Promote customer loyalty and improve your business today!

Radical customer service and customer minded individuals often boast that they will surpass the expectations of their customers, this is good and encouraging but let us face facts here: Just how many customers can you really spend extra time and costs on to exceed their expectations? We might be able to do it with one or two, but if you intend to go over the top with every customer you meet, I dare say it will take a whale of time to do that and additional costs too. There are fond beliefs in customer service that there is no limit to the frequency that we should aspire to as professionals; now that is a good mind set for business. Some look at the progression from this perspective: Service is doing the minimal, care is taking it to the extra mile, delight is making the customer very happy, ecstasy is ensuring that the customer is extremely happy. If this is true, just how many of us take the majority of our customers to the level of ecstasy?  The honest truth is very few.
A survey I have conducted across numerous service industries from Maritime, through banking and financial organizations onto educational and health care delivery organizations shows that not many customer service people really have the time or can bear the costs to take the customer to the level of delight, not to talk of ecstasy! Well this is okay. Because the secret of good customer service which is applicable across every service and product providing organization in existence today is simply meet the demand of the customer and do it with the least amount of hassle within the minimal amount of time!
Another out come from my research tells me all customers really want is for us to get the job done. Do what you told them you will do and they are satisfied. Not many customers look for over the top service to attract their loyalty. What they really want is to have the service rendered to them with as little effort as possible. If you can make your service almost effortless on the part of the customer he is likely to come back to you for more.
The summary of all these analysis is customer satisfaction leads to loyalty and loyalty on the other hand should lead to profit. Loyalty means that the customer is willing to make an investment of time and resources to encourage a relationship with you and your brand. So how do we promote satisfaction? Here are five things we can put into our service capability that would help us improve satisfaction:

1. We ought to take care of down stream complaints and inquiries so as to reduce the instances of the customer coming back to us for further information. This means don't just solve the problem at hand, look beyond it, try to anticipate what could be next and deal with it.
2. We should train ourselves as customer service people to address the emotional demands of our customers. There are various categories of customers. Some of them want more control of the product you provide, some want you to listen to their opinions about the product, others simply want you to understand how they feel about certain aspects of the product. If we can be a little more empathetic with our customers it would go a long way in helping us understand them and on the long run we will satisfy them.
3. We should make sure that our customer service channels: online( social media, website, automated service) telephone call center, Physical contact center all solve the problems of the customer so they do not have to switch contact approach. If we make all our channels encourage First Contact Resolution processes then it will improve customer satisfaction.
4. We should use feed back from customers to improve the service. Our complaining customers can be our best critics and a viable source to spotting flaws that could be remedied in our service. Feedback helps us to improve.
5. We should make our service as effortless as possible. Effortless service on the part of the customer is really what brings them back. Their satisfaction is not necessarily promoted with over the top attention and service. Meeting the minimal at minimal effort is enough.

If satisfaction breeds loyalty, then your loyal customers would be the evangelists that would help you build your business. Getting new customers through the marketing mix and promotions is not always as easy and as

cost effective as we think. But if you have dozens of loyal evangelists they will promote your service at a cheaper rate and even literally bring the customers to you.