As I sit here writing this, I will be married in three days to a woman that I asked to be my wife last November. This relationship is a true partnership. We act together. We trust one another. She and I, we do things everyday . . . every minute . . . that produces trust in the other person. We know how to take care of one another. We are sincere when we speak to one another. We are competent in our skill of taking care of one another. We are reliable to be there for one another at all times.
It’s consequential to love, honor and cherish someone. If you choose your partner wisely, your capacity to act and take of your concerns, whatever they may be, is increased exponentially. If you choose poorly, it can lead to unprecedented despair and breakdowns that affect your whole life.
I was talking to my teacher the other day and she told me that the same is true in business. You must love, honor, and cherish your customers as well.
Your customers don’t care about the breakdowns you face. They care about their own needs, their own concerns. They are trusting you to take care of them. In fact, they are paying you to do so.
We could write for days on the philosophy of money and what it means when a customer transacts with you. Suffice it to say that it is a unique and wonderful relationship because money allows us to take care of our own families.
As I begin to talk to small business people and how busy they are, they seem to have an attitude like they are entitled to the money BECAUSE they are working so hard instead of focusing, not on what the customer wants, but rather what is the customer concerned about that ONLY YOU can help them with because that’s the business you are in.
This applies to employees too. Your boss is your customer. They need to be loved, honored and cherished too.
What do you think? Can you love, honor and cherish your boss? Your customer? How you think customers should be feel after doing business with you?
First off, congratulations on the upcoming wedding! One of the things that’s been frustrating me lately is when I find out that clients have gone with another company — without even talking to us. I mean, they apparently didn’t even consider us!
But looking at it another way — why were we not seen as expert enough to be the first call? They may not have gone with us due to cost, etc. but when they don’t even call — that’s an us problem, not a them problem.
So – did we not contact them enough? Check in to see if they had any concerns or questions we could help them with? How did we treat them the last time they had contact with us — did we rush them to the door?
Life is trying to teach us something – and if we don’t listen, things won’t change.
Scott,
Thank you for the comment.
How do you measure satisfaction? The first measurement is “Will they call me again?” Customers don’t want the burden of making another business better, so they avoid the cost of telling you why or how they weren’t satisfied.
The world is teaching us something. We can’t take a break if we want to be uncommon and superior. We can’t drop the ball because dropped balls are costly. Very costly. And the customer may never tell us the ball was dropped. We have to recognize that the ball was dropped and fix it so that it doesn’t happen again.
Knowing that customers won’t volunteer information on how to make them more satisfied, what are the ways to try and get that information that actually work?
Scott,
My best recommendation is to learn about what your customers care about before you offer to help them.
Pretend you are the parent and your customers need to be taken care of in your domain. In that scenario you must know, before they even ask, what they need.
Scott,
Without knowing you or your business, am I right to assert that you have offers that are currently being accepted and you are fulfilling today? If so, I suggest working with those client to understand why they ACCEPTED your offer, as opposed to trying to understand why some didn’t. Learn your advantage, learn who accepts your help, then build your identity among them. There will always be prospective clients that don’t accept your help, even if they need it. Try not to be in (too) bad of a mood about this. Instead be in a mood of action to find those clients that will most value your help.
Just my 2 bits…ciao.