For Openers

Five greetings that boost sales to walk-in visitors

Quick, what’s the typical greeting used most often by 60% of retail stores? You’re right if you
guessed, “Can I help you?” The visitor’s usual response, “No thanks, just looking.” The
problem is the walk-in customer is never “just looking.” They came into the premises because
at some level they perceived a need. This greeting only reminds visitors that they’re not here to
buy. Lousy selling strategy.
The way you and your front line employees greet walk-in customers has a huge impact on your
bottom line. Here are some tips to ensure that you and your employees greet customers in a way
that makes them want to buy and keep coming back.
1. Show that you recognize them.
If you deal with customers, the two most important words are not, please or thank you, but are
your customer’s first and last names. Take the restaurant I patronized in Greece, for
example. As I walk in with my friends, he shouts, “Jeff, you’re back! Welcome!” He smiles at
the rest of my party and says, “I see you’ve brought your friends, excellent! We’ll clear one of
our best tables for you!” At this point I don’t care what the food tastes like — this guy gets my
business.
If you don’t remember the customer’s name, you need to at least let them know that you
recognize them and are happy to see them. So an effective greeting would be, “Well, Hello! It’s
nice to see you again.” Customers return to secure, friendly environments. Show that you
recognize them, and they’ll want to come back.
2. Ask if they’ve been in before.
One of the best money making greetings is, “Hi, have you been here before?” Michael Gerber,
author of the best seller, The E-myth, says that his clients who have switch from, “Can I help
you?” to this greeting have seen sales increase by 16%. While Gerber claims to have no idea
why this works so well, I think it’s because this greeting reminds the customer that they’ve been
at your business before, so it’s a familiar place. Familiar means safe. Safe means trust. And
trust means buy.
“If saying, ‘Hi, have you been here before?’ can increase sales by 16%, then it’s certainly worth
a test.”
With this greeting the employee can also add, “Welcome back, we appreciate your coming to see
us again.” That provides that all-important recognition. They can ask the customer about what
they bought on their last visit and how they like it. That provides the opportunity to provide
positive reinforcement and/or clear up any concerns.
If this is the visitor’s first visit, then the employee has a great excuse to show them around,
identify needs and point out specials. At any rate, if saying, “Hi, have you been here
before?” can increase sales by 16%, then it’s certainly worth a test.
3. Ask about the weather.
I realize the weather is an often-used topic, but it’s disarming, and gets the customer talking
about something where they can be the expert. The critical step that’s often missed is you need
to respond to the customer’s comments. That shows that you’re listening — not just
techniquing them. Once you’ve addressed their comments, you can then transition from the
weather to identifying their needs. Example: “Well, at least you’re in from out of the wind
now. What brings you in aside from the cold weather?”
4. Compliment appropriately.
Be careful with this one. If you do it wrong, you be construed as being a phony and will lose the
most important thing you need to sell — trust. So don’t offer a general complement such as,
“Don’t you look good today.” Instead make sure your complement is relevant and specific. If
you work in a clothing store you might say, “That scarf is terrific; its autumn colors are perfect
with your coloring.”
5. Use a conversation piece.
Interesting artwork, a talking parrot, or anything you place near your entrance that draws
comment is great. It gets the customer talking, questioning and interested.
Timing is everything.
More important that what you say, is the fact that the visitor is acknowledged — not necessarily
served — the moment they enter. One study revealed that 68% of customers who leave do so
because they feel like no one cares that they’re there. Picture entering an establishment waiting
to be served. Then use your watch to count off 30 seconds. You realize that even half a minute
is too long to wait.
One of my seminar participants, a bakery owner, ensured a fast greeting if the employees were
working in the back room by installing a doorbell that rings as the visitor enters. They call out,
“Hi there, I’ll be right out!” and they keep the business. Simple and smart.
The Six Worst Greetings

1. A stare — like employees are watching to see if you’re going to steal something.
2. The daze — they pretend they’re so busy they can’t see you.
3. (As you enter a restaurant) “Just one?”
4. “Can I help you”
5. “Next!”
6. A canned phony sounding speech

How to Greet Customers

Many business owners believe welcoming a customer or guest to a business
establishment increases loyalty, improves first impressions, and leads to
repeat business and positive word of mouth. Companies that have invested
heavily in training employees to properly greet customers-such as AT&T and
Apple-have determined by studying their own customer service results that
greeting customers makes a difference in their bottom lines.
For example, AT&T retail locations have a customer service policy that
requires salespeople to greet customers within ten feet and ten seconds of
entering the store. According to a recent “Forbes” interview of Paul Roth,
AT&T’s president of retail sales and service, the company has found that how
quickly a customer is greeted directly correlates to the customer’s overall
satisfaction and willingness to recommend the brand.

If the results of greeting customers are so positive, why isn’t it the policy of
every business engaged in retail activities? Unfortunately, many businesses
do not have the resources to train employees and build a customer service
philosophy. Some business owners and managers simply do not have a feel
for customer service and don’t think it’s important. Those smaller businesses
that understand the cause and effect of personal interactions with customers
on sales can achieve many of the same results as a behemoth like AT&T by
consistently requiring managers and sales staff to do these nine things:

1. Stop what you’re doing when a customer enters the premises. If you’re on
the phone, put the person on hold for a moment. Show your customer that you
believe his patronage is the most important thing to you at that time.

2. Make eye contact with customers when they enter the establishment. Most
customers hate being ignored, even if their conditioned response is to tell you
that your help is not needed.

3. Smile at customers. It makes you seem more approachable.

4. Welcome the customer to the establishment in a meaningful way. Don’t just

repeat a rote phrase, sound bored, or put-upon.

5. Extend your hand in greeting if the establishment is the type to allow you to
personally interact with customers.

6. Give the customer your name.

7. Ask if the customer needs help finding anything, but don’t be pushy. Show
that you care, but let the customer browse. Tell the customer where you’ll be if
needed.

8. Politely excuse yourself for a minute if another customer enters the

establishment while you’re with someone else. Greet the new customer
properly, and let the customer know you will be available to help shortly.
9. Make sure you are dressed professionally when you greet customers. As
the greeter, you want the customer to recognize you as an official
representative of the company.

A quick greeting with genuine warmth shows customers that you care and
changes the shopping experience for the better. The key is developing a
genuine approach rather than a robotic system that has salespeople following
a script. Customers want to feel appreciated, even if they don’t need help
immediately. Whether you are a current employee of a company or are
looking for a job, demonstrating that you understand the importance of
greeting customers as the basis of a solid customer service philosophy will
give you a leg up on your contemporaries

8 Basic Tenets to Remember When

Greeting Customers
By Meredith Wood | In: Customer Service

“Can I help you?” How often have you walked into a business to be pounced upon with
this generic (and not particularly helpful) opener?

Then at the other end of the spectrum, you’re doing laps around an establishment,
trying in vain to track down someone to answer a question.

Either of these scenarios are frustrating and off-putting—exactly the impression

you don’t want to give your customers.

A kind greeting isn’t just polite, it can also be a competitive advantage for your business.
After all, everyone likes to do business with a friendly face. Experts even suggest
that friendliness may be the key differentiator in how your company is perceived by
customers.

A greeting is about engaging customers in a genuine way, not giving a stock opening
line, or worse, missing that vital first impression altogether. Here are eight basics tenets
to remember when greeting your customers:

1. Be Prompt
Ideally, you’ll greet your customers within 30 seconds of them entering your business. If
you are in the middle of a task (that doesn’t involve another customer), stop what you
are doing to greet your new customer. If you are with another customer, ask if he or she
minds if you step away for a moment to greet the new arrival, then acknowledge the
newcomer and let them know you’ll be with them in just a moment.

2. Offer a Warm Greeting

Make eye contact with each customer and smile. There’s no worse greeting than a
blank-eyed stare. Replace the well-worn, formal “Can I help you?” with something more
welcoming. “What brings you in today?” or “Have you been in before?” are
improvements. When appropriate, introduce yourself as well.

Another rule of thumb: acknowledge a customer every time they come within 10 feet of
you as they move about the store. Even just a smile or nod lets customers know you are
aware of them and attuned to their needs

3. Read the Room

Follow social cues from each individual customer about the level of interaction they
need from you. In some cases, a warm welcome is enough; in others, a customer will
have specific questions. Don’t hover if your attention is not needed.

A greeting should feel like a normal conversation between you and your customer. As
such, follow normal guidelines about personal space, volume, and the like. Don’t greet
customers from behind or from another angle where they can’t see you—it can be an
unpleasant surprise. Don’t yell across the store, but don’t stand uncomfortably close
either.

4. Show Recognition
If you recognize a customer from a previous visit, say so. “It’s nice to see you again!” or
“We’re happy to have you back!” are good options for a customer whose name you
don’t know.

For your regular customers, make an effort to remember their names and
preferences. This makes customers feel you value their business and prioritize their
needs. Ask about previous purchases or services and how these items are working for
the customer.

5. Offer a Sincere Compliment

A sincere compliment can further engage your customer, especially if it is specific and
relevant to your business. If you own a salon, compliment your customer’s hairstyle as
he or she walks through the door. Own a fashion retail shop? Comment on an
accessory that the customer already owns. This will build your customer’s trust in your
expertise as well as boost their ego a bit.

6. Escort the Customer to Products

Rather than pointing a customer in the general direction of a product they’ve inquired
about, take the few minutes to walk them to it and answer any questions they may have.
This shows attentiveness—and allows you an opportunity to recommend specific
products or suggest add-on purchases.

7. Ask Questions to Personalize Recommendations

Ask appropriate questions to clarify what your customer is looking for. The more you
know about what they need, the more you can tailor your recommendations to those
needs. That in turn means they are more likely to buy, and to be satisfied with both their
purchase and the service. It also highlights your expertise in the field and knowledge of
your products.

8. Have a Good Exit Line

A great goodbye is almost as important as a great greeting. Let your customers know
you are there to answer any more questions they may have if it’s clear they will be
continuing their shopping. As a customer is checking out and leaving the premises,
sincerely thank them for their business. The most lasting impression comes when you
are able to include the name of your company in your goodbye.

Remember that interactions with customers should feel natural—just like any other conversation
you might have with another person. Being personable and attentive goes a long way toward
making a customer feel welcomed and valued at your establishment.
How to Greet Customers Arriving in a
Store
Co-authored by wikiHow Staff
Updated: March 29, 2019 | References
Research show that customer satisfaction plummets when customers are not greeted promptly
and friendly.[1] The proper greeting, on the other hand, will make customers feel welcome and
valued. Knowing how to act when greeting customers and what to say can increase both sales
and customer loyalty.
Part One of Two:
Acting Friendly and Professional
1.

1
Smile when you greet your customers. You want your customers to feel welcome, and that
starts with your body language. Stand tall, smile, and approach them briskly. Everything about
your manner should say “I’m glad you’re here!”[2]

2.

2
Dress professionally. How you look is a key part of your greeting. You need to look like you
care about your job. A conservative, professional outfit will convey that message. Unless you
work in a store with a specific dress code that states otherwise, avoid provocative clothing that
might offend customers or make them feel uncomfortable.[3]

3.

3
Acknowledge the customer quickly. 80% of customers say they want to be noticed and nearly
all welcome a friendly greeting.[4] You don’t have to greet each customer right away, but you do
need to acknowledge him or her with eye contact and a smile.[5]

 If stocking shelves or working in the back, stop to greet a new arrival. At the very least, tell
her you will be with her shortly. Studies show that customers are much happier waiting if
they have been greeted first.[6]
 If serving another customer, ask him if he minds if you quickly greet the new arrival before
you do so.[7]
 Use a bell on the door to let you know when new customers have arrived, so that you can be
sure to greet them promptly.
 Try to greet incoming customers within 30 seconds.
 Try to greet incoming customers within 30 seconds.
4.

4
Remember customers' preferences. It pays to remember frequent customers’ likes and dislikes.
Knowing what someone orders at a coffee shop or restaurant makes them feel like a regular. If
you work at clothing store, remembering that a customer loves pink or is fond of a certain brand
will make her feel like you care. Personal attention like this is a great way to create customer
loyalty.[8]

5.

5
Show customers to products. Don’t just tell them where to look for what they want. They will
appreciate it if you walk them to the product and show them precisely where it is.[9]

6.
6
Ask questions. The more specific details you can get on what a customer is looking for, the
better you can satisfy his needs. If at a nutrition store and looking for protein powder, you might
ask if he is trying to lose weight, built muscle, or tone. Does he want something for after
workouts or to stave off hunger? If a customer is looking for shorts at a clothing store, you might
ask about how formal or the type of fabric. Questions show you care.[10]

7.

7
Give space after the greeting if necessary. Don’t try to read your customers before greeting
them. You never want to assume someone wants to be left alone. Always greet an arriving
customer warmly, but if she responds coldly or not at all, tell her you will be nearby if they need
help and give them space.

8.

8
Get the exit right. The effect of a great greeting can easily be lost with a bad goodbye. Don’t
just thank them for coming in. Walk customers to the door and open it for them. Ask anyone who
looks like they could use a hand – older customers, pregnant women, parents wrangling their
children – if he or she would like help carrying their packages to the car.[11]

Part Two of Two:

Knowing What to Say
1.
1
Don’t say “Can I help you?” This is a standard greeting that simply does not work. Usually, the
answer is “no, just looking.” You’ll usually get a similar response – “just looking” – If you ask
customers if you can help them find something. And don’t start off with a canned speech, either.
The key is to promote a natural conversation that makes the customer feel welcome and
relaxed.[12]

2.

2
Tell customers your name more than once. You want customers to know your name if they
need something. Giving them your name also transforms you from a faceless employee to a
person they can feel comfortable with.[13] Try to use your name more than once to be sure they
remember it.

3.

3
Show you recognize your customers. If it is a frequent customer, you should greet him by
name. “Jack! Welcome back!” Hearing one’s own name stimulates specific regions of the brain
that makes people listen more closely to whatever comes next.[14] If you don’t remember his
name, at least let him know you remember them: “Hi! Nice to see you again!” People enjoy
recognition. It will make them want to return.[15]

4.

4
Ask if the customer has been there before. If you don’t recognize the customer, ask her if she
has visited the store before. This greeting has been shown to increase sales by up to 16%.[16]

 If she has been there, ask what she bought and if she liked it. This gives the opportunity for
positive reinforcement or to address concerns.
 If she has not been there before, offer to show her around the store.
5.

5
Discuss the weather. Weather is the old stand-by of small talk for a reason. It’s inoffensive and
something that everyone can talk about. Be sure to listen to your customer’s responses and reply
appropriately. The key is to foster a natural conversation in order to put customers at ease,
making them more likely to buy.[17]

Non-verbal communication skills for

selling
When selling to customers, your non-verbal communication skills - such as active
listening and interpreting non-verbal cues - are just as important as what you say.
Developing these skills will help you understand what your customers want, so you can
offer them the most suitable products and services.

Listening skills

Listening to your customer to discover their needs helps you suggest appropriate
products or services to meet those needs.

Active listening is the process of confirming what you think your customer has said, and
meant, by observing their verbal and non-verbal cues. To be a good active listener you
should:

 focus your full attention on your customer

 briefly summarise your understanding of what your customer has said
 take notes if necessary
  use appropriate non-verbal cues such as nodding your head, inclining your body forward
and maintaining eye contact
 note your customer's non-verbal cues - are they eager, reluctant, impatient?
 use appropriate, well-timed probing questions and summary confirmation questions.

Understanding non-verbal cues

Interpreting your customer's non-verbal signals and behaviours allows you to read their
attitude and better understand their needs. Projecting the right non-verbal cues yourself
can help your customer feel at ease. Here are some positive and negative examples of
non-verbal cues:

Facial expressions
 bad - wrinkling the nose, furrowing the brow or rolling the eyes
 good - smiling, raised eyebrows, relaxed mouth

Eye contact
 bad - avoiding your customer or looking outside your sales space
 good - looking back to your customer's face and at your products

Smile
 bad - closed, firm or expressionless mouth
 good - smiling or relaxed mouth

Hands
 bad - hands folded to the chest or near the face
 good - hands moving freely, relaxed, touching the product

Gestures
 bad - closed arms, dismissive hand gestures
 good - open arms, nodding the head

Posture
 bad - slouching, shoulders turned away
 good - standing upright, inclining the body forward

Position
 bad - moving too close, facing away
  good - observing personal space accommodating cultural differences.

Also consider...
 Find out more about non-verbal communication.

Verbal communication skills for selling

Your communication skills determine your chances of a sale - from your opening pitch
to your closing statements. Developing your questioning, vocal and conversational skills
will help you build on a strong first impression by gaining trust and establishing
credibility.

Questioning skills

Asking appropriate, purposeful questions can help you identify whether your customer is
likely to buy your products, and move them through the selling process.

There are several types of questions that can help you in the sales process.

Closed questions

Closed questions require a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer. For example: 'Are you looking for
a television today?'

Closed questions are used to:

 find out facts

 limit or guide discussion
 gather basic information from the customer that you can use to generate an open
question.

Open questions

Open questions require a customer to explain or elaborate. For example: 'What type of
product are you looking for?'

Open questions are used to:

 gather specific information so you can determine your customer's wants and needs
 build relationships with customers so that they are comfortable dealing with you.

Probing questions
Probing questions are about a specific topic to uncover more information. For example:
'What type of television do you think would fit best on your wall?'

Probing questions are used to:

 obtain more specific information in order to fully understand your customer's needs
 uncover and clarify your customer's perceptions and opinions.

Confirming questions

Confirming questions are designed to check that your customer understands what
you've said. For example: 'Which of these features would benefit you most?'

Confirming questions are used to check that you've successfully communicated

information to your customer.

Summary confirmation questions

Summary confirmation questions are designed to check that you understand what your
customer has told you. For example: 'Are you saying you'd prefer to order the next
model in our range?'

Summary confirmation questions are used to:

 check that you understand your customer's needs

 check that the benefits you've outlined meet their needs.

Conversational skills

Good salespeople look for a way to make a connection with their customer, and build a
conversation based on trust and understanding. Conversation skills include:

 asking non-confronting questions to show you genuinely care about your customer's
needs
 talking knowledgeably about your product or service
 displaying interest and warmth
 avoiding bias or stereotyping
 adjusting to your customer's verbal style
 telling the truth
 offering observations that show you understand
 accepting and acknowledging your customer's opinions
 refraining from interrupting or correcting unnecessarily
  watching for and responding to signs of discomfort or boredom
 being diplomatic
 making small talk - when it's called for and to an appropriate degree.

Vocal skills

Good communicators know that what they say is often less important than the way they
say it. Use your voice to make an impact by:

 adjusting your pitch to suit the conversation

 adjusting your volume to ensure clarity, and suit your customer's comfort and hearing
needs
 speaking in a steady tone of voice to show calm and confidence
 slowing the speed of your speech so it is calm and clear
 varying the inflection in your voice to suit your message - to show enthusiasm, common
sense, interest, and gravity
 enunciating your words clearly
 varying the quality and intensity of your voice to hold interest
 conveying meaning using the sound of your voice to reinforce your messages.

Creating good first impressions

Making a strong first impression will help you develop customer relationships and make
sales. From the moment you approach a customer, your behaviour, attitude and
personal presentation will influence your customer's decision to buy.

Meeting and greeting

Your customer will make early decisions about you - and how much time they'll give you
- based on your appearance, your body language and mannerisms, your tone of voice
and facial expressions, your words, and your demeanour. Here are some useful first-
impression tips:

 Make eye contact.

 Give a nice, warm smile.
 Open with a sincere, friendly greeting.
 Pay attention to the customer - not to the product, your stock or a colleague.
 Greet the customer and ask a useful opening question. For example, 'Good afternoon.
Can I help you find our sale items?'
 Never ignore the customer.
  Show the customer that they have your willing, undivided attention.

Personal presentation

Your appearance shows your customer that you respect them, your business and your
products and services. Here are some useful personal presentation tips:

 Be sure your posture is straight, confident and relaxed.

 Don't distract your customer with personal fidgeting and adjustments or by handling
stock while you're talking to them.
 Dress to impress - take care over your choice of dress, and tailor your wardrobe, and
make-up, to appeal to your customer base.
 Make sure your hair and nails are well-groomed.

Positive attitude

There are many things affecting your business that you can't control. Your personal
attitude is something you can control.

Your attitude affects the way you approach people and events in business. Choosing to
approach potential customers positively, confidently, enthusiastically and with a helpful
attitude - even when you're tired, stressed or frustrated - will improve your sales
performance and grow your sales.

Remember that every business exists to meet customers’ needs. If you believe your job
is to understand and solve the customer’s problems, then you will exude a natural,
helpful confidence.

Sales skills
No matter how good your products or services are, their success depends on your ability to sell
them.

Your business will grow or fail based on the success of your products and services, and how well
you persuade your customers to buy them.

Anyone can learn sales skills. Regardless of what you are selling, you and your sales team can
achieve great product sales by mastering a set of proven selling skills that focus on:

 confidence
 relationship-building
 listening
 persuasion
  product knowledge.

This guide explains how these core skills can help you perfect the sales process, including
building trust, identifying your customers' needs, selecting and presenting products for your
customers, handling questions and objections, and closing sales.

Building customer relationships when

selling
Good businesses thrive on their sales team's ability to interpret customer needs and
behaviour and build strong relationships.

Customer service

Customer service skills can help you keep existing customers and gain new ones.

Learn more about improving customer service.

Building rapport

Getting your customers to like and trust you is essential to making sales. Building a
rapport - making a connection with your customer - is one of the most effective ways to
build trust.

Building a rapport means making an effort to put yourself in someone else's shoes.
When you put yourself in your customer's shoes, you can then interpret and think about
what your customer expects from you and tailor your approach to moving through the
selling steps in a way that meets those expectations.

Effective negotiation skills

Negotiating skills are a powerful tool for salespeople, involving analysis, problem-
solving, personal influence and persuasion. You can also navigate the sales process
effectively with the help of good negotiation skills such as:

 proposing appropriate offers

 checking you understand your customer's comments
 paraphrasing your customer's objections
 considering and acknowledging your customer's views
  suggesting alternatives
 looking for closing signals
 making closing statements
 getting agreements quickly
 following up on promises.

Knowing your products and services

Product knowledge is an essential sales skill. Understanding your products' features
allows you to present their benefits accurately and persuasively. Customers respond to
enthusiastic sales staff who are passionate about their products and eager to share the
benefits with them.

Get to know your products or services

Customers are more likely to trust sales people who show confidence in themselves
and what they are selling. You can build this confidence by increasing your knowledge
of your products or services.

Use conventional and creative sources of information to learn about your products or
services, including:

 your own experiences using the products

 product literature such as brochures and catalogues
 online forums
 feedback from customers
 trade and industry publications
 internal sales records
 your team members
 visits to manufacturers
 sales training programs
 competitor information.

Be honest about shortcomings

If your product or service has some shortcomings in certain situations, be honest about
them with your customers. Let them know early on if you don’t think your product or
service is right for them and they will be more inclined to trust you when they need
something in the future.
Turn product features into benefits

As you engage customers, you can use your knowledge to lead your customer through
the sales process, and make their experience an enjoyable one that they'll want to
revisit.

Successful salespeople know all of their products' features and skilfully turn these
features into benefits for their customers.

To practice this skill, list your product's features, potential benefits, and all information
up front for your customers. Consider how you can communicate the potential benefits,
for example:

Product features Possible benefits for your customer

Its purpose It will meet your needs and save you time and
money

How it works It is easy to use so you won't be frustrated by

complicated features

How it is developed or manufactured It supports local industry and helps the

environment

How it is checked for quality You can be confident it will work

How it is delivered You don't have to worry about delivery; we

organise that for you
 Product features Possible benefits for your customer

How it is maintained and serviced You can be assured that if it needs maintenance,
we will take care of it for you

How long it is likely to last (including any You can be confident that if it has any problems
warranties) we will fix it or replace it while under warranty

Its price You can comfortably afford it

How it compares to similar products the You can base your decision on the good reputation
business offers our business has earned for selling other well-
regarded products

How it compares to competitors' You are receiving quality and value for money
products

Its strengths and limitations (the You are buying a product that is well-matched to
capability of the product to deliver your particular needs
benefits to clients)

Other products that might complement Buying this companion product will allow you to
it meet the needs of your entire household

Identifying customer needs

Before you start promoting your business you need to know what your customers want
and why. Good customer research helps you work out how to convince your customers
that they need your products and services.

Identify your customers

The first step of customer research is identifying your customers. Your market
research should help you understand your potential customers. Further customer
research can help you develop a more detailed picture of them and understand how to
target them. It will also highlight key characteristics your customers share, such as:

 gender
 age
 occupation
 disposable income
 residential location
 recreational activities.

Understand why they shop

Once you've identified who your customers are, you can find out what motivates them to
buy products and services. For example, consider if they make decisions based on:

 work demands
 family needs
 budget pressures
 social or emotional needs
 brand preferences.

Identify preferred shopping methods

As well as understanding why they shop, you will also want to understand how they
shop. To learn about your customers' preferred method and means of shopping,
consider if they:

 shop online, over the phone or in stores

 make spontaneous or carefully considered buying decisions.

Consider their spending habits

Different types of customers will be willing to spend different amounts. Find out what
financial capacity and spending habits your customers have. For example, consider:
  their average income
 the portion of their income they spend on the type of products or services you sell
 if they budget.

Find out what they think of you

Learn about your customers' views and expectations of your business and rivals. For
example, find out what they think of your:

 products and services

 customer service
 competitors.

Identifying customer needs - case study video

Identifying customer needs involves researching your industry and asking your
customers lots of specific questions. Lauren Wheeley, the owner of The Perfect Little
Wedding Company, explains the importance of gathering in-depth details from your
customers through regular communication, and being sure you can deliver on their
individual needs.

Researching customers
Successful businesses make profits by understanding their customers and identifying their needs.
Good customer research helps you choose products, tailor your marketing, and develop sales
tactics for the people in your market based on reliable, accurate information.

Customer research should be part of your overall market research and should be conducted
regularly. While your market research looks broadly at your customers, competition and industry
to identify who you will market to, customer research provides more in-depth information on the
needs, wants, expectations and behaviours of your customers.

By identifying information about your consumers such as where they work, what they read and
where they look at advertising, you can improve the strategies you use to attract them. It is also
important to understand their purchasing behaviour and attitudes with regards to brands and
products.Testing new product or marketing concepts with potential customers is also a good way
to prepare for a launch to see if your work has potential to translate to success.

Identifying your customers' needs and preferences allows you to tailor the strategies and tactics
you use in your marketing plan. This will help you to:

 attract more customers

 set the best price for your products
  create the right marketing message
 increase how much your customers spend
 increase how often your customers spend
 increase your sales
 decrease your costs
 refine your approach to customer service.

This guide explains how you can grow your business by identifying customer needs and
preferences.

Identifying Customer Needs

Identifying customer needs is mission-critical for businesses looking to create
a product that truly speaks to their customers’ problems. Not to mention, the
easiest way to position your brand smartly in the market is to unite your
internal teams behind the specific needs of your customers.
What are customer needs?

Customer needs are the named and unnamed needs your customer has when
they come in contact with your business, your competitors, or when they
search for the solutions you provide.
To identify the needs of your customers, solicit feedback from your customers
at every step of your process. You can identify customer needs in a number of
ways, for example, by conducting focus groups, listening to your customers or
social media, or doing keyword research.
However, identifying the needs of your customers is easier said than done. In
our experience, there are a couple easy ways to gain insight into what your
customers need from you.
Methods to Identify Customer Needs:

1. Focus Groups
2. Social Listening
3. Keyword Research

For more resources to help you identify and understand the needs of
your customers, check out our guide: Understanding Your Customer's
Needs and Wants in 3 Easy Steps.
Anticipating Customer Needs
The importance of anticipating customer needs can't be overstated. When you
anticipate what your customers need from you, you can create content or
expand your product features or services to meet those needs early.
Customers don’t part ways with brands that meet their every need. By
anticipating customer needs, you can ensure that your product lines up with
their expectations before they even have to ask for a new feature, service, or
solution from you.
One of the earliest ways to determine your customer’s needs is to
conduct keyword research. Think about how you function as a consumer.
When you have a question about a product you’re using, is your first step to
call the company and ask? Or is your first step to open Google and search for
the answer to your question? Most consumers would choose the latter.
That means the secret needs of your customers actually reside in how they
search for your product, your company, or your services online. For this
reason, keyword research will give you the earliest insight into the needs of
your customers.
Meeting Customer Needs
Meeting customer needs is crucial for any business looking to retain and
attract new customers. Because, as important as the discovery phase is,
knowledge about what your customer needs from you is only as good as the
way you use it. So, how do you meet customer needs?
This is where the going gets tough. Because, once you have knowledge and
data around what your customer needs from you, the next step is integrating
that knowledge into already existing processes. Often this can mean
revamping an entire marketing campaign. You may even need to plan, build
and execute on a brand new facet of your product. Each business will have to
approach this step differently, but we've created a framework for how you can
identify, understand and meet customer needs.
How to Meet the Needs of Customers:

You can follow a simple, four-step procedure to meet the needs of customers.

 Identify what your customers need from you through keyword research,
focus groups, or social listening.
 Distribute the information to relevant stakeholders in your organization.
 Craft product features or create content that speaks to your customer’s
needs.
 Collect customer feedback on how your efforts meet their expectations.

After you've identified what your customer needs from you, take the data
you've collected seriously. If customers (or potential customers) are asking for
something, big or small, make sure you deliver. Businesses that have a
developed methodology for how they collect and share customer insights
within their org will have the best luck at meeting customer needs quickly.
For some businesses, that could mean assigning a dedicated team to collect
customer insights. Other businesses may be able to roll it into the
responsibilities of existing departments. If you develop a strong system for how
you discover, analyze and address customer needs, your organization will be
set up for long-term success. So take the time and put in the legwork.
Why is it important to meet customer needs?

All of today's most successful businesses take steps to meet customer needs
early and often. For the modern marketer, taking strides to make sure your
customers needs are met will help you align with other internal teams at your
organization, like your sales team, customer support team, and your product
team. With your whole organization operating under a cyclical process of
anticipating, identifying and meeting customer needs, you'll see results in no
time.
Looking for more resources? If you’re looking to understand, identify
and meet your customer's needs, you’re already practicing customer-
first marketing. What’s customer-first marketing? We're glad you asked.
Companies want to stay relevant and innovative and often look at other successful
companies, hot industry trends or new shiny products for inspiration.

However, a vital component to growth is at every businesses' fingertips -- their

customers.

Yes, customers are the ones with the ability to determine your business' longevity and
progress.

Start solving for the customer today with these 17 templates.

"You've got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the
technology," Steve Jobs notably stated. "You cannot start with the technology and try
to figure out where you are going to sell it."
Although the importance of being a customer-centric company is not a new concept,
the right steps to achieve a customer service focus are still hazy.
Customer Code: Creating a Company Customers Love from HubSpot

How do you understand customers' needs? What can your company change? Do other
departments need to change their goals?

Navigating this arena can be daunting and a steep learning curve if you haven't paid
close attention to customers before. So to steer you in the right direction, here's a
beginner's guide that defines customer needs, unpacks common barriers that prevent
companies from fulfilling their customers' needs, and discloses solutions to start
improving customer service.

 What are customer needs?

 Types of Customer Needs
 What is a customer needs analysis?
 Types of Customer Service
 How to Solve for Your Customers' Needs
What are customer needs?

A customer need is a motive that prompts a customer to buy a product or service.

Ultimately, the need is the driver of the customer's purchase decision. Companies
often look at the customer need as an opportunity to resolve or contribute surplus
value back to the original motive.

An example of customer need takes place every day around 12:00 p.m. This is when
people begin to experience hunger (need) and decide to purchase lunch. The type of
food, the location of the restaurant and the amount of time the service will take are all
factors to how individuals decide to satisfy the need.

Below are the most common types of customer needs -- most of which work in
tandem with one another to drive a purchasing decision.
16 Most Common Types of Customer Needs
Product Needs
1. Functionality
Customers need your product or service to function the way they need in order to
solve their problem or desire.
2. Price

Customers have unique budgets with which they can purchase a product or service.

3. Convenience
Your product or service needs to be a convenient solution to the function your
customers are trying to meet.

4. Experience

The experience using your product or service needs to be easy -- or at least clear -- so
as not to create more work for your customers.

5. Design

Along the lines of experience, the product or service needs a slick design to make it
relatively easy and intuitive to use.

6. Reliability

The product or service needs to reliably function as advertised every time the
customer wants to use it.

7. Performance

The product or service needs to perform correctly so the customer can achieve their
goals.

8. Efficiency

The product or service needs to be efficient for the customer by streamlining an

otherwise time-consuming process.

9. Compatibility

The product or service needs to be compatible with other products your customer is
already using.

Service Needs
10. Empathy

When your customers get in touch with customer service, they want empathy and
understanding from the people assisting them.
11. Fairness

From pricing to terms of service to contract length, customers expect fairness from a
company.

12. Transparency
Customers expect transparency from a company they're doing business with. Service
outages, pricing changes, and things breaking happen, and customers deserve
openness from the businesses they give money to.

13. Control

Customers need to feel like they're in control of the business interaction from start to
finish and beyond, and customer empowerment shouldn't end with the sale. Make it
easy for them to return products, change subscriptions, adjust terms, etc.

14. Options

Customers need options when they're getting ready to make a purchase from a
company. Offer a variety of product, subscription, and payment options to provide
that freedom of choice.

15. Information

Customers need information, from the moment they start interacting with your brand
to days and months after making a purchase. Business should invest in educational
blog content, instructional knowledge base content, and regular communication so
customers have the information they need to successfully use a product or service.

16. Accessibility

Customers need to be able to access your service and support teams. This means
providing multiple channels for customer service. We'll talk a little more about these
options later.

In this article, we're going to explore how to attract and sustain customers based on
meeting their inherent needs and imposing value. For lunch, this could be a special
promotion, a short wait time, or a post-dining thank-you email. If companies can
begin to make changes before their customers' needs aren't fulfilled, this can
ultimately lead to growth, innovation, and retention.
What is a customer needs analysis?

A customer needs analysis is used in product development and branding to provide an

in-depth analysis of the customer to ensure that the product or message offers the
benefits, attributes, and features needed to provide the customer with value.

To conduct a customer needs analysis successfully, you need to do the following:

1. Customer Needs Analysis Survey

The customer needs analysis is typically conducted by running surveys that help
companies figure out their position in their respective competitive markets how they
stack up in terms of meeting their target customers' needs.

The survey should primarily ask questions about your brand and competitors, as well
as customers' product awareness and brand attitudes in general.

Questions can include:

 Questions about positive and negative word associations with your brand
 Questions asking customers to group your brand in with similar and/or
competing brands
 Questions comparing and sorting brands according to their preferences for
usage
You can learn more about which questions to ask in this survey in our guide and this
guide from dummies.
2. Means-End Analysis

Once you've conducted the customer needs analysis survey, you can use the answers
to get a fuller picture of the reasons why your customers purchase from you, and what
makes your product or service stand apart from your competitors'.

A means-end analysis analyzes those answers to determine the primary reasons why a
customer would buy your product. Those buyer reasons can be divided into three main
groups:
1. Features: A customer buys a product or service because of the features included in
the purchase. If the customer were buying a computer, for example, they might buy it
because it's smaller and more lightweight than other options.
2. Benefits: A customer buys a product or service because of a benefit, real or
perceived, they believe it will offer them. The customer might also buy the computer
because it syncs easily with their other devices wirelessly.
3. Values: A customer buys a product or service for unique, individual values, real or
perceived, they believe it will help them fulfill. The customer might think the
computer will help them to be more creative or artistic and unlock other personal or
professional artistic opportunities.

As you might imagine, these reasons for purchasing something can vary from
customer to customer, so it's important to conduct these customer surveys, collect the
answers, and group them into these three categories. From there, you can identify
which of those motivating factors you're solving for, and which you can improve on to
make your product or service even more competitive in the market.
Types of Customer Service

The communication channel your team uses to respond to customer needs plays a
major role in their ability to resolve problems. Some customer needs are time-
sensitive and require immediate interaction via phone or chat. Others are less critical
and can be resolved at a more casual pace. Let's break down the types of customer
service and how each optimizes your team's ability to fulfill customer needs.

Email

Email is one of the most fundamental forms of customer service. It allows customers
to fully describe their problems and automatically records the conversation into a
resourceful thread. Customers only have to explain their issue once, while reps can
reference important case details without having to request additional information.

Email is best used with customer needs that don't need to be resolved right away.
Customers can ask their question, go back to work, and return to the case once the
service rep has found a solution. Unlike phones or chat, they don't have to wait idly
while a rep finds them an answer.

One limitation of email is the potential lack of clarity. Some customers have trouble
describing their problem, and some service reps struggle to explain solutions. This
creates time-consuming roadblocks when the issue is overly complex. To be safe, use
email for simple problems that require a brief explanation or solution.

Phone

When customers have problems that need to be answered immediately, phones are the
best medium to use. Phones connect customers directly to reps and create a human
interaction between the customer and the business. Both parties hear each other's tone
and can gauge the severity of the situation. This human element is a major factor in
creating delightful customer experiences.
Phones come in handy most when there's a frustrated or angry customer. These
customers are most likely to churn and require your team to provide a personalized
solution. Your team can use soft communication skills to appease the customer and
prevent costly escalations. These responses appear more genuine over phones because
reps have less time to formulate an answer.
The most common flaw with phone support is the wait time. Customers hate being put
on hold, and it's a determining factor for customer churn. In fact, more than a third of
your customers won't return to your business if they hang up while on hold. This is
why your phone channel should be reserved for problems that require immediate,
hands-on support.
Chat

Chat is one of the most flexible customer service channels. It can solve a high volume
of simple problems or provide detailed support for complex ones. Businesses continue
to adopt chat because of its versatility as well as the improvement in efficiency it
provides for customer service reps.

When it comes to solving customer needs, chat can be used to solve almost any
problem. Simple and common questions can be answered with chatbots that automate
the customer service process. For more advanced roadblocks, reps can
integrate customer service tools into their chat software to help them diagnose and
resolve issues.

The limitations of chat are similar to those of email. However, since the interaction is
live, any lack of clarity between the two parties can drastically impact
troubleshooting. As a former chat rep, there were plenty of times where I struggled to
get on the same page as my customer. Even though we resolved the issue, that
miscommunication negatively impacted the customer's experience.

Social Media

Social media is a relatively new customer service channel. While it's been around for
over a decade, businesses are now beginning to adopt it as a viable service option.
That's because social media lets customers immediately report an issue. And since that
report is public, customer service teams are more motivated to resolve the customer's
problem.

Social media is an excellent channel for mass communication, which is particularly

useful during a business crisis. When a crisis occurs, your customers' product and
service needs become the primary concern of your organization. Social media is an
effective tool for communicating with your customers in bulk. With a social media
 crisis management plan, your team can continue to fulfill customer needs during
critical situations.

Social media is different than other types of customer service because it empowers the
customer the most. Customers tend to have more urgent needs and expect instant
responses from your accounts. While this type of service presents an enormous
opportunity, it also places tremendous pressure on your reps to fulfill customer
demand. Be sure your team is equipped with proper social media management
tools before you offer routine support.
In Person

As the oldest form of customer service, you're probably familiar with working in
person with customers. Brands who have brick-and-mortar stores must offer this
service for customers living near their locations. This fulfills a convenience need as
customers can purchase and return a product without having to ship it back to the
company through an online service.

In-person customer service is great for businesses with strong service personnel.
Without dedicated employees, your customer service team won't be able to fulfill your
customers' product or service needs. Successful teams have reps who are determined
to provide above-and-beyond customer service.
There's no "best" type of customer service. When used together, each medium
compliments the other and optimizes your overall performance. This creates an omni-
channel experience for your customers which will keep them coming back for more.

Now that you're familiar with each customer service type, let's talk about what your
team needs to do to solve for different customer needs.
How to Solve for Customer Needs

What stops customers from meeting their needs with your services or products? The
first step to solve a problem is to put yourself in your customer's shoes: If you were
the customer when we purchase your goods, use your technology, or sign up for your
services, what would prevent you from achieving ultimate value?

1. Offer consistent company wide-messaging

2. Provide instructions for easy adoption
3. Ask customers for feedback
4. Nurture customer relationships
5. Solve for the right customer needs
This list includes common customer pain points and proactive steps to develop
customer-first values.

1. Offer consistent company-wide messaging.

Too often customers, get caught up in the "he said, she said" game of being told a
product can do one thing from sales and another from support and product.
Ultimately, customers become confused and are left with the perception that the
company is disorganized.

Consistent internal communications across all departments is one of the best steps
towards a customer-focused mindset. If the entire company understands its goals,
values, product, and service capabilities, then the messages will easily translate to
meet the customer need.

To get everyone on the same page, organize sales and customer service meetings,
send out new product emails, provide robust new employee onboarding, require
quarterly trainings and seminars, or staff host webinars to share important projects.
2. Provide instructions for easy adoption.

Customers purchase a product because they believe it will meet their needs and solve
their problem. However, adoption setup stages are not always clear. If best practices
aren't specified at the start and they don't see value right away, it's an uphill battle to
gain back their trust and undo bad habits.

A well-thought post-purchase strategy will enable your products or services to be

usable and useful.

One way companies gain their customers' attention is providing in-product and email
walkthroughs and instructions as soon as the customer receives a payment
confirmation. This limits the confusion, technical questions, and distractions from the
immediate post-purchase euphoria.

A customer education guide or knowledge base is essential to deliver proper customer

adoption and avoid the ‘floundering effect' when customers are stuck. Other
companies provide new customer onboarding services, host live demos and webinars
and include event and promotions in their email signatures.
3. Ask customers for feedback.

Lean into customer complaints and suggestions and it will change the way you
operate your business. Criticism often times has negative connotations, however, if
you flip problems to opportunities you can easily improve your business to fit the
customer's needs.
Take customer suggestions seriously and act on those recommendations to improve
design, product and system glitches. Most customer support success metrics is
paramount to the customer experience and this mentality should trickle down to every
aspect of the organization.

To keep track of this feedback, many companies track and gain their feedback
through customer satisfaction scores, customer surveys, exploration customer
interviews, social media polls, or simply a personal email can grab helpful
candid customer feedback.
4. Nurture customer relationships.

When a customer buys a product or service, they want to use it right away and fulfill
their immediate need. Whether they are delighted within the first hour, week, or a
month, it's important to constantly think about their future needs.

Proactive relationship-building is essential to prevent customers from losing their

post-purchase excitement and ultimately churning. If customers stop hearing from you
and you don't hear from them this can be a bad sign that their lifespan is in danger.
Companies solve for customer relationships with a combination of customer service
structure and communication strategies. Solve for the long-term customer need and
create a customer service team dedicated to check-ins and customer retention, show
appreciation with rewards and gifts to loyal customers, host local events, highlight
employees that go above and beyond and communicate product updates and new
features.
5. Solve for the right customer needs.
Excluding customers from your cohort of business can seem counterintuitive to solve
for your customers' needs. However, understanding whose needs you can fulfill and
whose you cannot is a major step toward solving the right problems. All customers'
needs can't be treated equally and a company must recognize which problems they
can solve and ones that aren't aligned with their vision.
To find the right customer priorities, create buyer personas and uncover consumer
trends, look at customer's long-term retention patterns, establish a clear company
vision, provide premier customer service to valuable customers and communicate
with your ideal customer in their preferred social media space to capture questions,
comments and suggestions.

Successful startups, brick and mortar shops, and Fortune 500 companies alike all
solve and prioritize customer needs to stay ahead and establish industry trends.
How to Identify Customer Needs and
Expectations

One day consumers listen to their guts, the other to facts, then a mix
of both. They read honest reviews and fake ones. They first want
this, then they want that, while what’s actually useful for them
might be something totally different.

Making sense of all that static and identifying the customer's true needs and
expectations is a tricky task. This post is intended to clear things up for you.

Needs ≠ Wants ≠ Expectations

Two guys walk into your corner shop and you overhear one of them speaking to
the other: “God, I’m hungry! I’m gonna get a Mars.” Clearly, that customer has
a need, to fill the void in his belly. But he also has a conflicting want, his
craving for the chocolate bar.

You know that the sugary stick isn’t the best choice to fight hunger. He would
need a wholemeal sandwich. But it will be presumptuous, perhaps even
patronizing, to tell him that his own solution is not a good one. Who’s to say
that Mars doesn’t grant him bigger satisfaction?
Wants and needs are not the same thing. This can induce quite some confusion
on the business’ side about the best practice in such situations. These are two
motivations for the customer, and differentiation is essential.

A definition for a need suggested by Jorge Baba from Game-Changer is

"something that solves an actual or imaginary problem."

A want is simply something that we’d like to have for whatever rational or
irrational reason.

Expectations are the anticipated circumstances of a purchase. They include all

steps of the customer journey, all interactions with the company, as well as the
effects of the purchase and experience, the practical benefits, and the emotions.
Customers rate a company’s performance by its ability to meet their
expectations.
What the customer wants is often more of a powerful motivator than what
they need. This becomes clear when you listen to your customer and ask them
to tell you why they want what they want. Usually they have a burning desire
to get what they want and simply want you to show them how they can get it.
Jorge Baba, Game-Changer

Needs, wants, and expectations are the key motivations that drive the customer,
and for that matter, any person.

Gain insights from conversations

Service conversations are also an investigation of the customer’s needs and
expectations.

Your support department is the destination for customers who have trouble
finding the product they want, don’t know what product they need/want, or
don’t fancy searching for it.

Listen, ask, differentiate. To uncover customer motivations, your first step

is to listen closely. Doing so, it comes down to differentiating and asking the
right questions.

This matters so much because many customers won’t differentiate themselves.

One may say “I need a new laptop”, another “I want a new laptop”. To you, this
might indicate using a different approach for each of them. To them, it might
just be semantics. It’s through the questions that follow that you learn what they
actually mean.

7 Psychological Biases to (Ab)use in Your Website Content

Whether your customers buy from you largely depends on a collection of psychological biases.

Master of puppets

Many customers know what they want or need, but have trouble expressing
themselves. This can be because they’re not skilled in expressing their thoughts,
or because they are lost in the terminology of your products or service. In the
latter case, consider removing barriers in both areas by implementing a more
human language.
An unrecognized killer of a positive customer experience? Speaking in
industry jargon to your customers rather than using straightforward, simple
language.
 Micah Solomon, Forbes

Not all customers are clear about what they want or need, to themselves or to
service reps. You simply require more information to know what’s best for
them. These questions will help:

“What would you like the product to do for you?”

An approach that points at the actual benefit the customer is after. It’s meant to
filter the possible options of products based on features that grant this benefit. If
the customer does not need but wants a product (remember the distinction), the
benefit of the product is rather abstract and not practical – like its recentness, its
design or its trendiness.

“What is the issue you want to solve?”

Similar question but through its indirect approach the focus initially lies on the
problem the customer has. It works particularly well when customers have only
a vague idea of what they need, but are aware of what’s going wrong. The
ability to fix the issue is the product’s benefit, and this is what the customer is
actually looking for.

“How much are you willing to spend?”

Money matters to nearly every customer. But it can be hard for them to
recognize good or bad price for value in a certain product area. For example in
software that’s offered via subscription, the prices can vary while the value of
its features is hard to number. Be ready to follow up with comparison pages and
pricing itemization.

Tony Allesandra shared on HubSpot a list of 23 questions to ask your customer

that will help you and them uncover what they want and need. They work both
 in direct customer contact and feedback surveys, they’re tailored to a B2B
context.

Categorize feedback

It makes sense to look at the whole group of your customers for feedback. It
helps you identify patterns and make assumptions about the likelihood that
they’ll behave or approach you in a certain way.

Although this is a continuous process, think of it as a step preceding the actual

customer conversation. It gives you an idea about where to start in direct contact
with your ‘average’ customer.

Gregory Ciotti from Help Scout listed 7 great categorizable ways to gather
customer feedback:

 Email and customer contact forms

 Customer feedback surveys

 Usability tests

 Exploratory customer interviews (this one overlaps with my earlier take on direct
customer contact)

 Social listening (with polls on social media)

 On-site activity
 Comment boxes

These feedback channels are most likely filled out by your customers in written
and spoken language. The evaluation of such feedback is prone to subjective
bias. To draw reliable conclusions, the input needs to be collected and
categorized.

Ciotti suggests apps like Campfire and Trello to make the organization of
feedback a full-team-project. Pouring the data from various sources into a
collective tool enables everyone in your team to get the full picture of opinions
from your customer base. And eventually, about these people’s needs and
expectations.

Gain insights from customer metrics

You know you’ve done something right if you kept a customer active and made
him return over a certain stretch of time. Therefore, metrics that describe
retention, loyalty and satisfaction also inform you if you’ve met your customers’
needs and expectations.

It’s easier to get higher quantities of these metrics and, unlike with qualitative
customer feedback, you gather numbers that speak for themselves. You can
follow up on tendencies found through them and be sure they’re backed up by
strong figures.
 Looking for better customer relationships?
Test Userlike for free and chat with your customers on your website, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram.
Read more

In a previous post , we collected and explained methods to measure customer

satisfaction. These are the ones that hand you concrete digits right away:

 Customer satisfaction score

 Net promoter score

 Customer effort score

 Things Gone Wrong score

 Social media monitoring with tracking tools (I’ll get to that in more detail further
down in this post)

We also wrote a post about customer retention metrics :

 Customer retention rate

 Customer lifetime value

 Repeat purchase rate

 Redemption rate

Another of our posts dealt with the measurement of customer loyalty :

 Repurchase ratio
 Upselling ratio

 Customer loyalty index

 Customer engagement numbers

Gain insights from the community

One great thing about social media is the freedom people feel to speak out. They
might dramatize and glorify singular experiences with a company to be heard by
a bigger audience or out of pure excitement. It’s their own motivation to talk
about what drives them. Which also means that if they do, it’s relevant for them
– and you.

A Comcast customer doesn't hold back on Twitter when he can't watch his favorite series.
Facebook and Twitter are rather obvious platforms to track, but also Quora,
Yelp, TripAdvisor, Reddit etc. are worth observing, depending on the industry
you’re in.

Here are some helpful tools to monitor and evaluate what’s of concern for you
on social media :

Google Alerts . This Google service notifies you when your brand appears in a
prominent position.

Mention . A powerful freemium tool that gives you a heads up whenever your
brand is mentioned on the web. It’s especially handy for social media tracking,
for which Google Alerts is not suitable.

Socialmention . A free tool that analyzes social mentions of your brand on the
web. Among others, it shows the likeness of your brand being discussed on the
web, the ratio of positive to negative mentions, the likelihood of people
mentioning your brand repeatedly, and the range of influence.

Also, consider setting up a feature request page on which users can upvote
threads and requests. It provides you with opinions and concrete wishes from
people who act in their own interest, but they often know your product quite
well.

Feature request management systems like Receptive help in drawing the right
conclusions.

If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have

asked for a faster horse.
 Henry Ford

Ford’s quote tells us a lot about innovation, but also about customer needs and
expectations. Sometimes the customer doesn’t have the necessary information
or mindset to ask for the best product available. But even then, there still is a
want that is to be respected and considered.

Doesn't it look like a horse carriage? A 1902 Trevethan, one of the first cars to be built in the US.

Ford evidently took the bold road, replacing horse with horsepower, but also
paid tribute to his customers’ wish for approval and consent. He understood that
they may as well need to be reassured that what they want is the right choice.
Eventually, the first cars looked a lot like horse carriages.

With a mix of flexibility, respect, expertise, and the right data, you’ll find out
what makes your customers happy in the long run or during a brief encounter.

10 Ways to Deliver Good

Customer Service
Catherine Heath
January 23, 2019 • Illustration by Saskia Keultjes
Investing in customer service is key to long-term business success. While you
can use many different methods to delight your customers and have them raving
about your support to their friends, here are our 10 best ways to deliver excellent
customer service.

Related: Stop Defending Customer Support

Good customer service is the ‘make or break’ of

every business
You may have a fantastic product, but if your customer service is unhelpful,
unreliable, or just plain hard to get in touch with, folks will hear about it, and you’ll
lose customers over it. Good customer service doesn’t just happen overnight,
and it’s harder to achieve than you may think – but it’s certainly not impossible.
We’ve identified 10 ways to put your customer service at the top of the game in
your industry.

1. Know your product

As a customer support agent, you spend all day troubleshooting for customers,
and that means you need to be a product expert.

Expansive knowledge of your product is an essential customer service skill.

Ideally you should believe in your product, be able to discuss features and use
cases in an insightful way, and show your customers how the product can benefit
them — not to mention troubleshoot anything that’s not working right!

Your job is to help your customers get the most out of their purchase and feel like
they have gotten true value for their money. Make it your goal to learn everything
there is to know about your product so you can amaze your customers with
timely recommendations for using new features and services.

2. Maintain a positive attitude

Attitude is everything, and a positive attitude goes a long way in providing good
customer service.
“The right attitude changes negative customer experiences into positive customer
experiences,” says Flavio Martins, VP of Operations and Customer Service at
DigiCert, Inc. Since most customer interactions are not face-to-face, your attitude
should be reflected in your language and tone of voice.

It’s easy to misinterpret the tone of written communication, and email or live chat
can come across as cold. The brain uses multiple signals to interpret someone
else’s emotional tone, including body language and facial expression, many of
which are absent online.

Don’t be afraid use emojis to convey warmth and good humour, or pick up the
phone if you find an email or chat conversation getting tense.

3. Creatively problem-solve
Over 80% of customers have churned because they experienced bad customer
service. That’s why you must thrive on solving problems for your customers and
make it a central part of your support role – and there will always be problems to
solve.

Everyone has heard of the legendary customer service at Zappos. There’s the
time they sent a best man free shoes the night before the wedding, after his
order was sent to the wrong location due to a mistake by the delivery company.
Zappos solved a problem and exemplified great customer service — they won a
customer for life and gave the man a story that he couldn’t wait to share.

Don’t be afraid to wow your customers as you seek to problem-solve for them.
You could just fix the issue and be on your way, but by creatively meeting their
needs in ways that go above and beyond, you’ll create customers that are
committed to you and your product.

4. Respond quickly
A surprising 66% of people believe that valuing their time is the most important
thing in any online customer experience, according to Forrester. Resolving
customer queries as quickly as possible is a cornerstone of good customer
service. Speed should be of the essence — especially for smaller issues that
don’t take much time to solve.
That being said — great customer service beats speed every time. Customers
understand that more complex queries take time to resolve. There’s a difference
between the time it takes you to respond and the speed at which you resolve
their problem. Customers don’t want to languish in a ticket queue, but they’ll
spend as much time as it takes to resolve their issue. You should, too.

Get back to your customers as quickly as possible, but don’t be in a rush to get
them off the phone or close the ticket without resolving the issue completely.

5. Personalize your service

By personalized service, we’re not talking AI or chatbots. We mean knowing your
customers and treating them as individuals. Automation has its place in customer
support, but it can’t replace real people helping people.

It’s important to note that 40% of customers say they want better human service.
That means they want to feel like more than just a ticket number. They get angry
when they’re not being treated like an individual person, such as receiving
boilerplate responses, being referred to by a ticket number, or being batted like a
tennis ball to different people.

Customers want to interact with a person — not a company. It’s part of the
reason why many businesses send gifts to their customers on their birthdays.

Do you know not only your customers’ names, but also their birthdays? How
about their interests or hobbies? Can you make them laugh? It’s obviously not
possible to do this for everyone, but going off script and giving the personal touch
when you can is an important way to show your customers you know them and
you care.

6. Help customers help themselves

That said, customers don’t always want to talk to someone to get their problem
solved — often, they want to quickly resolve their issue themselves. Among
consumers, 81% attempt to take care of matters themselves before reaching out
to a live representative. Further research shows that 71% want the ability to solve
most customer service issues on their own.

Self-service is a scalable, cost-effective way to make customers happy — that’s

the thinking that led to the new version of Beacon, which puts help content front
and center so customers can find answers right where they are, without leaving
the page. Then if they’re unable to answer their own question, help from a real
person is just a couple clicks away.

Looking for a chat tool designed to create less work for your team?

Try Beacon 2.0 🎉

7. Focus support on the customer

Your customers are the most integral part of your business, and they come
before products or profit. Treat them like they are the center of your world —
because they are. According to Kristin Smaby in Being Human is Good Business,
“It’s time to consider an entirely different approach: building human-centric
customer service through great people and clever technology. So, get to know
your customers. Humanize them. Humanize yourself. It’s worth it.”

Southwest Airlines put this principle into practice in a very memorable way when
one of its pilots held a flight back to wait for a customer traveling to a funeral —
they put the human before their targets, and that customer will never forget it.

8. Actively listen
Paying attention to customer feedback includes looking back over the data, as
well as listening in real-time.

Show your customers you hear them when they take the time to speak to you.

“Acquire the habit of attending carefully to what is being said by another, and of
entering, so far as possible, into the mind of the speaker,” said Marcus Aurelius,
2nd-century emperor of Rome. It was wise advice then, and it’s still wise advice
now. Listening increases the chances that you’ll hear your customers’ real
problems and can effectively solve them, resulting in happier customers.

Listen to what they have to say without pushing your own agenda. Don’t assume
that you know what your customer is going to say. Demonstrate active listening
skills; when you’re on the phone or live chat, use phrases like “It sounds like … ”
and “Do you mean … ?” or “Let me make sure I’ve got this right.” Make sure you
repeat the problem back to them in your own words to show you’ve heard them.
Active listening also means you are mindful of your customer’s unique
personality and current emotional state, so you can tailor your response to fit the
situation. Customer service is not one-size-fits-all.

Related: Talking to Customers Won’t Teach You Anything

9. Keep your word

If you promise something, making sure you deliver on it is common-sense
customer service. Don’t let your customers down. Keeping your word is about
respect and trust.

For example, if you promise an SLA uptime of 99%, make sure you keep to that
standard. If you promise to develop a certain feature in your software in a
particular time frame, make sure you deliver on that.

When you break your word, like saying you’ll get back to a customer within 24
hours and you don’t, offer something to make up for it. If your customer’s delivery
goes awry, offer to replace it and refund their money for their trouble. You might
lose some money in the short term, but you’ll gain a loyal customer.

Interestingly, according to research, customers do not feel extra grateful when

you deliver more than you promised. They do, however, feel angry if you break a
promise. It’s still better to under-promise and over-deliver so you can make sure
you never break this important social contract.

10. Be proactively helpful

Going the extra mile is one of the most important things you can do to establish
good customer service. This is when you have ticked all the boxes, and yet you
still want to do more.

Sometimes being helpful means anticipating your customers’ needs before they
even have to articulate them. In fact, sometimes customers may ask for one thing
without realizing that they really need another. It’s your job to anticipate their
needs and provide for them.

When customers feel like you value them — like they’re truly special to you —
they’ll keep coming back. This may be linked with the phenomenon of
reciprocity in social psychology. This means that if you do something nice for
your customers, they will want to do something in return — like buy your
products!

Sending them a small gift “just because,” or giving them a rare promotional code,
will speak to your customers’ egos and demonstrate your genuine appreciation of
their business.

Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland hotel delivered truly helpful customer service when
a customer asked them where she could buy a particular alarm clock they had in
her room. The hotel gave her one as an unexpected parting gift, winning them
one very delighted customer.

9 Tips for Providing Excellent Customer

Service
 Share
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The Balance

BY ALYSSA GREGORY

Updated August 19, 2019

Excellent customer service creates loyal customers for life who are willing to refer your
business to friends, family, and colleagues. Providing this type of excellent customer
service starts with a genuine desire to delight your customers, but you also have to think
beyond selling your products or services. You need to consider the cumulative
experience your customers have when they visit your store or website, what they think
and feel, and what you can do to make it better.
Learn more about your customers to create a pattern of excellent service in your small
business.

01

Know Your Product or Service

To provide good customer service, you need to know what you're selling, inside and out.
Make sure you and your customer-facing staff know how your products or services
work. Be aware of the most common questions customers ask and know how to
articulate the answers that will leave them satisfied.

02

Be Friendly

Customer service starts with a smile. When you are in a face-to-face situation, a warm
greeting should be the first thing your customers see and hear when they ask for help.
Even when handling customer service requests via telephone, a smile can come
through in your voice, so make sure you're ready to be friendly.

03

Say Thank You

Gratitude is memorable, and it can remind your customers why they shopped at your
store or hired your company. Regardless of the type of business you have, saying thank
you after every transaction is one of the easiest ways to start a habit of good customer
service.

04

Train Your Staff

It's important to make sure all of your employees, not just your customer service
representatives, understand the way they should talk to, interact with, and otherwise
assist customers. Provide employee training that gives your staff the tools they need to
carry good service through the entire customer experience.

05

Show Respect

Customer service often can involve emotions, so it's important to make sure you and
others you have handling your customer service tasks are always courteous and
respectful. Never let your own emotions overtake your desire to see your customer walk
away happy.

06

Listen

Listening is one of the simplest secrets of customer service. It means hearing what your
customers are saying out loud, as well as what they are communicating non-verbally.
Watch for signs that they are displeased, while listening to what they say to you directly.

07

Be Responsive

There may be nothing worse than nonresponsiveness to a customer who is trying to get
help, resolve an issue, or find out more about what you're selling. It's important to
respond quickly to all inquiries, even if it is only to say you are looking into the issue and
will be back in touch. Some response is always better than none so the customer
doesn't feel ignored.

08

Ask for Feedback

You may be surprised what you learn about your customers and their needs when you
ask them what they think of your business, products, and services. You can
use customer surveys, feedback forms, and questionnaires, but you also can make it a
common practice to ask customers first-hand for feedback when they are completing
their orders.

09

Use Feedback You Receive

You need to do something with the feedback you receive from customers in order to
make it useful in your customer service process. Take time to regularly review
feedback, identify areas for improvement, and make specific changes in your business.

Excellent customer service often comes down to consistently checking in with your
customers and making sure they are happy with the products and services you're selling
and the process of purchasing, ordering, working with you. If you do that successfully,
you are on your way to becoming known for providing excellent customer service.

Three Basic Ways to Build Rapport with

Customers
BY SELLING POWER EDITORS

Rapport is all about highlighting common interests and establishing a mutual feeling of
friendliness. When people like each other – whether in business, friendship, or both –
they tend to help each other.

Most salespeople are naturally enthusiastic, positive, and outgoing people, but that
doesn’t necessarily mean everyone will like you off the bat. Here are three ways you can
increase your rapport rating with prospects and customers:

1. Match your customer’s style. Pay attention to how your customer prefers to
communicate and get in step. Does your customer prefer to get right down to business,
or warm up by engaging in small talk? What kinds of things does he or she find funny,
interesting, or intriguing? If your customer talks quickly and loudly, make an effort to
match that energy.

2. Trust builds rapport. Your customers will learn to trust you if you do what you say.
Keep your commitments, call when you say you will, and always follow through. Be
careful not to make promises you might not be able to keep. Too many salespeople
 make well-intentioned commitments, only to find themselves unable to find time to
fulfill them. They may not always lose a sale because of this, but they’re certainly not
building the kind of trust that will make that customer anxious to give referrals.

Another way to build trust is to demonstrate that you’re interested in their well-being —
beyond your own profit potential. Know and appreciate your customers’ needs beyond
your product. See what you can do to help them meet those needs. Little things like
finding information for them or putting them in touch with other suppliers tend to make
a big difference.

3. Practice reciprocity. When you treat people in a certain way, they tend to want to treat
you in the same way. Find ways to treat your customers as valued members of your
professional and even social circle. In life and in business, the little things make a big
difference.

Here are a few customer service tips for identifying ways to better serve
customers:

1. Strengthen your customer service

skills
First, it’s important to make sure that your customer service team has the right
skills for your managing customers’ needs. No amount of CRM software can
compensate for shortcomings in this area. But what skills should you be
looking for in a customer service rep?

 Empathy, patience and consistency. Some customers will be irate. Others

will be full of questions. And others will just be chatty. You must know how to
handle all of them and provide the same level of service every time.
 Adaptability. Every customer is different, and some may even seem to
change week-to-week. You should be able to handle surprises, sense the
customer’s mood and adapt accordingly. This also includes a willingness to
learn– providing good customer service is a continuous learning process.
 Clear communication. Ensure you convey to customers exactly what you
mean. You don’t want your customer to think he’s getting 50% off when he’s
actually getting 50% more product. Use authentically positive language, stay
cheerful no matter what and never end a conversation without confirming the
customer is satisfied.
 Work ethic. Customers appreciate a rep who will see their problem through to
its resolution. At the same time, you must have good time management skills
and not spend too much time handling one customer while others are waiting.
Stay focused on your goals to achieve the right balance.
 Knowledge. Ultimately your customers rely on you for their knowledge of your
product. Stay informed enough to respond to most inquiries and know where
to turn if the questions become too detailed or technical for you to answer. But
don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know” either. Customers will appreciate the
honesty and your efforts to find the right answer.
 Thick skin. The customer’s always right… right? The ability to swallow one’s
pride and accept blame or negative feedback is crucial. Whether your team
works directly with customers or looking for feedback on social media, they’ve
got to keep the customer’s happiness in mind.

Not sure if your reps have the right customer service skills? Survey or
interview your customers to understand whether your service team is showing
each of these traits. Running a customer feedback survey through your CRM
program, at the point of sale, or when you send customers an invoice is a
great way to see where your team’s skills do and don’t measure up.

2. Look at every touchpoint

A bad customer experience at any point in the customer lifecycle can ruin your
relationship. In addition to making sure the right skills are demonstrated, you
need to be sure they’re being demonstrated consistently. Pay the most
attention to key touchpoints, but make sure you have a full view of the
customer experience, or you risk lapses in service that can really hurt
business.

3. Improve your customer interactions

If your staff has the necessary skill set, that’s a good start. But they still need
to relate to your customers. Here are some tips for making sure customer
service is both thorough and well received:

 Ask reps to try to identify a common ground–like shared interests–with

the people they help. Having this point of understanding makes conflict
easier to overcome by humanizing the relationship, and it endears customers
to your rep (and ultimately your company).
 Practice active listening so your customers feel heard. Clarify and
rephrase what the customers say to ensure you understand them. Empathize
with and reflect their feelings by saying things like, “That must have upset you”
or “I can see why you feel slighted.”
 Admit your mistakes, even if you discover them before your customers
do. This builds trust and restores confidence. It also allows you to control the
situation, re-focus the customer’s attention and resolve the issue.
 Follow-up after a problem is solved. Make sure the issue stays fixed and
that your customers were satisfied with the service. Sending an email, or even
a feedback survey is an excellent way to let the customer know you’re still on
their side.

Related: 3 tactics to help you improve the customer experience

4. Enhance your customer service

strategy
Your staff may have the skills and know-how to interact with your customers.
But what organizational strategies can you employ to please customers?
Practice proactive customer service by making your customers happy before
they come to you with problems. Here’s how:

 Get personal. Your customers want to feel like they have access to real
people, not bots and FAQs. Offer more than just automated email responses,
and do not let your telephone prompts or website send them down a rabbit
hole. Take full advantage of social media (such as Facebook, Twitter and
Yelp) and write responses when your customers post on your page. Post
photos and bios on your website. This shows your customers that you are real
people working on their behalf.
 Be available. Part of the personal touch is making sure your customers can
reach you. For example if your business is primarily online, meet in person
occasionally with local customers and offer video calls (such as Skype) for
those farther away. Work early and late when needed, especially if your
customers are in different time zones. Even providing customers with your
physical address helps build their trust and reminds them that your company
exists off the internet as well.
 Cater to your customers. Make sure you are fully meeting your customers’
needs. Consider assigning reps to specific customers so they can build a
 relationship. Offer VIP treatment for your best customers to let them know
they are appreciated. What special services might your customers like? Set
up focus groups, interview customers, or run a survey to get ideas.
 Create communities. Your customers will feel even more valued if you treat
them as important members of a community. You can bring various customers
together in numerous ways, including webinars, interactive websites, social
media, trade shows and conventions. And don’t forget that while your
customers come to these forums to learn from you, you can learn as much–if
not more–from them.
5. Make sure your reps are engaged
You can have the best customer service skills and the best training in the
world, but if your reps are checked out, it won’t matter at all. Improving
employee engagement is another way to make sure customers have a great
experience. Dissatisfied employees are unlikely to come forward with their
problems, so consider an anonymous suggestion box or an employee
engagement survey to see what makes your employees tick.

You’ll want to know how your customer service team feels about working
conditions and compensation, opportunities for career advancement, training
and their peers. Our employee engagement template offers a good overview.
We’ve also compiled benchmark engagement data to help you understand
how your employees’ engagement compares to other companies.

Since engagement can vary from industry to industry, you may also want to
look at more specific data through a service like SurveyMonkey Benchmarks.

6. Give your customers a way to provide

feedback
No matter how proactive you are, you’ll never be able to get in front of every
customer issue. To make sure you learn about the good, the bad, and the ugly
experience your customers have, create an easily accessible way for
customers to give feedback.

Whether it’s a phone survey at the end of a service call, an email survey sent
directly from your CRM tool, or a form on the “Contact Us” page of your
website, creating a means for customers to give feedback makes it easier for
you to learn what needs improvement. It also helps keep unhappy customers
from voicing their displeasure on highly visible places like your social media
pages.

Whatever steps you choose to take, remember feedback’s importance to

customer satisfaction. Unsure what your strengths and weaknesses are?
Don’t know why the numbers are dipping? Make an effort to get closer both to
your customers and your reps.

Not only will you discover touchpoints and skills that need improvement, but
your customers will see that are dedicated to providing top-notch, proactive
customer service.

How to Use Technology to

Improve Customer Service
More companies are using technology to handle customer service in an
efficient and cost-effective way. Here's how you can use data management and
analytics and insight-driven marketing to improve your customer care systems.

By Inc. Staff

There's no denying the fact that customer service is important to a small or mid-sized
business. The quality of that service will either enhance or degrade customer loyalty to
your brand and your business. With the economy in recession, customers have more
alternatives than ever. The business that proves to be responsive to customer
questions, complaints, or other needs can gain a clear competitive advantage. That's
why it's so important to understand how new technologies can help you anticipate
customer needs, tailor business processes to best serve customers, and ultimately
improve the efficiency of your business – the latter of which can keep costs down.

Customer Service Technology

 There are a few major areas in which technology now is able to help provide key
advantages to businesses in engendering customer loyalty by improving customer
service:

 Websites. Providing areas on your website where customers can answer their own questions or
seek answers from others.
 E-mail. Using e-mail as a way to improve customer service and more quickly respond to certain
needs or help requests.
 Communications. Unifying communications so that you know that the customer who left a voice
mail also sent an e-mail with the same request a few days ago.
 Software. Better managing customer relationships with more sophisticated data-gathering tools,
such as customer relationship management software.
Giving Customers What They Want, When They Want It
The goal of your business in terms of its customer interactions is the generate loyalty.
There's no better way to do that than to offer quality products and services and to be
responsive to your customers. But as new technologies have come to market to make it
easier for businesses to provide customer service, they may also be increasing the
number of channels through which you interact with customers and the complexity of
those interactions. Accenture, the technology consulting firm, suggests that businesses
that want to use technology to raise the quality of their customer service focus on the
following:

 Data management and analytics. Using data collected from customer to analyze their
preferences.
 Insight-driven marketing. Gaining insights into your business from customer data so you can
more effectively target marketing.
 Marketing automation. Streamlining and automating business processes to improve efficiency
and keep costs low.
 Self-service optimization. Finding ways for customers to interact with your business when they
want.
 Workforce effectiveness. Encouraging your staff to embrace new ways improving customer
treatment by providing tools and training to deliver better service.
The following articles will provide an overview of the ways you can use technologies to
better serve your customers and, in the process, better serve your business goals.
 HOW TO HANDLE CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS
5 strategies that can help resolve a customer complaint in a
smooth and professional manner.
Posted: June 18, 2013

Article Author:
Lorri Freifeld

By Amanda Herder, Account Manager, Signature Worldwide

Complaints happen every day. When a customer complains, it is usually for a good reason or genuine concern. They
usually have made a purchase that did not meet their expectation—a product, service, or maybe a combination of the
two. In the customer service industry, we cannot avoid complaints. We must take care of the customer by listening to
the complaint, and resolving it, to ensure a happy customer.
Fewer than half of unhappy customers will bring a complaint to your attention. Those who never say anything will tell
an average of 11 other people about their bad experience. It is important that we recognize complaints as
opportunities, so we can sway these averages, one resolved complaint at a time.
Customers want to know someone is listening and they are understood, and they are hoping you are willing to take
care of the problem to their satisfaction. No matter what the situation is, when a customer brings a complaint to your
attention—even if they do it in a less-than-desirable way—be thankful. As the old saying goes, “We can’t fix it, if we
don’t know it’s broken.” Moreover, we must realize that improper handling of a customer complaint can be costly to
the business.
Here are five strategies that will help you handle a customer complaint in a smooth and professional manner:
1. Stay calm. When a customer presents you with a complaint, keep in mind that the issue is not personal; he or she is
not attacking you directly but rather the situation at hand. “Winning” the confrontation accomplishes nothing. A person
who remains in control of his or her emotions deals from a position of strength. While it is perfectly natural to get
defensive when attacked, choose to be the “professional” and keep your cool.
2. Listen well. Let the irate customer blow off steam. Respond with phrases such as, “Hmm,” “I see,” and “Tell me more.”
Do not interrupt. As the customer vents and sees you are not reacting, he or she will begin to calm down. The
customer needs to get into a calm frame of mind before he or she can hear your solution—or anything you say, for
that matter.
3. Acknowledge the problem. Let the customer know you hear what he or she is saying. If you or your company made a
mistake, admit it. If you did not make a mistake and it is a misunderstanding, simply explain it to the customer: “I can
see how that would be incredibly frustrating for you.” You are not necessarily agreeing with what the customer is
saying, but respecting how he or she perceives and feels about the situation. An excellent phrase for opening up this
particular conversation would be, “So, if I understand you correctly…” After the customer responds, follow up with,
“So, if I understand you correctly, we were to resolve the problem by noon today. I can see how that must be
frustrating for you.” Then be quiet. Usually, the customer will respond with “That’s right” or “Exactly.” By repeating to
the customer what you think you heard, you lower his or her defenses, and win the right to be heard.
4. Get the facts. After listening, take the initiative in the conversation. Now that the customer has calmed down and feels
you have heard his or her side, begin asking questions. Be careful not to speak scripted replies, but use this as an
opportunity to start a genuine conversation, building a trusting relationship with your customer. To help you
understand the situation, get as many details as possible.
5. Offer a solution. This happens only after you have sufficient details. One thing to keep in mind: Know what you can
and cannot do within your company’s guidelines. Making a promise you cannot commit to will only set you back.
Remember, when offering a solution, be courteous and respectful. Let the customer know you are willing to take
ownership of the issue, even if it was out of your control. Take charge of the situation and let the customer know what
you are going to do to solve the problem.
A quick follow-up phone call a few days later to make sure everything is OK is icing on the cake. Even a small
gesture of apology can turn this interaction from disaster to legendary. The cost could be minimal—maybe a simple
upgrade on the customer’s next purchase or a small gift certificate. A simple gesture like this could result in a future
referral or a positive word-of-mouth marketing recommendation.
When you resolve customer complaints successfully, you will better understand their needs, retain them as loyal
customers, and enhance your business.

How to handle customer complaints

 Small Business Guides

7 min read
Most small businesses will receive complaints at one stage or another. But it's how you deal with them
that matters. We sat down with CustomerSure, a customer feedback business application, to hear their
insights about turning a customer complaint into a positive experience.

Opportunity for improvement

When your small business receives a complaint, the natural reaction is for you, as business
owner, to feel defensive. Managing most complaints will be genuine issues from upset or
disappointed customers. They aren't trying to make trouble for you – they're letting you know
that your business has made a mistake.

Guy Letts, Managing Director of CustomerSure, says it’s important you don't take offence when
you receive a complaint. Instead, try to see the issue from the customer's point of view. It's not
always easy, but if you can manage this then you'll learn about the areas of your business that
can be improved or changed. And that in turn will win you more customers.

Why you should embrace complaints

The most successful, customer-focused companies embrace complaints – because complaints

are unsolicited feedback. No surveys, no loaded questions, no focus groups required.

A complaint is raw, direct interaction from a customer and it should be treated as a valuable
source of information about your business.

Customers don't complain just to be rude to you. They complain because they’ve experienced a
problem with the way your business operates and they’re trying to tell you about it.

If you can resolve their problem, you'll also be resolving the problem for other customers who
have experienced it but didn't have the time or energy to complain.
Understand the customer's perspective

It's common for complaints to be made due to growing frustration. Customers don’t usually
complain aggressively about minor issues – it's when those issues aren't properly dealt with
that problems start to occur.

This is the typical experience most complaining customers go through:

 They approach you with a request.

 They see no movement to resolve the issue.
 They complain.

The majority of customers who complain are sensible, normal people who’ve taken steps to try
to find a reasonable solution first. When their efforts are ignored or badly handled, they
understandably become upset.

In general, customers complain because they feel they've been treated unfairly or had no
response. Nobody likes being ignored, especially when they've paid money for a product or
service.

Resolve the issue to the customer's satisfaction

You need to make sure a customer's issue is resolved properly. Here are six tips to help you do
that:

 Talk to the customer

Sending standard letters or emails might work in some cases. But often you can achieve more,
faster, with a phone call. This will help you properly understand their complaint. It'll also feel
more personal to the customer, and reduce the risk of them misunderstanding the tone of your
response.
 Find out what they want
You might have an idea of what it takes to resolve the complaint. Your customer's idea might be
different. Ask them what they want and listen carefully to the response. You might not be able
to grant every wish, but perhaps you can meet them halfway.
 Ask about wider issues
Is the customer happy generally with your service or product? What other feedback can they
give that might be useful? Asking them questions like this will help them feel engaged and
valued.
 Give something back
You might want to do more than just solve the customer's problem. You could go further –
maybe offer them a discount on their next bill, or send them a voucher for your products or
services. This small additional cost will help you retain them as a customer, and could pay for
itself many times over.
 Confirm your solution
Go through the details of your proposed solution on the phone, then follow up by email or
 letter. Make sure your agreement is fully understood on both sides. Your customer will feel
engaged and it should reduce the risk of disputes and misunderstandings later.
 Keep in touch
Get a member of your staff to follow up with the customer a week later, to check that all is well.
If it is, you have a happy customer. If it's not, find out why and repeat the process. They'll
appreciate your proactive behaviour.

The most successful, customer-focused companies embrace complaints – because complaints are
unsolicited feedback.
Don't ignore complaints

Always respond to a customer complaint. If you deal with the issue quickly enough, you should
be able to resolve it and keep your customer. Remember, it takes a lot more effort and expense
to gain new customers than it does to keep existing ones.

Also, in this connected age, if you ignore complaints you run the risk of your unhappy customer
spreading the word through social media and personal contacts.

Complaints are part of business life. Having an established process for handling them will
minimise their negative impact on your business.

Be prepared for anger and emotion

Complaints can sometimes escalate into emotional, insulting and offensive behaviour. This can
be traumatic for the customer, and also for the person in your business who's handling the
complaint.

Why does this happen? Because customers see your business as an entity, as a single unit –
almost as a person. When that 'person' ignores them or treats them unfairly, they take it
personally, just as if they'd been insulted by a human being.

Customers don't want to complain, in fact most people try to avoid conflict. So when they find
themselves in a position where they feel they have to complain, they are often stressed and
angry about it.

Respond rationally, not emotionally

Customer emotion might come out in a letter, email or phone call when they're interacting with
your business. You can reduce the tension and anger by taking a few sensible steps:

 Make it easy for customers to complain

Provide contact details on your website and your stationery. Go out of your way to ask your
customers for feedback, good or bad. It'll help you refine the way you do business.
 Respond to complaints quickly
Get in touch with your complaining customers within a week – preferably less.
  Be polite
Always treat your customers with respect. Apologise when it's clear that your business has let
down the customer.
 See their perspective
Try to view the events leading to the complaint from your customer's perspective, to
understand what has upset them. This will help you resolve the issue.
 Don't deny that there's a problem
Disagreeing with the customer's perspective is the same as calling them a liar. It's unhelpful and
will upset them further. You might not see the problem, but they clearly feel there is one. Try to
resolve it.
 Have an escape route
When talking to customers who become irrationally angry or abusive, be prepared to say “I'm
sorry, we'll have to stop this conversation now.” Nobody has the right to treat you or your staff
badly.
 Train your staff
Complaints-handling is a delicate business. Send your staff on training courses if necessary, to
help them handle customer complaints.

Look for the underlying cause

If you're receiving numerous complaints about the same issue, there's probably something
wrong with that part of your business.

Fixing that problem will reduce complaints and probably also help your business grow.
Remember: for every unhappy customer who complains about a problem, there could be many
more unhappy ones who don't.

So try to fix the problem at source:

 Get feedback
Wherever you can, ask your customers to tell you how well – or poorly – your business is
performing. Ask specific questions about different areas of your business.
 Talk to your staff
What issues are they seeing? Are the same problems occurring repeatedly?
 Audit your business processes
Go through the way you run your business, perhaps with the help of a business adviser or
mentor, and check that you're doing the right things.
 Make necessary changes
If something isn't working properly, change it. Fixing a broken process might cost money, but it'll
save you more money further down the line.

Use customer complaints to help build a better business

Complaints are inevitable once your business reaches a certain size. But as we've shown here,
you can use them to improve the way your business operates.
Try to develop a company-wide attitude where complaints are opportunities to be welcomed. If
you teach your staff to listen, you'll find out a lot more about what makes your customers
unhappy. And that will also tell you what you need to do to make them happy.

Happy, loyal customers can do wonders for your business. They spend more, enhance your
reputation and help you hit sales and revenue targets. They can also provide your team with a
sense of purpose and drive.

So don't be scared when your customers complain. Handle customer complaints carefully, learn
from them and use them to build a better business.