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Living on Australia’s Gold Coast the newspapers have been full of articles about poorly perceived customer service in restaurants. And unsurprisingly clients have also been talking about how to improve their customer service.

This article by Susan Oakes  (M4B Marketing) deals with the topic really well hence I have taken the liberty of posting it in full below:

We know customer service is important in marketing your small business. It is one of the key elements that can help you compete successfully against many larger businesses.

However, in certain circumstances it can be a big waste of your time and money.

Here is a story that shows how great customer service by itself can count for nothing in the end.

Within a few weeks of starting my business my computer decided to play up and I needed someone to fix it. I looked in the local paper and found a person who would come to your place of work. “John” turned up on time and fixed the problem quickly.

All in all I was very happy with the service, he appeared to know what he was doing and the customer service was very good.

Later more service was needed including transferring files etc to a new computer. Again the customer service was very good, however each service call took longer, the quality of the work was not always good and once he had to come back three times to sort out a simple problem.

He didn’t charge for all his time which was not good for his business and eventually shut his business down. Apparently others were experiencing the same service quality problems, which meant that he was not keeping his customers or gaining any referrals.

The point of this story is that we can sometimes neglect the very thing we are selling. It can be very tempting especially these days to overpromise on what we can really deliver to our customers to gain business.

To overcome this for products you could:

    * Actually “pull it apart” and see where you can improve the quality
    * See what the product is lacking versus competitors
    * Seek feedback and input from customers

This can be done gradually keeping in mind the costs that may be associated with any improvements.

To overcome this for services you could:

    * Drop those services that you are not great at and just specialise in the ones you doing extremely well
    * Update your skills as there are many courses available
    * Partner with another business to outsource those services where you skills and experience may be lacking

Again, don’t forget to check with your customers as they will provide feedback on what services are the most important.

Taking a moment to examine what you offer can lead to higher revenue, cash flow and happier customers, and your excellent customer service will not be in vain.

How do you improve your products or services?