Use these words to get back unhappy clients

Most businesses are keen on closing a sale but not a relationship with a customer. PHOTO | FILE 

By PETER IRUNGU

In Summary

• Businesses that beat the competition willingly and frequently say ‘thank you’, and apologise.

It is a greater opportunity for any business to hold the customer closer to their chest due to the available externalities surrounding a worthy relationship between the parties.

Even with evolution of technology, businesses need to massage the ego and emotions of a customer to keep on milking this never drying ‘cow’.

Needless to say, great businesses are built on the customer pillar and all efforts to measure how well the customer is satisfied must be enshrined in every creed of a business enterprise.

Great customer experience is critical to modern businesses characterised by era of consumerisation, customer rights crusaders, cut-throat competition as well as changing dynamic consumption tastes and trends.

Many businesses offer the same product and service, but the differentiating factor is the customer service.

World-class customer service assures continued patronage from the existing customers who assure business of repeat purchase.

Delighted customers usually send referrals to great businesses as a sign of satisfaction, which also drives sales. It is hence paramount to ensure customer experience is a key performance indicator in today’s business strategies and this need to be entrenched in the balance score card appraisable for the benefit of business.

It is not what you tell the customer but how you say it that makes or breaks the customer relationship. In some cases, the customer may be in the wrong but it takes intelligence to make the customer feel a winner.

Good language spiced with a nice tone is a good to have in such incidents and businesses have no option to adopt this under any costs for survival purposes.

The use of magic words with amazing therapeutic effect to the customer’s soul is a good ingredient in any business enterprise.

Even in scenarios where the customer is in default of making good his obligation, business must strive to say sorry, thank you... in a bid to sooth the soul of the customer. Nobody minds being pampered even when on the wrong. Customers have emotions and are not robots.

Businesses need to be innovative on best practices to excite emotions of clients especially for dead relationship or ones in limbo. They need to swallow their pride regardless of the volumes traded and go for the lost ‘sheep’.

Strategies like a call, sending appreciations after a good sale as well as notes of apologies or regret letters after a bizarre incident can rekindle the dying relationship. This is one of the ways of increasing sales.

Keeping time on client appointment has been a challenge of many business people who give all sorts of excuses after arriving late.

They need to remember that sometimes clients schedule appointments to measure the level of reliability, trust and availability that can be assigned to a business during periods of need. So, avoid, flimsy excuses and send apologies early. Time is money.

Timely call backs of a diarised meeting with a client, random calling, sending a message of condolence, vote of thanks among others are seen as an assurance that you care and increases the trust and attachment with a client as well as care of their welfare.

Delighted customers defend a brand against all odds, which protects the corporate image and places a lot of social benefits to the business and may end up providing political and economic strengths.

This may imply that budget towards corporate social responsibility may be reallocated to other strategic pillars of the business, for example, research and development.

Provision of flexible, secure and reliable communication channels is a wholesome avenue for customers to air grievances on service quality and businesses need to leverage on this.

Deploying technology to capture customer service issues has been a practice of many businesses but, sadly, they are not analysed, making the effort an exercise in futility.

Data mining on the customer service responses is a great asset many businesses forgot long time ago and thwarts achievements.

The old axiom “doing the right thing, right time and the right place’’ seems to have been thrown in the trash can as many businesses don’t take care of quality issues.

High standards

The need to measure error rates by businesses seems to have lost steam and never bothers businesses. However, they need to set high standards beyond customer expectations to gain loyalty and repeat sales.

Most businesses today are interested in closing a sale and not a relationship with a customer. Relationship management has been left to the elite who can tip while the majority of spenders belonging to the bottom of the pyramid are left uncared for.

There is a need to refresh on the business model of low margins but high volumes anchored on the bottom of the pyramid and has proved a success to many.

It is important to remember and pat internal customers like workers on the back and discuss with them openly.

Mr Irungu is a PhD candidate at JKUAT.