Wednesday, April 3, 2013

CUSTOMER SATISFACTION?

My subject this week was scheduled to be something entirely different but I can't resist discussing my difficult encounters with a company I am almost begging to do business with.

Our company and my wife and I personally are in the process of moving from our current location and that event is to take place in about a week. In preparation for the move we have had to make the usual amount of phone calls to connect various services etc. You are all familiar with the drill.

Many of you have probably seen the commerical of a certain satellite TV provider advertising how easy it is to move with their service. Just pick up the box, take it with you and they'll hook it up for you at the new location. Something got lost between their operations department and their advertising department. It would serve them well to have a meeting to discuss what is really happening.

I now have completed 6 calls to this company without any satisfaction. I was actually told by two of their representatives that getting the service hooked up at the new location was my problem, they provided the boxes, how I got service was not their problem. Since they have a contract with the building owner, I cannot just call up another service provider, I must work my way through the issue.

It got me thinking about the industry we are in. Do you have any customers that have tenants that would like to switch providers but can't because the building management signs the contract? Do you take some of the tenants for granted knowing they don't make the final decision or have the power to influence the decision? Do you really strive to have everybody in the building happy? I know, I know, that is impossible but the key word here is strive. Do you strive to keep everybody happy? Is there a disconnect between what you are selling and what you are delivering? Have you read your own advertising literature lately? Have you shown it to the operations department?

You see, someday one or more of the people in those buildings you clean may be in a position to purchase one or more of the services you provide and they will remember how they were treated by your organization back when. Do you "strive" to always provide customer satisfaction or have you more than once said "we don't do that".

I remember several years ago sitting in a consulting client's office and heard him say at least 3 times to different customers who called, "we can do that". I asked him about that phrase and he said they made it a company policy to always go out of their way to provide the customer with satisfaction and many times that meant finding a sub contractor to perform some work that he wasn't capable of doing. I remember him telling me that they didn't always make a lot of money on each of these special requests but he had been sucessful in developing the reputation among his clients of 'getting things done". They knew by calling him that the problem would be solved. It helped solidify his relationship and avoided the "going out for bid" process because the customers were concerned that another vendor may not be able to provide all the special services that my client could. Great concept, isn't it?

"We can do that" can be a difficult culture to establish in a company. If you are use to doing "only the specs" and have trained your staff accordingly, it can be culture shock to now say you are going to be an umbrella service provider. I know I had difficulty in my own organization creating that change in thinking, especially among my supervisors who didn't want any more work. It was just easier, when a customer asked at night, to say "we don't do that". For the most part we succeeded in changing to a "we can do that" company but it was a challenge.

What changed some attitudes among our staff was when they saw customer retention increasing because customers didn't want to risk losing their one stop phone call shopping. It sure made missing that trash can that before was a major issue seem like not a very important little blip in the grand scheme of things.

So...how about you? Are you taking some or all of your customers for granted? Are you saying "we don't do that" when a phone call to a sub contractor would endear you to that customer? In this day of e-mail and texting it is pretty easy to forget to get in front of the customer and tell them how much you appreciate their business and let them know all the services you can provide and that you want to be their service provider and not just the office cleaners. Let me challenge you to personally visit each of your customers this month and show your appreciation for their business. Some of them may be shocked to see you at a time you are not asking for a price increase.

By the way, while you are visiting with them ask them if their are any other facility services that you could provide that would help ease their workload. I know I just said that in the previous paragraph but I want to see if you are paying attention and it is very important. They might just be struggling with something that would be easy for you to provide and/or compliments what you are now doing. You will never know if you don't ask.

I will let you know how I resolve my issue.

Till next time.

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