Better Customer Service = patient listening

Customer’s Friend or Foe?

Mid sized businesses often dream of becoming big and go all out trying to acquire new customers. However it’s almost 6 times more cost effective to grow by selling more to existing customers. And that’s not all, as happy customers get, even they get more customers without any additional marketing costs: through their referrals. Isn’t it smarter to pamper existing customers rather than chase risky new customers? Besides customers expect the SME to be more proactive in addressing their needs as that’s one of the main reason a customer chooses a SME as he finds big businesses to be more focused on other big customers. If SMEs do not pay sufficient attention to improve their customer service levels, they lose on cheaper ways to boost their revenues and may also lose out on existing revenue opportunities. Inefficient customer service is too big a risk to take, if SMEs want to survive and thrive as a successful. One of the most common mistakes which SMEs make is to stop listening to customers, or even if they listen they ‘forget’ to carry out the necessary changes (this is even worse than not listening as it’s a ‘fatal’ betrayal of customer trust!) .

Do you argue or do you listen?

Ok you are a busy SME business owner who has million tasks to attend and almost every task is life threatening: payment to suppliers, tax returns, chasing for refunds, fixing broken equipment etc etc. But what use is all this if you don’t have the time to listen to your customers? You stop listening to customers; you stop growing or even surviving as a business. Remember customer is the king? So can you afford to ignore the undisputed King?? For heaven’s sake no! He who cares and listens to his customers not only earns more from customers but also gets free insights to fix business flaws that may lead to major embarrassments or even major revenue leakages.

So how do you feel when people argue instead of patiently listening to you, especially when you are agitated about an irritant? Agreed you’re an expert and most of the time you know better while the customer doesn’t know what’s he is complaining about. But will your reputation take a hit if you simply shut your mouth; offer a concerned apology (costs you no money)? In fact many studies have indicated that businesses who argue less and patiently listen to their customers (offer solutions only after a patient hearing and an apology) win more with higher customer retention rates. As an SME you need to engage patiently with our customers, just like a true-friend. Will you be friends with people who only want to argue with you? If you can get exasperated with such irritable one-sided arguments, so can your customers.

Are you a lazy listener?

Your customers often enjoy multiple options and love to exercise their freedom of choice. Like your customer can grab an ice-cream from the roadside cart (belonging to the leading ice cream brand) or he can come to your store for your unique ice-cream flavours. Only if you take the effort to listen to the latest discounts offered on competitions’ ice-creams and beat them. If you think listening to customers is sufficient you are sadly mistaken as should continuously listen to competition’s offers. SMEs who fail to master this art of ‘proactive-listening’ miss out on many opportunities of making more sales to existing customers. Then there are times when you fall into a ‘research-lethargy’ trap. Ok you did conduct a comprehensive customer feedback campaign and also gave out exciting gifts to surprise sweepstakes winners. But did you implement the findings of the survey or simply forgot about them as you were too busy to go through the mountain of collected-data? The day you get lulled by growing business demands, you are inviting competition to not only steal your customers but also your business. Wakeup and become a better listener-doer for reaping the many benefits of proactive customer centricity.

Cheers Anshumali Saxena @ www.soilindia.net