An Instant Guide to Customer Care

1. Customer Care is as important as the product or service itself. You are wasting your time getting the product or service right if you blow it at the last minute by rude staff, keeping someone waiting, not phoning the customer back, or whatever.
2. Organisations are judged in the first 30 seconds of contact with the first person who the customer sees. This may not be a highly paid or “important” person. But of course they ARE important, because of this.
3. The essence of Customer Care is making every customer feel important. Don’t prejudge your customers by appearance. If they were the Queen, would you treat them like that? If not, there’s a problem.
4. The first part of Customer Care is getting the basics right. These are the expected things – getting their name right, being on time, giving them what they have ordered, having clean and tidy premises, smart staff, etc. If you get these right the customers won’t even notice, but if you get them wrong they will! You need systems and procedures for these, so they never fail.
5. The second part of Customer Care is the “delight”. You need to think creatively about what you can do to delight your customers. These are the things they don’t expect. These are the things they will tell their friends about.
6. After a while the “delight” things may become expected. Tough! You’ll just have to keep on thinking of new delights for your customers!
7. Sometimes it’s a Delight to bend the rules for a customer. This needs careful management, but is unavoidable. A Jobsworth can lose you a lot of customers.
8. Different people want to be treated in different ways. For some it’s about being served quickly, for others it’s about details, and for others it’s about friendliness. Staff need to be trained to recognize these types of variation and adapt as necessary.
9. Customer Care is a management job. It is the job of management to recruit friendly people, set up systems, make sure the systems are followed, lead by example, and to get morale to a level where cheerful staff are motivated to care about customers.
10. Only 4% of unhappy customers complain. This means that if you get 4 complaints you actually have 100 unhappy customers. And they have each told eleven others – so that’s over 1000 people who have heard negative things about you. So those 4 complaints must be taken seriously. They may be difficult people but they bring an important message.
11. Customer Care is not just about new customers – it needs to be ongoing for existing customers too. The biggest cause of lost customers is “Perceived Indifference”. Replacing a lost customer, i.e. getting a new one, is very expensive and difficult compared to keeping an existing one happy. Systems need to be set up to look after existing customers. And all staff need to be “Warm Fuzzy” types rather than “Cold Prickly”.
12. Complaints can be turned into a net gain if they are handled well.
13. Customers need to be surveyed in order to find out what they think of you. This means existing customers, and if possible non-customers and ex-customers too. You need to know what they think is important, and how good you are at the important things.
14. Be your own mystery shopper occasionally. Try phoning in to your organisation. What are the first impressions like? Try queuing at reception. What does it feel like? How efficient are the systems?

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