Customer Service - What's That?

True stories of poor customer service abound.

Email to customer from supplier of IT services: "We would like you to consider paying a fixed support fee of £150 per month instead of buying our services on an ad hoc basis."

Customer's reply to IT services supplier, sent one hour later: "Our records show that on average we pay less than £150 per month for your services so please explain the benefit of going to a fixed support fee."

IT services supplier's swift response to customer, sent minutes later: "We consider your response to be unreasonable. We offered you a fantastic deal and you turned it down, so our offer is now for a fee of £300 each month."

Yes, this really happened, in the course of an afternoon last week. No, the IT supplier is not a large, faceless corporation that can afford to upset people now and again. Both the customer and the supplier are small, owner-managed businesses. Needless to say, the customer is now considering sourcing an alternative support provider.

It's amazing how, even in a recession, businesses fail to understand the value of their customers or how to use communication technology effectively. In the situation I related above it's clear that the supplier wrote and sent their final message in haste and in anger.

Let this be a reminder to all of us - always pause before pressing the send button and consider how the customer will react. Because if you upset them you'll probably lose them, and if you lose too many you won't have a business at all.

A good tip to remember: use every engagement with a customer as a marketing opportunity.

Communicate to Succeed

Great communicators are more likely to be successful. That applies to individuals and businesses alike.

This post is prompted by an incident the other day. I won’t bore you with the details; it’s enough to say that someone used the wrong method of communication and, unsurprisingly, the message didn’t get through and the customer was upset.

We live in the communication age and we’re surrounded by an array of communication systems. I’m writing this post on a laptop in my car and even here my communication options include email, Twitter, mobile phone, and text. Not to mention good old face-to-face contact.

Despite our wealth of communication tools, or perhaps because of it, people often choose the wrong tool for the job.

So here are some tips, based on my experience, for using your communication tool box effectively.

1. Telephone – use this for urgent messages and when you need confirmation that it's been received and understood. It’s also one of the fastest ways to get your message across because it allows dialogue.
2. Email – great for sending messages that are not particularly time-sensitive, and it allows for lots of content where required. Ideal when you need to communicate with a large group in multiple locations.
3. Text - invaluable for short, clear messages that you can be reasonably confident of being picked up on quickly; either one-to-one or one-to-many.
4. Twitter - very similar to text messaging but online. But also very different from text messaging because tweets can be read by anyone if they're not direct messages or protected.
5. Face-to-face - use this when your need to deal with complex issues or negotiation. It allows for comprehensive communication including body language and opportunities for questions and answers.

This short guide doesn't cover all communication methods or situations, but if nothing else I hope it makes you think about the tools you use and how appropriate they are to different situations.

Timeliness and complexity are two fundamental issues when choosing how to communicate. It might seem obvious but experience tells me that it's not.

Next time you need to get a message to someone, particularly a customer, make sure you're doing it in the most effective way.