Customerwellness the best way to prevent ill customers.
Everyone is talkingabout the rising cost of healthcare. Not me. I’m talking about thehealth and well being of your customers.
How healthy is theirrelationship with you?
What’s your cost ofkeeping them healthy?
Is it on the rise?
Let me give you a clueabout the cost of customer health. It pales in comparison to the costof losing them.
Have any customers thatare in poor health?
Have any customers whoare sick (of you)?
Sick of dealing withyou? Dying to replace you?
What’s the cost ofthat?
If your customer isangry — think of them as having business illness. They’re deathlysick of you! Like human illness it has various stages of debility.Once discovered, you will go to all lengths, and spend thousands offruitless dollars to try to save the patient. But if the illness isdiscovered too late, the patient is likely to die.
You could have spentfar less dollars and prevented this illness from occurring. Insteadof waiting until your customer is terminally ill, why not institute acustomer wellness program to prevent illness from occurring in thefirst place?
Hey, wait a minute.That sounds too easy!
HERE’S A WAKE UPCALL: Prevention is the best way, the easiest way, and the leastexpensive way. It’s also the competition prevention way.
Here is JeffreyGitomer’s Customer Wellness Program — a success formulafor serving memorably and keeping customers loyal. (NOTE: It willrequire that EVERYONE on your team buy it, buy in, get in the groove[the customer awareness groove], and get service healthy.)
1. Establishbenchmarks. Minimum acceptable standards, methods of response,decision parameters, a list of every reason a customer calls, a listof every customer complaint, a list of every customer expectation,and a documented “best response” to each of those situations.
2.Empower employees with specific actions to decide based on yourbenchmarks. Empower everyone to say yes. Only empowersenior management to say no.
3. Start with “YES!”Everyone needs to start with attitude training FIRST. Get thereby whatever positive means it takes.
4.Train everyone in your business. Starting with YES! Attitudeand developing fundamental skills in achieving goals, understandingyourself and your co-workers, developing pride, acceptingresponsibility, listening to understand, effective communicating,embracing change, making decisions, memorable service, and working asa team.
5. Develop astandardized “gripe response” formula. Train everyone in yourorganization to execute it perfectly.
6.Ask your customer to help you serve them better by asking, “What’sup Doc?” or “where does it hurt?” Listen to discover yourcustomer’s most important characteristics in a relationship withyou. Ask them where you can improve. Ask them to evaluate yourstrengths and weaknesses in those areas of prime importance to them.Find out their perceptions, and match them to yours. Modify or changeyour characteristics and perceptions to meet theirs.
7. Evaluate your ownstrengths and weaknesses. Make a plan for weakness improvementthat has a deadline and measurable results.
8. Identify yourcompetitive advantages (your super strengths). Play to those asoften as possible. To identify them, ask customers.
9.Stay in front of your customer. More than your competition.Develop tools that aid that process (newsletters, faxes, articles,gifts, tickets).
10. Train everyoneto serve exceptionally and memorably every time a customer isencountered. Treat every customer as though they were acelebrity.
11.Surprise your customers as often as you can. Exceed theirexpectations in a memorable way. You know what it feels like when youare surprised — do it to someone else. Get people talking about you.
12.Decide you are willing to go the extra mile. Sometimes extraeffort is required to make service happen. You have to have awillingness to go the extra mile to achieve it.
12.5 Your reportcard is unsolicited referrals. Unsolicited referrals are themeasure of your success, the testament of your quality, and yourability to serve.
Think you can do it?Think you and every co-worker in your company can make customerwellness happen?
Want my opinion? Youhave no choice. Wellness and healthcare are two of the biggest issuesin America. Make the wellness of your customers is yourbiggest issue.
If you want the formulato customer loyalty, go to www.gitomer.com, register if you’re afirst-time visitor, and enter the word LOYALTY in the GitBit box.
