Tag Archive for 'Customer Service'

Is your product the problem?

Published on May 5, 2010 in Continuous Improvement. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

The majority of my time is spent educating and training staff on the value of customer service, store presentation, marketing, customer profiling and ensuring they can keep their food and labour to budget which are all important issues should a store wish to grow sales and/or customer counts on a local level.

Today’s post was found by Andrew Powell of Montreal Canada, sent to Dr Marc Dussault who then forwarded it on to me. It’s a great example of a promotional video for a Quick Service Retail operation.

Many of the business owners I meet and work with are frustrated with their sales and customer counts because they feel that they are doing everything they possibly can to ensure ‘EXCEPTIONAL CUSTOMER SERVICE’ not realizing that the product itself acts as a barrier to sales growth.

What does your business do to measure customer satisfaction of your product and does your business act on this feedback whether positive or negative?

One business has taken the measurement and action to a whole new level not shying away from the negative feedback, they have embraced the feedback and as an entire corporation of 9,000+ stores made the changes that their customers have demanded of them.

Any Fast Food Franchise or independent operator would be well served to create a video that tells ‘their story’ like this. Please enjoy!

Further information on this story can be found at pizzaturnaround.com

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Customer Service Rule #2: A Smile Is Worth A Thousand Megabytes

Published on March 14, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

With the advent of sexy new Point Of Sale (POS) Systems, the line between personal and systemized customer service is getting blurrier by the day. Interestingly, 70% to 90% of what happens with customers is driven by human nature, having nothing to do with technology. We all agree that state of the art technology is a necessity today, but it’s meant to enable human interactions, not disable or interfere with them.[1]

This is so true with quick service retailing.

We have all experienced the customer service representative that ignores us in favor of their computer or POS screen. Trying to make eye contact or just get a response from someone absorbed in data entry can be annoying.

But here’s the thing most retailers don’t realise.

Even if a customer doesn’t remember being ignored, they may (subconsciously) associate your business with an (unknown, but felt) sense of frustration, distance or lack of ‘connection’. Those feelings will build up unbeknownst to the client and they may eventually take their patronage elsewhere.

Customer Service With A Smile

Customer Service With A Smile

The sad part of all of this is it all happens without conscious knowledge or intent. The client simply has no compelling reason to want or desire to return so he or she simply doesn’t.

That’s a killer for a retailer.

So what can you do to optimise the necessary POS data entry while offering outstanding customer service?

POS Customer service Tip #1: Continue reading ‘Customer Service Rule #2: A Smile Is Worth A Thousand Megabytes’

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Your Customers are Gold

Published on March 9, 2010 in Customer Service Tips And Ideas, Positive Training Solutions, Retail Marketing Concepts and Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .
Your Customers Are Made of Money

Your Customers Are Made of Money

I HAVE to break this to you, businesses cannot survive without customers. A business without customers is like a well without out water. Good customer service is the ground water that fills up your well. You’re high and dry without a reputation for taking care of your customers. Plus, the longer you keep customers, the wetter your well, because long term customers are more profitable. A 5% increase in customer retention can boost profit by 25% to 125%

Not digging the well analogy? Here is another way to think about it; your customers are money, gold to be exact, because they appreciate in value as time goes on. You may not think of customers as goods that can be bought or traded, but they’re assets to your company, just like stock investments or an office computer. They are them most vital part of your business’s economic machinery.

You pay hard-earned business capital to market to your customers, you essentially buy their patronage, one person at a time. Once bought, a customer will continue to generate your income, without much further advertising effort. On the flip side, customers who leave take with them every cent that you invested in marketing to them.

Customer retention is FREE MONEY! If you go the extra mile to keep customers, your marketing budget will go down, and your profits will go through the roof. You’ll have to ‘buy’ less new customers, and loyal customers generate some powerful word-of-mouth patronage.

Losing customers has the opposite effect, and can be truly devastating. And, you have no excuse for customers walking away from your business because of poor service, it’s the most controllable factor of your business. Technology can fail, accounts can pay late, but there is no reason to be rude or inattentive to a customer.

One way to gear up for fantastic customer service it to train employees to see each customer for how much they’re really worth. They may treat customers a bit differently if they imagined them as giant stacks of money or piles of gold. Each retained customer is (literally) money in the bank.

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Why Choose Positive Training Solutions?

Published on December 5, 2009 in Customer Service Videos, Positive Training Solutions and YouTube Videos. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

In this short YouTube video, James Grima, Founder and CEO of Positive Training Solutions explains why you should choose Positive Training Solutions for your quick service retail establishment.

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“Would You Like Fries With That?”

Published on November 13, 2009 in Customer Service Videos, Food Service Humour and YouTube Videos. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

This question has become legendary – reported to have generated $5 Billion for McDonald’s… Of course whenever a GREAT idea is used, others jump on the bandwagon with total abandon, hoping to re-create the original success. Sometimes, as in this example – the imitator puts a new spin on it. Sometimes it works and sometimes well… it’s taken a little too far.

Today’s lesson is two-fold (1) Life’s too short to be too serious and (2) whenever you take a great idea, be careful not to take it to an extreme or distort the ORIGINAL intention of the strategy.

Often the success is all about the NUANCE. For example “Would you like fries with that?” was an INSTANT success, but the alternate “Would you like an apple pie with that?” was not. People did not associate hot apple pies with hamburgers, even though the apple pies were good.

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Retail Make Up Sex

Published on October 29, 2009 in Customer Service Statistics and Customer Service Tips And Ideas. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Did that subject line get you? I thought it would :-P The customer is mad. You didn’t do what she wanted, maybe you weren’t friendly enough, maybe you didn’t know enough about the product. Whatever the problem, you have to fix it, the consequences for not doing so are severe. Even if she’s mad, you’re going to want to keep her as a customer. It costs five to six times as much to get a new (first time) customer as it does to keep a current one. [1]

Furthermore, long term customers are usually more profitable. A 5% increase in customers retention can boost profit by 25% to 125% [2] You also run the risk of her leaving and telling other people and losing potential customers because of her bad experience. Clearly you have to keep her from leaving angry, but how?

Play Nice

Customers were asked what single factor best defines high-quality service. The most frequent response was personal attention. [3] You have to let the customer know that you are concerned that they are upset. Tell them that you will personally do everything that you can to fix the situation. Make them feel like you are on their side.

Be friendly from your first interaction, whether or not the customer is complaining, an aura of kindness goes far in any industry. There are certain customers that will make it hard to be nice. You have to try to maintain your cool, no matter what the customer does or says, you have to respond politely. Her reaction will escalate if you respond in anger, whereas overreaching politeness has the power to diffuse the whole situation.

Give It Away

Continue reading ‘Retail Make Up Sex’

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