customer care | The Age of the Customer – by Jim Blasingame

“Thank you” is golden, “No problem” is a problem

July 30, 2014 10:47 am , admin

It has happened to all of us: You’re being waited on at a restaurant, buying a product or returning something to a merchant, and as an employee is delivering some kind of service you say, “Thank you.”

Good for you; your mother would be so proud. But she wouldn’t be impressed by what has become an unfortunate response to thank you. After you say thank you for having your water refilled or your order completed, there is sadly a good chance the employee will say, incredibly, “No problem.”

So, from this response are you now to think that simply allowing service to be delivered is some sort of problem you’ve created, for which forgiveness should be granted? Should you feel relief that you’ve been redeemed by this person with “No problem” absolution?

Clearly, American English has devolved to a level that makes many of us nostalgic for casual. It’s difficult to pinpoint where things ran off the rails. But somehow the sublime “it’s my pleasure” has deviated into the subpar “no problem.”

Well, my friends, let’s get one thing straight: No problem is a problem. When small business employees say no problem to a customer instead of you’re welcome, it’s a serious problem that over time could be the equivalent of a business death wish.

Think I’m overreacting? How much money do you spend getting a customer to do business with you? How much energy and resources do you invest into making sure your products, pricing, display, etc., are just right? How many sleepless nights do you spend worrying about how to compete with the Big Boxes?

Now that we’ve established the enormity and consequences of these answers, are you sure that no employee of yours ever causes one of your customers to think — even subliminally — that the mere fact that they do business with you could be some kind of problem?

In The Age of the Customer, the only thing unique about your relationship with a customer is the experience they have with you — how they FEEL about doing business with you. Everything else is a commodity. Everything!

So, pray tell, in what universe does “no problem” help your business maximize the positive emotions of an excellent customer experience? Stop saying it, and train your employees to stop saying it. If success is your goal, this is non-negotiable!

There must be 39 different ways in the English language to express your delight in serving a customer without saying “no problem.” Use one of them.

Write this on a rock… In The Age of the Customer, “Thank you” is golden, “No problem” is a problem.

Posted in: Age of the Customer, Customer Care , Tagged: age of the customer, business, communication, courtesy, customer care, customer communities, employees, Jim Blasingame, manners, small business, training

Do you know how customers are finding you?

July 24, 2014 11:30 am , admin

In the old days, when someone would call or come in the door of your business for the first time, you would ask them how they found you. And since it’s not your customer’s job to catalog such things for future retrieval, you probably had to help them a little by reciting examples of where you might have spent your marketing budget: an ad on the radio, TV, newspaper, Yellow Pages, a Little League uniform, etc.

Here in the second decade of the 21st century, asking how customers find you is still important, but with one new element: For the past 10-15 years, you should also include, “or did you find us online?”

Not too long ago, saying “our website” instead of “online” would have been appropriate. Today, online is best because customers can find you in other places on the Internet, including the social media and customer review platforms, even if, Heaven forbid, you don’t have a website.

The question is not whether your company is “out there” online today, but rather to what degree and – this is so important it will be on the test – what is being said about your business.

We wanted to know how much small businesses are attributing sales performance to the Internet, so recently we asked our radio and online audience this question: “How much of your 2011 sales do you think will result from some kind of Internet activity, even as simple as people just finding your business mentioned online?” The results made me very happy. About 90% of our respondents said they would be able to attribute some sales in 2011 from the Internet.

Breaking the numbers down, over 50% said less than half of 2011 sales would be attributed to online activity. The next number is really exciting: About one-fourth said they would see more than half of their sales from the Internet. And finally, the bookends: Those who said all of their sales would come from the Internet were almost the same – around 10% – as those who recorded a goose egg because (read this with a nasal whine), “We don’t have a website.”

As the Age of the Customer™ becomes the marketplace norm, your customers are increasingly demanding more connection and support from you with online resources. Any company that is not making at least some effort to meet the growing online support demand will experience the painful death of irrelevancy.

Write this on a rock … You don’t have to win the online race to be successful, but you do have to show up and compete.

Posted in: Age of the Customer, Customer Care, Future Thinking , Tagged: age of the customer, business, customer care, customers, Jim Blasingame, sales performance, small business growth, small business success

Forge the customer goodwill alloy of “Thank you”

July 3, 2014 11:00 am , admin

What would you pay for a small business silver bullet to win the fight with Big Boxes and online competitors?

Before you get overwrought about how you would come up with the cash for something so valuable, here’s good news: It’s free and you already possess it.

There are several versions of this silver bullet, each to be used at an appropriate time and engagement, but here’s the default version and the most important one: “Thank you.” I promise, if your customers never leave behind their hard-earned cash without hearing a heartfelt, “Thank you,” your business would become a competitive force to be reckoned with.

Here’s an expanded version: “Thank you for your business.” Long after this sentiment enters the ears of customers, when they’re considering the next purchase of what you sell, they will remember that you looked them in the eye and lodged these words in their heart: “Thank you for your business.”

Here’s one more, in response to a request or when a customer thanks you first: “It’s my pleasure.” And if you really want to pull off the silver bullet hat trick, say, “Thank you. It’s our pleasure to serve you. We really appreciate your business.”

Photo courtesy of lifecare-edinburgh.org.uk

Saying thank you – and making customers believe it – forges what I call the “Customer Goodwill Alloy.” Just as steel is created when you forge iron with other elements, customer goodwill is created when values, commitment and engagement are forged in the crucible of training, practice and execution, causing your employees to say “Thank you.”

We all know what happens when steel is left exposed and unmaintained: Corrosion causes it to revert to its base elements as rust. But do you know what happens when the “Customer Goodwill Alloy” is left unmaintained and exposed to the elements? It sounds like this, “No problem.” Or, “Here you go.” Or, “Have a good one.” Or even worse – nothing! Not even eye contact!

If you want to compete in The Age of the Customer, you can’t allow your business to revert to customer service rust. More than a means to an end, it must become a way of life to forge and maintain the “Customer Goodwill Alloy” every hour of every day of every year.

If your door is open, if your phone is ringing, if your website is working, customers must know how important they are to you. Otherwise, save yourself a lot of money and anguish and close up your business now. The Big Boxes have beaten you.

Paraphrasing Paul Simon so customers don’t leave you, there must be 50 ways to express your delight in serving a customer instead of “No problem.” Use them! Words matter!

Write this on a rock …“No problem” is a big problem that can be solved by simply saying “Thank you.”

Posted in: Age of the Customer, Customer Care , Tagged: age of the customer, business, customer care, customer goodwill, Jim Blasingame, small business

AUDIO: Are you meeting your customers’ new expectations?

June 27, 2014 3:11 pm , admin

It’s the Age of the Customer, and your customers want to know about your business. But it’s not just the business practices they want to know about. They want to see your business from every angle.

Your prospects and customers have new expectations. Jim Blasingame explains that if you’re doing business the way you’ve always done it, you won’t meet your customers’ new expectations and your business will not survive.

Click the image below to start the recording.

Posted in: Age of the Customer, Customer Care , Tagged: age of the customer, business, customer, customer care, Jim Blasingame, online content, radio, radio program, small business

Don’t be stupid — eliminate barriers of customers to your small business

June 18, 2014 10:00 am , admin

A while back, I needed to reach an acquaintance who worked in a local branch of one of the national banks. When I looked for the local number in the phone book, all I found was a toll-free number that connected me to a computer answering system. That’s right – a local business didn’t publish a local number in the phone book, and here’s the stupid part: The answering system didn’t offer an option to connect to any branch or person.

From this one encounter stemmed a powerful story and four equally powerful lessons I thought worth sharing to big and small businesses out there.

Lesson 1 – Don’t create barriers to customers and prospects.

If you have any, take them down NOW! I know you think you don’t, but in the name of efficiency and the advent of new technology, you might.

Undaunted, I called a local board member of that bank who gave me the local number (yes, they had one). When I called, I was told that my acquaintance, a loan officer, had recently been laid off.

“Why was he laid off?” I asked. Since the bank was losing money and, for the sake of the stock price the CEO needed to impress the stock analysts with his guidance on the next quarterly conference call. So an edict came down that almost 2,000 employees across the company would have to hit the bricks. Never mind how valuable they were, or what such cuts would ultimately do to the bank’s long-term ability to compete, “We’ve got to cut costs and the quickest way is to cut payroll.”

Lesson 2 – Quarterly goals are important for planning.

For a publicly traded company, quarterly guidance to stock analysts is a counter-intuitive and dangerous practice for long-term success. Small businesses have to remember that customers don’t buy based on quarterly schedules, so don’t let your quarterly pressure on sales people cost you lost business and, worse, lost relationships.

I learned later that even though my acquaintance was the top loan producer, he was the last one hired, and also the first to go. Now he’s no longer a payroll drain on this bank, but he is now kicking the backside of his former employer as a high-producer with a competitor.

Lesson 3 – In the 21st century, seniority doesn’t trump productivity.

Today, this bank is one of those that had to be bailed out by the government. The bank CEO, who allowed blind devotion to stock price undermine the tried-and-true management practices of building a strong team and taking care of customers, is now no longer a drag on that bank’s payroll.

How much business did this bank lose because of that phone answering strategy? What would have happened if this bank CEO had simply installed an answering system that made sure anyone who wanted to call a local branch could not only find that number easily, but quickly connect to a local person? The answer might be that the CEO would still have his job, and so would my friend and several hundred other former employees. Who knows? By simply adopting a customer-friendly phone system, this bank might have actually needed to hire more employees to handle all of the new business.

Lesson 4 – If you need more sales revenue, make sure your organization’s people, systems, and policies aren’t getting in the way

Recently, on my small business radio program The Small Business Advocate Show I talked about the potential dangers of quarterly policies with sales management expert and Brain Trust member, Skip Miller (m3learning.com), author of The Ultimate Sales Tool Kit. Take a few minutes to listen to what this smart guy has to say and be sure to leave your smart thoughts.

Posted in: Age of the Customer, Customer Care, Storytelling , Tagged: age of the customer, business plan, business planning, business success, customer care, Jim Blasingame, small business, small business success, story, storytelling

The customer is now in control of your business — get over it!

June 11, 2014 10:00 am , admin

The business world is changing. The Age of the Seller is succumbing to the Age of the Customer, and in this new Age, control of the relationship between Seller and Customer has shifted to the customer as well.

This paradigm shift is largely caused by online platforms that are:

1) increasing the access customers have to information about a Seller and its products

2) allowing customers to express and share what they have learned about and experienced with a business.

Photo courtesy of ThoughtBlender

To put two fine points on the first element of the shift, in the new Age:

First, Customers have access to virtually all the information they need before you know they’re interested, and prospects are similarly informed before you even know they exist. Such access to information is changing – or disrupting – the way you market to and connect with customers, as well as how you train sales people. Plus it demonstrates why your greatest danger in the Age of the Customer isn’t being uncompetitive, it’s becoming irrelevant.

Second, the new kid on the block corresponds to a centuries-old marketplace maxim, “If you make customers happy they will tell someone; if you make them unhappy they will tell 10 people,” which describes the ancient practice of word-of-mouth. The theory behind the 1:10 ratio is that all businesses, regardless of size, are motivated to perform, or risk a marketplace indictment by the judge and jury of word-of-mouth.

In the new Age, online platforms have caused word-of-mouth to transmogrify into a powerful dynamic called “user generated content,” aka UGC. This is when customers post online their experiences, questions, praise or condemnation about a seller’s products, services, and general behavior in the marketplace. In the vernacular, it’s word-of-mouth on steroids.

Indeed, if the word-of-mouth maxim were coined today it would sound like this: “Customers may post online their opinion – positive or otherwise – about your business, making it available potentially to millions.” To paraphrase Mark Twain, comparing word-of-mouth to UGC is like comparing a lightning bug to lightning.

In the new Age you have to do two new things: 1) anticipate that customers are already well informed; 2) track and respond to UGC about your business. And how well you do these two will influence whether the new customer control becomes a sales lever, or a disruptor that makes you irrelevant.

It’s the Age of the Customer — get over it.

Posted in: Age of the Customer, Customer Care , Tagged: age of the customer, business, customer, customer care, Jim Blasingame, small business, small lousiness support

Create online customer communities for your small business

May 22, 2014 1:00 pm , admin

A “craze” is something that takes popular culture by storm. A “fad” is a craze that doesn’t last. Social media is currently a craze, but it’s not a fad. And the question is not whether this craze will last, but rather, what will it look like over time and why should a small business care? Consequently, let’s establish a few “social media” points.

Strictly speaking, “social media” is the technology that makes online community building possible, not the community itself. It allows for the creation of and service to online communities, where dialogue and interaction among community founders and members are possible. Ultimately, the term “social media” in a business application should become the more accurate term, “online customer communities.”

Photo courtesy of MySocialAgency.com

In defining community, Webster uses words like association, fellowship, like-mindedness and shared interests. When building online customer communities, we should remember these words. Every small business should create online customer communities, of which there are two primary examples:

1. A company’s profile pages on sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Your company leverages these companies’ platforms. These sites are free but have limited flexibility.

2. Communities founded and hosted by your company, oriented around relationships with customers and prospects. An online community is established when customers subscribe to one or more of your channel offerings in order to receive your information.

A channel is a syndication tool or method of content delivery and service to a community. For example, real simple syndication (RSS), a blog, an email newsletter (ezine), a text blast and Twitter are channel tool examples, through which businesses and their communities exchange information.

Merely having a website isn’t practicing community building any more than owning a piano makes you a musician. But a website can become a platform from which you launch and serve online communities.

There is one critically important thing for a founding company to understand about both of the online customer community types: the company cannot control community behavior. Members – customers and prospects – control the community. A founding company can only create the community and influence it by establishing community values, then serving it via the channels and information it offers, which are requested by members.

Always remember: Customers control online communities, not companies.

Posted in: Age of the Customer, Customer Care, Online Content, Social Media , Tagged: business, business communities, customer care, customer communities, Jim Blasingame, small business, social media

Blasingame’s new law of customer relevance

May 21, 2014 1:00 pm , admin

When you take a photograph, the resulting product is two-dimensional: tall, wide, and flat. But in most cases, you want the photo to actually show depth, where images in the foreground and background are all in focus.

In photographic terms, the range of focus front to back is called depth of field. The way to expand depth of field so more of the subjects in the photo are in focus is to add light. Light creates depth of field.

Photo courtesy of Business2Community.com

If you were given a photo of people who were the most critical to your success, you’d easily recognize your customers in the foreground in perfect focus. But as you look deeper into the photo you’d notice the images behind that first row increasingly drop out of focus with each receding row. The reason is because for most of the history of the marketplace, businesses have gotten away with having a very narrow customer depth of field.

When the coin of the realm was to be competitive, that meant you spent all your time thinking about how to serve the person in the foreground, the first row of your business world: your customers. But as I’ve revealed in the past, being competitive has been trumped by being relevant. And in The Age of the Customer, perhaps the most important component of being relevant to business customers is helping them serve the most important person in their photo: their customers.

Let me say that again with Blasingame’s New Law of Customer Relevance:

If you want to have customers for life, help your customers help their customers.

The way to accomplish this is to increase the depth of field of your customer photo. Light up the view beyond the first row of customers so that the second row is completely in focus. This three-step process works every time:

Identify the customer of your customer.
Find out what your customer needs to do to become relevant to their customer.
Whatever the answer to #2 is, help your customer do that.

Executing this approach is how you acquire customers you almost can’t run off. Because when you help your customers help their customers, they know you’re doing more than just delivering stuff; you’ve become part of their team – integrated and committed, like a true stakeholder.

And if you want to pull off the customer relevance hat trick, light up the third row of your businesses photo: Help your customers help their customers help their customers.

I’ve done it – it’s a beautiful thing.

Achieve maximum relevance with customers by helping them serve their customers.