Customer Service With a Capital “S”

The real secret to customer focus and creating customer loyalty is twofold:

1–Provide customer service that exceeds our customer’s expectation.

2–Out perform our competition on customer service.

True customer focus, a Core Value here at Stathakis, isn’t about doing everything right all of the time, it is about focusing on our customers—what they want, what they need and what helps them. Perfect service every time is not the goal, although certainly something to work towards. Every business has a base level of expectation from customers. We expect lines at grocery stores, being on hold too long with our cable company, and a long drawn out negotiation when buying a new car. So too our customers have a baseline of expectation with our industry.

For us to create customer loyalty we have to exceed our baseline, even if just by a hair. If we can focus on the customer and identify the major issues they have come to expect from our industry, we then have our to do list to tackle. When we can avoid making mistakes that customers have come to expect from this industry, we are one step ahead of our competition in terms of service execution.

We must also ensure that our customer service is better than that of our competition. Imagine for a moment that you have two equally competent companies both of whom deliver at or around the baseline of our service expectations. Things are running along smoothly until an issue comes to light. With both companies the issue is the same. One company is responsive, friendly and handles the issue to your satisfaction. The other company is dismissive, seems less than fully interested but handles the issue nearly the same as company one. If asked to make a choice of one company to continue to do business with, which company do you think most people would choose?

A customer-focused business delivers customer service with a capital “S” meaning we make our customers feel special and feel heard. Perception is often reality, and when the companies we work with are responsive and friendly, it colors our perception of how valuable we are. Losing loyal, long-term customers rarely happens because a company makes a mistake, rather, it happens because of a negative experience with a staff member that leaves a customer feeling unvalued and unheard.

Let us never forget that the customer is the sole reason why we are in business. So if we understand that in order to increase customer loyalty, we should counter some of the negative preconceptions customers have of our industry, we need to identify what those are. When we identify what the issues are, we can make every effort to sidestep these particular problems. And when our efforts fall short as they sometimes will, we will make sure that our company is responsive, friendly and delivers customer service with the capital “S” that shines. While this may sound like an overly simplified prescription for customer loyalty, amazingly all too often companies forget true customer focus is the easiest route to loyal customers and continued referrals.