Your customers aren’t numbers. They are people. A simple greeting is all it may take to personalize your service and start a great relationship.

On her blog Customers Are Always, Maria Palma brought up some excellent points about treating customers. In her post, she quoted the Trainer’s Blog on how to deal with waiting customers:

Acknowledge the customer who is waiting. We all want to be noticed. A smile and a sincere greeting, or “I’ll be with you in just a moment” to the person who has just joined the line goes a long way. Explain to your employees that as long as they don’t engage the second customer at the expense of the person in front of them, they have the opportunity to make both customers feel valued. And, if there was a wait, employees should acknowledge it by saying something like, “thanks for your patience.”

Our family loves to eat at a nearby burrito restaurant Freebirds. Every time we go in and progress towards the front of the line, an employee will greet us and say “we’ll be right with you.” They do all this while they are assembling the burrito for the person ahead of us. No productivity is lost. No other customers lose out because of this greeting. It is efficient, personal, and welcoming.

It is a powerful reminder of what a simple acknowledgment can do for your customers. Customers know they are there, but do they know that you know they are there? Don’t leave it to guessing, say hello and welcome your customers!

You need your customers to be honest in their business dealings with you. Your company’s financial health and long-term viability rely on honesty in your transactions.

Mark Twain commented on honesty:

Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.

source

Money is a powerful force that can affect people’s behavior for good or bad. So how can your company encourage honesty?

Honesty Shouldn’t Be Hard

This past week as I was reviewing our bank statement, I noticed that there was a $600 deposit last month that we didn’t make. The statement didn’t give any details of the source of this amount.

I called the bank to inquire about this mystery deposit. After about 15 minutes on the phone the agent couldn’t help me resolve my issue but told me to talk to the check fraud department.

When I immediately called the fraud department I navigated through the phone tree just to find out they weren’t open yet.

Later that day, I called the fraud department and again waited on hold for quite some time before being helped. I reviewed the details of the deposit again and was told they would investigate it and get back to me.

That afternoon, the fraud department returned my call and told me that the deposit was a clerical error. I asked if the proper owner of the deposit had inquired about the money. They hadn’t.

It shouldn’t take more than an hour making multiple phone calls to correct someone else’s problem.

Encourage Honesty

The majority of people want to do the right thing. Make it easy for them to do it! I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get a clerical error fixed that was in my favor to begin with.

If the process for getting something done right is too complicated and time consuming, even the most honest of us will just give up trying.

Acknowledge Honesty

Honesty should be the foundation of your interactions with customers. However, sometimes customers do something like give back extra change, or tell you that you undercharged them, that not everyone does. In these cases, you should recognize that the customer did something out of the ordinary.

During my phone calls with my bank, I had to ask if other people reported extra deposits to their accounts. They told me “not usually.” Since this was such an odd occurrence I was surprised to be treated like just another caller.

Appreciate Honesty

Thank your customers when you catch them being extraordinarily honest. Tell them that you understand it took some extra time and effort to do the right thing and that both you as the company and any other customers affected are grateful for their honesty.

Happy employees make customer interactions better. Grumpy employees will more often than not, spread their negativity to your customers.

This past weekend we drove on some of our area toll roads for the first time since they were completed. Since we didn’t have the automatic toll tag sticker, we had to stop and pay the attendant.

We stopped at three different toll booths along our way. Every time the toll booth attendant was pleasant, smiling, courteous, and downright friendly. I couldn’t believe it was happening.

In fact, I asked those in the car with me if these attendants weren’t the “happiest toll booth people on earth.”

Doug over at the Service Untitled blog recently asked: “Do happy employees give better service?”

After my trip up the toll road, I’d say: Yes, happy employees do give better customer service!

Instead of thinking about handing over yet another dollar to the toll road, I was struck by the friendliness of the attendant.

In your business, you can establish a great relationship with customers by encouraging your employees to simply be nice people. You can do this through training, role playing, incentives, and observing them in action so you can give timely feedback.

Friendly employees will connect on a personal level with customers and in so doing will eliminate a lot of customer’s concerns or worries. Because customers will be comfortable with you and your employees, their business will follow.

Your advertisements will only be effective if they are targeted to the needs of those viewing them.

This past weekend we drove through the Hill Country here in central Texas out to a pumpkin patch. We took a small, two lane state road that had its fair share of curves and ups and downs. There wasn’t much traffic out on the road and we did see lots of motorcycles enjoying the ride and nice weather.

The drive was through some pretty remote country and we didn’t really see any development or billboard ads. However, when we approached the city of Marble Falls, there was a big billboard outside of town. It was the first one we had seen for miles. I thought it was kind of odd to be out there in the middle of nowhere. Then I saw what it was advertising.

The billboard was for motorcycle insurance. The billboard’s product may not have applied to my family cruising the Hill Country in our minivan but it was very applicable to all those motorcycle riders enjoying the same road we traveled.

It was not coincidence that the insurance company placed their billboard ad where they did.

Ad Placement

Seth Godin, in his book Purple Cow talks about the death of mass marketing and untargeted advertisements. Billboards could easily fall into the “mass marketing” category. Many companies fall into the trap of paying too much to reach too many people that are not potential customers. However, the example we saw out in the Hill Country was brilliantly positioned and it targeted exactly those people that would be riding by on motorcycles.

Laser-Guided Ads

Online advertisements are easily targeted to your audience. Keywords, search patterns, and user tracking information all allow advertisers to deliver ads with precision. How can you target your offline ads with similar efficiency?

Learn where your customers hang out. Find out what will catch their attention. Once you know, go make yourself visible in those same locations.

Spend Time with Customers

It wouldn’t surprise me if someone that worked for the insurance company was out on his Harley cruising the Hill Country and thought, “Hey, this would be a great place for a motorcycle insurance billboard.” How did he know that? Because he was out with the customers doing what they do and seeing the opportunities that other companies are missing.

A great way to advertise offline is by using promo items like personalized pens and other useful products.

Your online application or website must stay current or people will lose confidence in your company. This may seem like common sense but unfortunately as your website grows, there will be pieces that you forget about.

We recently tried to redeem some of our frequent flier airline miles via our credit card’s online website.

I entered that we’d be leaving from Austin and they identified that request as leaving from the Robert Mueller airport. Unfortunately, that particular airport has been closed for years and is now the home of a new hospital, shopping center, and residential developments. I don’t see any flights leaving from there any time soon!

This initial data error completely undermined my confidence in the process, this online application, and my frequent flier credit card. If this one thing was wrong, what else was going to be wrong?

I decided to press ahead since I had little other choice. Unfortunately, things only got worse as my wife and I didn’t even get seats together. And to add insult to injury, they asked for my credit card number again. If this is my credit card company’s site and I logged in, why do I have to answer redundant questions?

Double check your website today to see if there are little blemishes that should be corrected in the information you are presenting.

Set up a regularly scheduled process where you review your site for accurate data.

With frequently reviewed site content, your customers will be assured a fresh, and up-to-date user experience. This will create the confidence needed for people to become (and stay) your customers.

During our summer vacation this year at Bear Lake, Utah we enjoyed their famous raspberry ice cream shakes.

Rumor had it that most of the raspberries aren’t even grown in the Bear Lake Valley any more. This is despite the fact that they have an annual Raspberry Days festival!

So why not just close up shop?

Because people are expecting raspberries when they go to Bear Lake.

So what happens when your product or service depends on something that disappears or is no longer grown or manufactured locally?

You import what you need.

Customer expectations have been established that you’ll provide a particular product as you’ve always done. If you run into supply chain problems, your customer’s expectations don’t automatically dry up. They still want your product.

The Bear Lake ice cream stands and other local businesses helped meet customer demand by importing raspberries from elsewhere. They still make shakes. People still buy them and everyone is happy.

When your business hinges on having the “original” ingredient that you’ve always had, you should start planning your contingencies now. What will happen if you lose that key supplier, principle employee, or real estate lease?

If you’re unprepared, disaster could strike. Be prepared.

When you handle customer returns or exchanges, don’t let your company policy blind you to common sense.

A friend of mine told me about her recent trip to Target. She had purchased a Target brand rug for her home. When she got it home, she realized it was too small and decided to return it to the store.

She had lost her receipt but approached the customer service counter to make the return.

The employee pointed out that their policy had recently changed and that she would need a receipt to make the return for any items over twenty dollars.

The rug was clearly a Target product as it had numerous labels and stickers with their famous bullseye logo and associated verbiage.

My friend asked if she could exchange the product. She would gladly take a store credit since she was going to do some more shopping that night.

The employee’s response was no and that she would need to call a 1-800 number to get the issue resolved.

So there stood my friend and this employee at an impasse. There was no one else in line. Just the two. So why didn’t the employee help her resolve this issue?

Laziness? Lack of education on this process? Indifference?

No matter the cause, this interaction left a lot to be desired.

Contrast this experience with the famous tale of a customer returning a set of tires to Nordstrom.

Nordstrom didn’t sell tires and yet they accepted the return and refunded the money. In our story, Target obviously sold the rug and yet was unwilling to even offer an in-store credit. Ouch!

How your business handles returns and exchanges will influence if customers will want to do business with you again. Don’t let a punitive return policy prevent future sales.

Once upon a time I signed up for an email newsletter. I tried to unsubscribe from this newsletter a few weeks ago.

When I clicked on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email I saw this page:

You’ll notice that there are two radio buttons but no label on them. I clicked the “Change subscription” button and was on my way.

A week or so later I realize I was still getting this guy’s newsletter. What’s going on?

I again clicked on the link at the bottom of the email to unsubscribe and this time I noticed something different:

For some reason, the labels of the radio buttons were white text. They were impossible to see without highlighting the words with the mouse.

So this time I did select the right radio and was on my way. Let’s hope it worked!

This is a great example of how companies try to make it difficult for customers to leave. You can’t keep customers forever. If you try to prevent a customer from leaving by some form of trickery, they will just leave angry. That anger could undoubtedly prevent future business from that customer, not to mention potential business from the friends and family that hear about their experience.