Have you ever considered premier customer service to be a part
of your advertising budget? I am envisioning glazed looks and a
sudden shift in interest. Since I don't want you to tune this
out I'll jump right into the details.
If you have an unhappy customer you will also find that most of
them will become advertisers for your business. Of course they
won't be the type of advertisers you are looking for.
In the past, radio advertising representatives were often told
by potential advertisers they didn't believe advertising worked,
but if that radio station ad rep were to tell the customer,
"Well, we'd be happy to provide advertising that points out the
negative aspects of your business at no cost because we'd like
to prove to you that advertising works," the business owner
would typically back peddle. In this case the advertiser knows
that advertising works they either don't want to advertise or
their budget won't allow them to do so – but they certainly
don't want negative advertising.
The truth is negative advertising is acted on by more consumers
than positive advertising. You can point out all the positives
you want, but if you have a customer service issue that you
don't take care of, the damage of negative advertising may be
subtle, but it will impact your business in a negative way. If
you have too many unresolved customer service issues the damage
may be hard to overcome.
So, you see, the truth is premier customer service should be a
part of your advertising budget. That's right, you should
consider spending some money to achieve quality customer
service.
A happy customer will be more likely to pass along word of
mouth and email referrals. You may never know whom they told,
but if you build trust in positive customer service you can be
certain it can be nothing less than positive for your company.
As with any advertising it can be hard to pinpoint how and when
an individual heard about your business, but quality customer
service will reap long-term benefits.
Too many businesses view customer service as something they
will `try to do their best at'. If you don't put together a
specified plan of action in dealing with customers you will
probably drop the ball and you're failure to communicate will be
noticed.
Look at it this way; your customer already placed trust in you
for their original purchase. If you can be decisive in your
handling of customer complaints you are essentially enlisting a
new form of advertising. Word of mouth is a form of advertising
that has always been a positive to business. It doesn't matter
if your business is homegrown or an offshoot of an existing
brick and mortar corporation. Help your customers find a reason
to come back for more.
There will always be water cooler conversations, make sure when
the subject of your business comes up somewhere in the world
today the comments from at least one knowledgeable customer
places you in the `websites to investigate' file in the minds of
co-workers.
