Customer service is the backbone of almost any company. You can have the best product on the market. If your customer service stinks, it won’t matter. The Freight Rate Company can promise cheap shipping rates, but if we don’t follow through with the best customer service, people will go elsewhere next time to move their freight.

But there are other aspects about customer service many do not think about. Or they are relying on traditional models of customer service, some of which do not apply today. In addition, some customer service “musts” are actually myths.

Let’s examine some of these other aspects:

• You have both external customers and internal customers. – This is a concept I learned while working at Cargill, Inc. Our overall goal is to serve our external customers – the clients. However, everybody on the team within the company has separate roles to see that happens. There will be times when a co-worker will need something from you in order to satisfy that client. At that point, they are not a co-worker. They are an internal customer. If you treat them as a co-worker, it affects their ability to satisfy the needs of the external customer.
• “The customer is always right” is a myth. Yes, we want to do all we can for our customers. But there are times when customers are wrong. Not to long ago, I was in a Michael’s store. They have a custom framing department and I listened as a customer berated (and very loudly) the poor woman behind the counter who was doing her best to help. He kept asking ridiculous “gotcha” type questions. This went on for nearly 10 minutes before a store manager stepped in. I don’t know what the end result was, but I would have told him to take his business elsewhere. It can be hard to replace a customer, but one customer should not come at the expense of the team who works for you.
• Don’t wait to respond to customers. I’ve heard it all before. “I was in the middle of a big project!” or “I was out of town!” or “I was in meetings all day!” When I say “Don’t wait” it does not mean you have to attend to what the customer needs at that given moment. But you should, at the very least, acknowledge their communication. 90% of the time a client is calling to inquire about something that is not urgent. They’re not calling in or emailing with the expectation you drop whatever it is you’re doing and tend to their needs (though some do and for that, see point 2). But don’t ignore them either. I worked for a company where I had clients calling me because their assigned account manager would not acknowledge them. “I can’t even tell if she’s there anymore because she won’t even acknowledge she read my email!” It’s takes 10 seconds to hit reply and say, “I’ll look into this and have an answer back to you within _______________.” That’s it.
• Don’t lie to customers. It sounds like a no-brainer, right? But it happens quite often. The culture starts at the top. I actually heard an executive say the following: “Don’t tell customers we cannot do something. That’s not good business.” Really. Apparently, lying to them is good business. Again, that kind of culture runs downhill. So people in sales are afflicted with YWCDT syndrome. “Yeah we can do that!” when “we” actually cannot. It’s not to say a company can never do what the client is asking for, but what you get from lying and saying you can? It’s often the hope of the people at the top, that whatever “it” is can be implemented in order to satisfy the request. In almost all cases, the customer is left disappointed because it does not happen.

Do you agree? Disagree?

What would you add to the list?

Success in business goes hand in hand with great leadership. Businesses with poor leadership can thrive for awhile but over time, it will harm the business. Attitudes within the company reflect the leadership.

There is always a benefit to reading business blogs. Combining that with great blogs about leadership is even more of a benefit. Below is a list of some of the business and leadership blogs you should be reading every day:

• Seth Godin – Godin is the kind of person that takes conventional business thinking and turns it on its head. Nobody understands better that we exist in a whole new world with regard to business than at any time before in history.
• Michael Hyatt – Michael was recently the CEO for Thomas Nelson Publishing. He retired to focus on writing and speaking. His blog is a can’t miss resource for leadership. His insights are applicable to business and to everyday life.
• Dale Carnegie – Mr. Carnegie passed away nearly 60 years ago but his legacy lives on. This blog focuses on personal skills and simple sales strategies that can pay off. There is a reason why ‘How To Win Friends & Influence People’ is still a successful book despite having first been published just over 75 years ago.
• Small Business Trends – Practical advice, news, strategy and plenty of tips. If you run a small business, this is an indispensable blog.
• Chris Brogan – Social media is no longer “becoming” an important tool for small business and enterprise business alike, it is an important tool. There is however, a strategy to using it. Brogan offers many insights in that regard.
• Duct Tape Marketing – A blog dedicated to small business marketing. Their tag is “Simple, effective and affordable.” Check it out.
• ProBlogger and Tentblogger – Contrary to what you may hear around the interwebs, blogging is not “dead” at all, particularly in the small business world. Darren Rowse and John Saddington both provide strategies for amping up your blogs.
• Quicksprout – Good SEO is critical in today’s world, particularly for the small business that doesn’t have the marketing resources of a major corporation. Quicksprout provides strategies, insights and tips into the world of SEO and online marketing. Invaluable stuff here.

This is just a small list. Please share in the comments some of the blogs from your own list!

It’s something heard all too often.

“We have good customer service.”

For some people, “good” is just not good enough. We’re going to cover in more detail in our series how critical customer service is in the freight shipping business. But it applies anywhere. From Accenture comes this sobering report:

Two out of three (66 percent) consumers switched companies – including wireless phone, cable and utilities – as a result of poor customer service in 2011 even as their satisfaction with the services provided by those companies rose, according to new research released today by Accenture (NYSE: ACN). The research findings pose new challenges for marketers as they focus on building customer loyalty and improving market share in a very competitive business environment.

More:

The survey also found that fewer than one-quarter (23 percent) of consumers surveyed feel “very loyal” to his or her providers, while 24 percent indicated that they had no loyalty at all. And, only half (49 percent) indicated that they are strongly influenced by at least one loyalty program offered by their service providers.

If You Promise, Deliver!

This was the most startling part of this survey:

The study found that consumers rate “having the service experience match the promise a company makes to me up front” as one of the most important areas of customer service. Yet the greatest service frustration cited is a provider’s failure to deliver on the service experience promised up front.

The last thing you want is a former customer telling others, “This company is good at what they do, but when they promise something, they don’t follow through.”

Don’t provide good customer service. Provide outstanding customer service. If not, you may find some customers looking elsewhere.