If I had to give one simple answer to this question I would have to say communication is the biggest weakness of many businesses. It frustrates me no end because it really is such an easy issue to remedy.
A business owner can find a pile of money to set up a business, rent premises, fit it out, find staff, advertise, build a website and do everything else right to get customers knocking down the door – and then they bugger it up by failing to deliver when it comes to communication. They take forever to respond to a customer enquiry, promise to get back to you and never do, fail to take the right instructions or orders, make you chase them or they simply ignore you. We have all experienced this frustration time and time again.
In the past ten years business has been pretty darn easy, in fact it came to us. I am not so sure it will be that easy in the next few years. As customers we will have a lot of choice and most of us will not accept second best anymore. This is going to be a shock for many business owners who will wake up one morning to an empty shop and a very quiet phone because they didn’t react quickly enough. Their customers finally got sick of being ignored or not valued.
Now is the time to really service our customers. Follow up and deliver on our promises. If there is an issue call them don’t make them chase you. Listen to what they want and most importantly make sure you give it to them. Look at response times to emails – taking a week to get back to a customer is not OK. Using the excuse that you are busy is not what a customer wants to hear – because this is implying that your time is more valuable than your customers time. From my experience most people who are poor at communicating are generally disorganised.
Generally we put a lot of time, money and effort into getting new customers but very little of anything to keeping them. Anyone who wants their business to not just survive but to actually grow stronger in the year ahead needs to sit down and have a good long look at how they communicate with their customers. Find ways to improve response times, make follow up a must do activity within your business, listen to what your customers are saying and build a reputation for being a business that delivers what it promises and one that communicates with its customers.
To me this is a real opportunity for any business owner to not only strengthen the business they already have, but to also increase word of mouth referral. Quality communication leads to loyalty. We are in a time where surely we want as many loyal customers as we can get? And best of all the cost is zero.
So when other businesses around you are panicking, cutting costs and staff numbers, taking no positive action and lowering their level of service, there is an opportunity to leap to the front of the pack simply by talking to your customers and giving them what they want. Pretty simple stuff really, with awesome results.
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