Delivering consistently exceptional customer service experience doesn’t just result in smiles at the checkout – it also turbocharges your profit potential as a business owner over the long haul.
Studies consistently show that over 80% of customers are prepared to pay substantially more if they know they’ll receive excellent customer service. The money is out there – it’s just a question of raising your game to attract it rather than competing on price in a race to the bottom you don’t even want to win.
Top-tier delivery isn’t a one-shot deal, however. You need to be consistently meeting the standards you’ve already set to truly unlock the potential of lifetime customer value – and this this isn’t necessarily an easy task. We’ve probably all experienced that sinking feeling of watching a company’s standards inexorably slip over time as they take their eye off the ball after securing the initial sale.
Let’s look at three quick ways of making sure that doesn’t happen to you and that you’re consistently matching the standards your customers rightfully expect.
- Make quality control a defined part of your process
It’s all too easy to cut corners and take your eye off small details when you’re racing to beat a deadline. Remember, whether you’re delivering a product or a service, the job isn’t done until it’s been checked before it goes out the door.
Having quality control as a specific stage of the overall delivery cycle forces you to be disciplined and define and maintain your standards. You may think you’re already doing this naturally, but a documented procedure that has to be followed will nearly always drive improvements.
- Commit to customer service spot-checks
You may not be churning out goods on a production line, but that’s no reason not to take another common sense leaf out of the manufacturing book – random spot-checks.
Applying this concept in the context of customer service lets you make sure existing processes are actually being followed, and functions as a highly effective, low-cost health check for your company’s ability to delight customers.
- Survey customers at every stage of the life cycle
Whether they’re repeat customers or not, the people who pay your wages move through several different stages as they do business with you over time. Make sure you’re not just focusing on obvious interaction points such as the actual purchase – post-sale support, for example, is equally important in keeping customers on your side.
Go the extra mile and explicitly solicit feedback from customers at every stage of their journey via surveys or other means in order to identify and plug gaps in the quality of experience you’re providing.
Delivering top-notch customer service is a genuinely difficult thing to do. Given the amount of effort involved in getting it right, it makes a huge amount of sense to put procedures in place that guarantee consistency over time, rather than trusting to luck.
The three simple steps we’ve outlined take a little time to get up and running, but they’ll drive reliable excellence for you and your customers for years to come. Start using them today!
