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297Chapter 18: Enhancing Customer Service

ߜ Offer special, customized favors and follow through with exceptional
delivery.

ߜ Keep records on customer wants, needs, special requests, and past
favors so you can surpass your service efforts in the future.

ߜ Increase communications with customers, lapsed customers, and service
staff.

ߜ Polish your first impression (see Chapter 6) by improving the way you
greet customers by phone, mail, e-mail, online, and in person.

ߜ Be open to new ideas. If customers ask for something, get it. If they com-
plain, fix it.

ߜ Create a customer service environment. Put pens where people need
them, chairs where they want to sit, reading material where they’re apt
to be waiting, courtesy phones in convenient, quiet areas, supply after-
hour contact options, and on and on.

ߜ Go the extra mile — and empower your staff to do the same.

Nurturing Concerns and Complaints

Use customer complaints to lead your business to service improvements and
satisfied customers. Follow these tips:

ߜ Talk with customers. Listen for direct and indirect complaints along
with suggestions for how you can improve your service.

ߜ Encourage complaints. A complaint handled well leads to loyalty.

ߜ When you receive a complaint, first deal with the customer, then
deal with the problem. Let the person talk, hear the full story, listen
to the degree of disappointment and the level of anger, and then make
amends — quickly. Don’t make excuses or blame others and don’t
simply complete a complaint form. Resolve the issue with a refund, an
alternate product, or whatever feels like a fair trade for the customer’s
inconvenience. Then, once the customer is calmed down and out the
door, take actions to see that the problem doesn’t happen again.

ߜ Treat returned products as nonverbal forms of customer complaint. If
products are coming back, either they’re faulty or your communication
was unclear and the product was misrepresented. Similarly, watch what’s
backlogged as an indicator of unmet consumer demand.

ߜ Encourage customer pickiness. Businesses that win customers for life
create discerning and demanding customers with expectations so high
that no other business can rise to the occasion.