrainlearn.com”>ManageTrainLearn and download amazing FREE training software. And while you’re there, make sure you try out our prize quiz, get your surprise bonus gift, and subscribe to our fortnightly newsletter. Go and get the ManageTrainLearn experience now!

The following is Part 2 of the interview:

MagicBecky Messmer: May I take it from an on-line perspective?

Mooie Infinity: Yes indeed.

MagicBecky Messmer: I talk about this in my book, “Secrets of the Second Fortune.” When you begin the process of creating your on-line business you look for a problem to solve right?

Mooie Infinity: Right.

MagicBecky Messmer: So you start researching and getting into your prospects head, thinking how they think, figuring out how they feel. Your next step is to create your product and start communicating with them.

So you expend all this energy and time making a connection with them. Are you not at this point working on *serving* your customers needs?

Mooie Infinity: Yes.

MagicBecky Messmer: At this point you are doing customer service. That’s the very interesting distinction that people don’t seem to get.

Mooie Infinity: Customer Service is a genuine attention to the needs of the customer.

Mooie Infinity: Customer Service is a genuine attention to the needs of the customer.

MagicBecky Messmer: Problem resolution on the other hand- is solving (or resolving) a very specific problem they are having.

MagicBecky Messmer: Yes, Mooie! I love that statement, Genuine attention to the needs of your customer.

Mooie Infinity: Yes you can use that somehow–it has a certain ring to it.

MagicBecky Messmer: Sounds like the title to an article.

Mooie Infinity: I want to address the lack of communication skills.

MagicBecky Messmer: So, back to what I was saying.

Mooie Infinity: People need to altruistically learn how to communicate.

MagicBecky Messmer: After someone plunks down there money, most people on-line want to automate the rest of it. So they are basically automating their customers right out of their business which does one thing. It alienates the customer which ruins all the time and energy the business owner has spent in connecting with them in the first place.

Mooie Infinity: Yes.

MagicBecky Messmer: I agree about the communication.

Mooie Infinity: Communication is key, and largely overlooked.

MagicBecky Messmer: Yes it is but then that goes back to the whole taking responsibility issue.

Have you listened to how we as adults communicate with each other and our children?

Mooie Infinity: Yes, we all can fall prey to negative communication.

Also–people tend to allow their emotional hot buttons to be pushed as opposed to learning the art of detachment in talking to others.

MagicBecky Messmer: Glad you brought that up Mooie. This is one of my favorite parts of service.

Mooie Infinity: As I said in Ho’oponopono and Stellar CS (a bonus to your forthcoming electronic book). Love is all you need.

MagicBecky Messmer: We are emotional creatures. We have 2 sides of our brain, the emotional side and the thinking side.

Mooie Infinity: Yes–creative and rational, spiritual and practical.

MagicBecky Messmer: When you are upset, the emotional side takes over. That is why its so important for someone doing problem resolution (or CS) to learn how to let a customer rant while supporting them in their right to be upset.

Once they get done ranting their brain equalizes itself out and they can then *hear* what I or any CS person has to say.

When a customer is really angry, you could say, I am going to give you a million dollars and they wouldn’t hear you.

Mooie Infinity: Are CS people trained in communication?

MagicBecky Messmer: Whether they are trained in communication, depends on the company.

Where I worked we took CS classes all the time- including one called Communication 101.

Mooie Infinity: You could write an ebook about that very problem: Lack of communication skills and the solution for CS workers.

MagicBecky Messmer: I did want to speak on one more issue if that’s ok.

Mooie Infinity: oh please, do.

MagicBecky Messmer: The idea that customer service is not a revenue producing activity.

Mooie Infinity: Ah, yes.

MagicBecky Messmer: Many believe that because it doesn’t immediately put a check in your bank account that it doesn’t make you money and therefore not such an important part of business.

Mooie Infinity: How wrong “they” are.

Everyone in an organization needs to be CS minded

MagicBecky Messmer: My thoughts on the matter are if you don’t take care of your customer they won’t stick around.

Mooie Infinity: Every one must be a CS person in any organization.

MagicBecky Messmer: Everyone in an organization should be treated like a customer, whether they are internal customer or an external customer.

Mooie Infinity: Now there’s a good point! As an employee, I recently wrote to the Vice President of my hospital about a very serious problem–and got absolutely no response.

A few weeks later I sent the letter back, saying I expected the nursing staff to be empowered and not blown off.

MagicBecky Messmer: Are you not HIS customer?

Mooie Infinity: I am. And that’s why I sent it back, and got an answer then.

MagicBecky Messmer: But see that’s another reason why CS is not done correctly in many cases. Everything trickles down from the top. If the people at the top don’t value service, then who is teaching the employees?

Mooie Infinity: Good point.

MagicBecky Messmer: It all works together. If a marketer on-line doesn’t think customer service is important, how well do you think his or her staff is going to take care of the customer?

Mooie Infinity: I believe whole organizations could learn from this, from several hundred or more to the lone marketer, like us.

MagicBecky Messmer: I agree, because it is such an integral part of business.

Mooie Infinity: Respect, cooperation, compassion, kindness, humanity.

MagicBecky Messmer: Whether it be a huge corporation or a small online business, the one thing everyone seems to forget is the reason we are *in* business is for the customer. Is that not who we create products and services for?

Mooie Infinity: Yes.

MagicBecky Messmer: So let’s not forget them in the equation.

Mooie Infinity: Building relationships and trust, loyalty– Fans!!!

MagicBecky Messmer: Trust me they will remember it and thank you for it by spending with you again and again. As I like to say, A customer will never remember what you do for them but They will ALWAYS remember how you made them feel.

Mooie Infinity: True. That’s what I always remember, as a customer.

MagicBecky Messmer: Me too!

Mooie Infinity: Thank you Becky! This has been enlightening.

MagicBecky Messmer: And of course that goes right back to your idea about love your customers.

Mooie Infinity: Love is all you need. MagicBecky Messmer: My pleasure Mooie. You got me to talk a lot.

Shhh– It’s a secret.

It’s the Secret of the Second Fortune!

Mooie Infinity: Yes it is.

MagicBecky Messmer: Definitely. How to tap into your customer’s heart.

Mooie Infinity: Our conversation today will help people see the mportance of nurturing Customer Service in their businesses.

Thank you for coming!!

Customer service training programmes are often designed to meet you particular requirements. Typical programmes include, call centre development, complaints handling and influencing skills, telephone skills, developing a customer focussed approach, general face-to-face customer service and visitor experience development. This is a fairly comprehensive list but it is also important to remember that customer service training can be bespoke to your specific needs.

Call centre development will improve the level of service you offer to your clients. There is nothing worse than phoning a company for support and being on the end of a call with someone that really does not value your needs as a customer. There has also been a great deal of criticism in the UK about companies that have outsourced their call centres to India. Typical problems include a lack of understanding about the local knowledge of the people they are paid to help.

People have rung up these help lines to ask when the local branch of a bank will be open and have been advised that the closest bank is 100 miles away. This is because that is what had turned up on the computer in India. Being aware of these kind problems and knowing how to deal with them can be addressed with customer service training.

Being able to handle customer complaints is one of the hardest and at the same time most crucial parts of running a business. Ideally your business would only ever cause the client to be happy. Sadly this is not always the case and even the most savvy of businesses experience some form of customer dissatisfaction at some point. The great thing is that ninety percent of the complaints that are received from a dissatisfied client can be amended simply through communication.

Most complaints you receive are due to lack of communication. Fortunately a training course can provide you with techniques to improve the effectiveness of communication in the case of complaints. It can be taught to anyone and will have a really positive effect on your clients and as a result could have a positive effect on employee motivation.

If your business relies on talking to people on the phone – as most do – then improving the level of skill that your staff has on the phone would be vital. Many people will benefit from knowing the role of customer service in telephone interactions. Effective use of the telephone is essentially based on attitude and a course will help educate your staff on the essential techniques such as transferring calls, receiving transferred calls, putting calls on hold, taking messages, making promises and owning completion of them and building rapport with customers.

What Is the Role of Customer Support

The customer support team needs to ensure customers are happy by representing the customer’s interests inside the business at time when no one else is motivated to do so.

The customer support team, along with the sales team, represents the customer’s interests inside the company. The sales team does it to get new customers. The support team does it to keep existing customers.

The major challenge that customer support teams face within most organizations is that it is hard to tie specific support activity to a specific amount of revenue dollars. There is always a temptation to ignore your existing customers, because they probably won’t leave right away. There is always a temptation to ignore any customer that doesn’t have an open order because as a business you need to raise enough money to pay your bills and your employees in order to stay in business.

What Can Support Team Managers Do?

As a Customer Support manager, there are a few things you can do to help your cause.

Recognize that fundamentally the Customer Support team is there to ensure repeat orders. Know the repeat order potential of each customer and factor that into the time, money and priority you give any given customer. Very often a small number of customers take up a large percentage of the customer support time and budget. Make sure you are not neglecting the high potential customers because you are busy serving the needs of needy customers with lower potential. I know we like to help everyone, but let’s face it you make priority decisions every day on which issues to handle first. Many customer support teams have no idea what the repeat order potential of any given customer is. Make sure you know, and make sure that repeat order potential is at least as big a factor in your decisions as how loud the customer is. Tying action to financials will get the attention and support of upper management.

Get to know the Sales team. In most organizations the sales teams are much more influential than the support teams, it’s just a fact of life. The sales teams are also the people inside the company who benefit the most from good customer support. They get the credit and the commission checks for repeat orders. Let the sales team know when their high potential customers are having issues, and when you are not getting the support you need to help them. You can be guaranteed that a commissioned sales rep will not sit idly by and risk losing a repeat customer. Keep the sales team in the loop. When things go well, tell them. It’s a great opportunity for them to go in and make their next pitch. When problems are brewing, tell them that too so they can avoid walking into the lion’s den with a new sales pitch, and instead make a timely service call to show they care and offer assistance. The sales team is motivated, influential, and has the most to lose from poor customer service. You already have the power to help them; use it to help them help you.

Look for ways to actively help your customers use the products or services they buy from you. Don’t just wait for complaints and repair calls to come in. Think of ways that you could help your customer’s use your products. Think about this. If you can help a customer use something he or she has already purchased, they will be much more likely to come back a second time. If you can help a customer use up something he or she has already purchased then they will need to come back and replenish their stock. Remember that customer support is there to help the customer use the product or service. Why do you think craft stores sponsor craft fairs? Because it helps people use up their craft supplies, and it also makes them happy. If you can help them use it up, or consume it, then you can rightly claim that you have helped the customer and increased revenue for the business when their frequency of buying increases. Be creative.

Summary

Fundamentally the role of customer support is to ensure repeat sales. Post-sale customer support teams are a critical cog in the business cycle. They should be respected. They should be in constant communication with the sales team. They should be actively looking for ways to help the customer use the products or services they have purchased.

As a customer service manager one of the best things you can do for your team is to learn to tie their actions to the business financials. That’s how decisions are made at the top.

How many times have you been ready for the now familiar message “please listen carefully for our options have changed” only to find yourself screaming at the phone after one too many option levels? Hey – it works for the business – it keeps their operating overhead down – they don’t have to staff as many people as they used to because the call tree does the job on auto-pilot. No late or sick employee to worry about. No customers complaining about your phone receptionist cutting them off or having a bad attitude.

When you stop to think about all the conveniences we have lost over the years, it’s pretty astounding. Doesn’t it seem like we’re doing more with all the automation that was supposed to make our lives easier? No more secretaries; we have a computer. No more gas jockey; we can do it ourselves and we even get to watch TV while we’re pumping. Nobody to answer your call or tell you when they will; you can leave a message.

I don’t know about you but all this convenience can be very frustrating for me. I can’t ever sit back and let somebody else do the task because I’m expected to use self-serve. I remember the days when service people were expected to be extremely helpful. We have begun to expect poor service and we are no longer surprised when it occurs.

This is the perfect time for small businesses to step up and offer that which cannot be offered by the big companies. Convenience is such a big selling point, how about offering customer service as a convenience for your customers? Many small businesses are run by owners that are too busy running the business to implement good customer service on the Internet. In fact, customer issues may be rare and infrequently occurring, but as the business grows good customer service becomes a necessity. The business owner will eventually find it difficult and overwhelming in the long run.

The post sales process is just as important as the initial sales process when it comes to customer loyalty. A poorly treated customer will not have a reason to do business with you again even when you roll out new products and services. Here’s three ideas for you to implement that will not take excessive time or money but will increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty:

1. Follow-Up Personally with an Irate Customer

Running a business is like having a new adventure every day. You can never be surprised when the unexpected happens, only be ready to deal with it. When things go terribly wrong for your customer, have someone follow-up with a phone call. You may be surprised to learn that Internet shoppers think of online businesses with a bit of celebrity stars in their eyes. It is totally unexpected that an online business would call them to apologize for any inconvenience and make sure the issue was resolved to their satisfaction. I’ve done it – it works like a charm every time.

2. Use Words and Phrases Guaranteed to Calm Any Customer

Customers enjoy the speed of the purchase and the anticipation of the immediate download shopping on the Internet for digital products. Things can go bump in the night at any point in the purchase process, even getting to the download page. Make it easy for your customer to report the issue by having at least one method guaranteed to get results within four hours. And then be sure you always include “we apologize for the inconvenience”, “please reopen this ticket if further assistance is needed”, “thank you for notifying us of this problem”, “please”, “thank you”, “we’re so sorry for the delay”, etc. This type of acknowledgement lets the customer know that you care. Isn’t that really what we want?

3. Give the Customer Value for Their Inconvenience

New people are coming to the Internet every day so you should expect and plan for the “this is my first time” issues. One way you can do that is to provide your customer with more information than is required to resolve the issue. For example, solving the issue and telling your customer how to prevent a similar issue in the future will assist them in using the Internet and they will greatly appreciate the extra time and effort your business took to assist them.

Combine all three of the above ideas and you will provide customer service few have seen on the Internet, let alone in many offline businesses today.

In many cases these customer service representatives log complaints, but have virtually no authority to take any immediate action to help a customer deal with their immediate problems. They can let the customer know they have logged the complaint and a representative will be contacting them.

The truth is some of these customer service centers answer the phone for numerous businesses and aren’t actually acquainted with anyone from the main office nor are they personally acquainted with every product they represent. These individuals simply serve in a call center based on a contract with the originating business for the purpose of accepting customer service questions and complaints.

It is possible for a disgruntled customer to speak with several representatives with no meaningful results. All of the individuals will likely agree a problem exists, but without the authority to actually supply a solution for the problem it simply makes the customer feel as if they are imitating a dog chasing its tale and the customer service rep hates feeling as though their hands are tied or they become slightly jaded and try not to become emotionally attached to any singular problem experienced by callers.

The impression can often be that there is no one willing or able to help customers come to grips with their problem.

A friend of mine battled with a customer service center for two months to get a repair on a purchase. This individual had purchased an extended warranty and the item would not work the day after it was installed in their home.

Promises were made, callbacks were promised and the item sat unused when frustration settled in like clouds in Oregon.

The issue was only resolved when my friend threatened to take the issue to the Better Business Bureau by a certain date if the covered repairs weren’t taken care of.

While the repair was taken care of quickly once this threat was made, it really shouldn’t be this way.

I’m not even saying that call centers are necessarily a bad idea, but there needs to be a solid framework for addressing customer complaints and providing quality customer service.

Some companies are empowering call centers with certain latitude in making decisions on behalf of the company. Obviously this isn’t a free for all, but they are allowed to work to satisfy the customer within certain bounds. Calls that cannot be satisfied are sent to the originating company and a specialized onsite customer service rep assumes control of the issue.

I understand the need for cost cutting measures in business, but the ability to retain customers may rest on the ability to follow-up and follow-through with customers.

If your current plan isn’t working maybe you should take some time to completely evaluate your customer service process and define a better way to retain those valued customers.

Many users claim in their testimonials that all their PCs and printers are of Dell and are so satisfied that they have never needed to try any other manufacturer. A large number of customers claim to be regular Dell customers and are greatly pleased with the fast delivery system and convenient return policy. A user nicknamed as Blessed shares his experience with others whereby he wanted to have his Dell laptop battery exchanged. The Dell customer service replaced the battery within 24 hours, without charging any shipping cost.

The delivery of orders placed online is usually very fast and efficient. Incidents like delivering wrong products or late delivery are very rare and in case of such experiences, the Dell customer service makes up for it by giving concession coupons to the customers. According to most of the reviews, the customer service deals with such problems very well, and finally manages to satisfy the customers.

A particular reviewer called Scott writes in his review that he made multiple purchases with Dell. Whenever he had a query, he was given a very good response by the Dell customer service. His review says that “The 2 times I had customer service questions (never anything wrong with the computers) I felt I got very good, friendly and helpful information and response.” Yet another customer called munnu claims to have bought a Dell printer and writes in one of his testimonials that “Service and after sale Technical support makes this Printer the best in the industry.”

Yet another customer named Constance Siekmann expresses his pleasure over being guided very effectively through the installation process of a computer, by the Dell technical support. The most common compliment that Dell receives is about the free shipping cost. Yet, another compliment is that Dell always keeps on informing the customers about the current stage of the orders are during the delivery process. If the orders are delayed, customers are informed beforehand. Quite often, the items are delivered earlier than they are expected.

Do you offer such great service that your customers offer to refer their circle of influence to you?

Excerpts from E-myth Revisited by Michael Gerber

The Entrepreneur asks how will my business look to the Customer.

The Entrepreneurial Model does not start with a picture of the business to be created, but of the customer for whom the business is to be created for.

To the Entrepreneur, the business is the product and the customer is the opportunity. If we do not know who we are for the customer, what our business means to the customer or who our customer is – then building a financially successful business could be impossible.

The point is how can you give great customer service to your customer, when you do not know who your customer is or what they want.

What is customer service?

Customer service is taking care of the customers needs (for the most part). What is not customer service? Not taking care of the customers needs (for the most part).

The reason why I explain what customer service is with a condition ‘for the most part’ is; there are a small percentage of customers that you do not want and you cannot make them happy or meet their need. ‘For the most part’ protects customer service from including those unwanted customers.

The majority of the customers are worth helping, it is just the few you need to stay aware from.

Do what your competition is not doing

We have a limited amount of time to connect, inform, excite and close the deal. If our business looks like all of the other businesses then it is a crap shoot as to who gets the customer. Do what your competition is not doing and do it a lot. Your competition is not following up with their customers.

That means their customers can become your customers as long as you do not do what they just did. Anyone can loss a customer, but it takes skill to keep the customer and get into their warm market.

The British people have such low expectations from the people that they hand over their money to that there are thousands of businesses that get away with terrible service and still turn a massive profit. It wouldn’t happen in America because the people are more likely to vote with their feet. However it has to be said that the companies that do value the levels of customer service that they offer and make strides to offer a good level of customer service are invariably rewarded with an increased number of customers that are loyal.

Service with a smile does not cost more and the benefits are incredible so if you want to improve the level of service you offer and subsequently increase the number of customers that use your business then get your staff trained in customer service.

It is a common misconception that people believe that people are either good at working with customers or they are not. Although on the face of it some people are naturally better at conversing with customers it is definitely a skill that can be improved with training and everyone is capable if improving their customer service skills. Customer services training takes a practical approach and will improve anyone’s level of customer skills regardless of how quiet they are. All of the skills that you need to converse well with clients can be taught and as a result customer services training can be an extremely beneficial type of training to send your staff on.

Meeting the needs of your clients is the single most important aspect of business and those businesses that manage to do this effectively invariably have more customers, retain their customers and ultimately make more money. Training is at the core of making this a success and training providers are well versed in teaching your staff how to meet the needs of the customer. Most of these training providers will deliver training that is specific to the needs of the organisation. This means that instead of delivering a stale course that deals with customer service in a generic manner they offer training that is directly focussed to the needs of your team. This can be an incredibly effective method of training as it will directly address your needs and the results of this can be impressive.

Another common misconception is that the training will be boring. The reality is that customer service training is a very upbeat and realistic training schedule that aims to cut out the management speak and teach real, tangible skills. The atmosphere at these events is usually really good with trainers making the training as enjoyable as possible. The atmosphere encourages active styles of learning so that your staff are not going to be sat behind a desk all day.

Have you heard about the relatively low confidence readings by the public? You yourself might have asked yourself how to continue to pay for $4/gallon gas at the pump, ever increasing prices for food, and many other daily necessities.

Officially we have an inflation rate of about 1.5 – 2 % but when I look at most of what we consume, it has increased easily by 20% or 30%, and in some cases even 40%, not to speak of the 100% increase when filling up the tank of my car.

Do you feel the same pain? If so, you might ask yourself what you can do. You might also ask yourself what your organization can do, as your place of work is probably the one resource you can’t afford to loose in these challenging times.

With unemployment racing towards 6% nationwide, there is an increasing fear among the workforce about job security. The overall mood of the population is suppressed by the jump in prices, the war that doesn’t seem to end, the negative economic news, the unending stream of reports about foreclosures. It almost looks like everything is on a negative downslide right now.

Individually we can’t change the fundamentals of the economy and the associated political decisions. What we can do is get back to the very basics of doing business. One of these very basic things is customer service.

I strongly believe that the trend we currently see in many organization is going to be regretted when the dust of all the turmoil settles. When companies want to reduce cost, they typically look at those parts of the organization that don’t deliver obvious returns on investment. These include, almost on equal levels, expenses for training, and expenses and salaries for customer service.

One of the additional fallacies is the believe that a reduced number of customers coming into stores or visiting your website means you don’t need as many people providing services. The opposite is actually true.

When you want to maintain reasonable sales figures and thereby secure the jobs in your organization, you need to be better in customer service than most everybody else.

Many people who would have been customers a year ago are prospects right now. That means they might be interested in what you have to offer in products and services, but they have a generally negative state of mind. You know the reasons from reading all the bad things above.

To convert a prospect with a negative frame of mind into a buying customer, you will have to find out what they need, and show them all the benefits of what you have to offer. In these times, customer service becomes a needs satisfaction task, not a pure sale.

If you can satisfy the needs of a prospect by clearly showing how he or she will benefit from spending the little money they currently have with you, you have a much better chance to actually make a sale.

The second and almost more important task for your customer service providers is the transformation of a customer into a client. When the economy is restarting and the general mood will turn more optimistic, those organizations able to convert lots of prospects into customers and ultimately into clients, will be in a prime position to accelerate even more.

Never forget that a customer buys once (maybe because you just happened to have what they were desperately looking for). A client buys over and over again and builds a relationship with you that is often stronger than the lure of a lower price your competitor might offer.

To have a lot of clients, you want to determine what the needs of your prospects are, what the benefits of your solutions are, and then bring the two together in a smooth, caring, supportive way. If you can trigger the urge of a prospect to fill a need by buying what you offer, you will have a seamless sale.

If you keep serving your customer well after the sale, he or she will turn into a long term client and no recession in the world can change that.

Make sure that everybody in your organization understands that customer service is even more important in these challenging times than it is during a boom. You might even want to change the term from customer service to client service.

If that becomes the frame of mind of everyone working with and for you, your chances of flying through this demanding economy are way better than any of your competitors.

Make sure you don’t save at the wrong end of your business and invest in the skills of those among you who deliver the all important client services. That will secure the longevity and prosperity of your organization automatically.