Play out this scenario with me. You are looking to switch your email service for your business. With today's cloud computing there must be some great new solutions out there that are as good or better than using Microsoft, right? After a little research on Google, you identify a couple companies to contact and you fill out their form on their web site. How long do you think it should take a company, who sells online email services, to email you back? Remember you are a customer looking for a new, better, updated solution for your growing business.
Answer: 10 minutes.
If you are selling on the web and you want to BE better than everyone else you need to be DOING IT better than everyone else. If you cannot react to a sales inquiry within minutes of it being submitted to you, you are conducting your online business all wrong, and I will prove to you why in my scenario below, but first two more examples.
Two months ago I ran across a site called Living Social. It is like Groupon in that business can offer a deal to Living Social's subscriber base or you can go to the Living Social site and search for your city and browse deals. Cool, right? This business is booming and Groupon just turned down a $6 billion offer from Google to buy them. A ridiculously stupid move as Groupon will soon have 10 more competitors doing the same thing as them and they will be fighting to keep what they have. $6 billion. Wow.
Okay I got sidetracked. So I was intrigued by Living Social and wanted to see about potentially partnering with them as I had a client interested and another that I knew would be interested. I filled out their online form and waited. Then I waited some more. Finally after two weeks, I sent a follow up email. Still no response. After a month and a half, I sent an email, copied anyone I could find at Living Social, and finally got a response from their help department. It told me to email the original email address I sent to almost two months ago. Really? Not only is this bad, Bad, BAD customer service, overall they have given off a response of "we are just too busy to deal with you". And I am a potential partner to bring in more business to them!
I got frustrated and decided to go to Groupon and try the same thing. Believe it or not, it's been over a week and the same thing has happened. I hear Groupon is booked 3 months out now because they are so busy. Let me get this straight, you think people are going to wait 3 months to advertise with you when they can go somewhere else sooner and do the same thing? How much did you just turn down from Google?
How can you call yourself a successful company if you are turning customers away? That kind issue would keep me up at night as a business owner. Knowing there are people out there that want to pay me money for my product and my customer service is so dysfunctional that I can't get to them.
So here is my scenario, you decide who you want to do business with.
You decide you are in the market for tires and heard you can get really good deals online. You go to two different web sites and fill out their form asking questions about your specific vehicle and a recommendation for the best tire. Tire Company A responds within 15 minutes, answering your question and directs you to the link where you can go back to their site and purchase the tires they recommend. Company B responds two days later answering the question but telling you to go to their site to figure it out. Who are you more likely to do business with? My bet is Company A.
The speed at which you respond to inquiries is vital to doing business, online or offline. In the same scenario above let's say I called two local tire shops. Company A was completely responsive, helped me figure out what I needed, and offered to give me a ride. Company B said "I have two people waiting, can you call me back?" Who are you more likely to do business with?
There is nothing more important to being successful than customer service. It can make or break you and its important you have your employees who are in direct contact with customers be excellent customer service people.
Often time's clients will ask me "How do I teach good customer service?" While to some extent you either have the skills or you don't, you can train employees to be better at it. Here are some ideas to communicate to them:
- Follow the Golden Rule - Treat people how you want to be treated. If we all did this the world would be a much better and less hostile place but think about it in terms of customer service. How do you want to be treated when you sit down at a restaurant, call about tires for your car, or fill out a form online? Now do that for your own customers.
- Record calls or review email inquiries - One of the most revealing ways to see how your employees are doing is to have calls recorded. They are excellent for training purposes and I helped many companies improve their customer service skills just by letting them listen to themselves on the phone with customers. There are many phone tracking services that can help set this up for you. Similarly reviewing emails that are sent out to inquiries can also be revealing. Are you answering the questions? Are you asking for the business? Not asking for the business is one of the biggest mistakes customer service employees can make. "Can I schedule you an appointment to bring in your car for those new tires?", "Would you like me to get the paperwork started?" or even "Would you like fries with that?"
- Call your competitors - secret shop your competitors and see how they do it. Find out what they are doing well and implement that at your own company. You know who your competitors are and who is doing well, steal some ideas and make your customer service experience better for your customers.
Always remember that there are others out there that do what you do, and they want your customers. You usually don't get more than one chance to show your customer why they are at the right place; don't screw it up by crappy customer service. $6 billion offers don't come along every day.