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Customer Service Tips: How to Give Your
Customers What They Really Want
by Molly Gordon, MCC
You know how it feels to hang out with your best friend?
Pretty nice.
My friend Sara knows me warts and all. I let Sara in whether
I feel repulsively needy or shamelessly fabulous. In Sara's presence,
my self-regard (or lack thereof) melts like butter in sunshine.
And what does Sara get? My undying loyalty, for one thing. Overflowing
gratitude, for another. And all the permission she can stand
to be her sweet self irrespective of the state of her own self-esteem.
Paradoxically, she gets the best of me precisely because I don't hide
the worst.
What Does This Friendship Have to Do With Good Customer Service? How
Is Your "Just-Right" Customer Like a Best Friend?
Like a best friend, your just-right customer wants what you do
the way you do it, not what you think you need to do it to compete.
They want you to be authentic and clear so that what you advertise is
what they get.
Like a best friend, your just-right customer wants to know you
care and that you can be counted on. Serving your customers well
doesn’t mean meeting their every need. It does mean your customers
can feel secure in the knowledge that what you offer is what you truly
want to share.
And like a best friend, your just-right customer deserves access
whether or not you happen to be operating at the peak of self-esteem.
Just as a friend may rightfully resent being pushed away when
you feel "less than," your just-right customers are ill-served
when you withdraw just because your self-esteem has bottomed out.
It's natural to retreat when you feel low or inadequate, but
it's unfair to do it to a customer. How can you serve your customer
and make good on your offers if you're hiding out with your old bad self,
replaying your most embarrassing moments and screening action features
based on your greatest fears?
You may feel that hiding out is more ethical than promoting your
work when you are full of self doubt -- but can you be sure?
Is holding back for fear of being less than perfect really an act of integrity
and good customer service?
When you place your self-esteem between you and a customer, you're
like a teenager that leaves her date out in the cold while she agonizes
over a blemish. A customer deserves service grounded in reality,
not in the equivalent of a Harlequin romance.
If you're serious about growing your business, find ways to show
up and serve as you really are. For tips on how to do this (because,
after all, there is a difference between customer service and friendship),
read 5 Things Customers Want and How to Deliver Them.
5 Things Customers Want
- To know how your service can make their life better. What problems
can be solved, dissolved, or removed by working with you
- To be able learn more about your service and what it takes to work
with you without jumping through lots of hoops.
- To know you and your services are a good fit.
- To take a test drive without fearing the hard sell.
- To compensate you for the services you deliver so they needn't feel
obliged and they can feel good about asking for more.
How to Deliver Good Customer Service
- Be up front, even bold, in stating how your goods or services make
things better for your customers so that they can make a decision about
whether to ask for more information. This respects their time and attention
by answering the question, "What can you do for me?"
- Be clear about what it takes for you to deliver consistent value.
How much time? How much money? How much energy? What kind of commitment?
What support? What resources? What else?
When you know what you need in order to deliver good customer service,
set your prices, policies, and procedures accordingly and make it easy
for your customers to understand them.
- Show up in your business. Use language, imagery, colors that are
consistent with the way you naturally serve your customers. Are you
a funny, organized, motherly midwife? Or a charming, blunt career coach?
It's almost certain that lots of people do what you do and do it as
well or better. However, it is highly unlikely that anyone else relates
to their customers and serves them quite like you do. Make it easy for
prospective customers to tell how well you're likely to fit.
- Offer a test drive. If you sell products, give samples. If you sell
services, give samples. What does that look like? An eight-page special
report, a newsletter, reprints of articles, audio of speeches or seminars.
Keep your eyes and ears and mind open, and your samples may add up to
a product and a new income stream.
- Make it easy for clients and customers to pay for your work. When
your just-right customer pays for a service, they are making a conscious
commitment to getting their money's worth. This makes it a lot more
likely that they will do what it takes to benefit from what you offer.
Far from requiring you to be someone you are not, excellent customer
services requires you to be yourself. Being yourself with your
customers means charging enough for you to get your own needs met so that
you can deliver service reliably and graciously.
If your self esteem or simply the lack of business experience is keeping
you from delivering and being paid for your best work, you need Authentic
Promotion: Grow Your Business, Feed Your Soul (see below).
* * *
 Learn
more about Authentic Promotion - a comprehensive small
business marketing resource that turns marketing and self promotion into
a path of increasing self-awareness, authenticity, and right livelihood.
In particular, the strategies of maintaining your work life balance you
learn to apply will build the solid foundation for your authentic prosperity
as an entrepreneur.
* * *
Contact Master Certified Coach
Molly Gordon at:
Shaboom Inc. Life could be a dream…
PO Box 195
Suquamish, WA 98392-0195
mgordon@authenticpromotion.com
As a business coach and small
business marketing consultant, Molly Gordon, MCC, is available in Greater
Seattle Area and internationally |
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