Welcome to another episode of WebPunch’s School of Online Reputation Management. It’s early summer, things are hot. I’m your host, Matt Jones, here to drop some knowledge. I’m here to discuss a little bit of a topic that most business owners are pretty sensitive to, and that’s customers. How many of you have said, “Oh, we treat our customers like family. Every customer is treated the same.” I know some of you do, so don’t lie. I know that we do that, and it reminds me of that show, “Cheers.” You guys remember that? Okay. I know I’m really old, and I’ve got wrinkles and Millennials have no idea what I’m talking about. But there was a show called “Cheers.” It was about a bar where regulars would come and interact with the staff. There was all sorts of shenanigans. But the point was, over time, you know, they became like family. And that’s how it is with some customers. Some customers you like more than others. Now I know we at WebPunch have never had a customer that we didn’t like…
Okay. We’ll move on. But for those customers who are difficult, how can you guarantee that they’re getting adequate customer service, and how can you guarantee that you’re servicing them just as well as the ones you really like? Again, we’re people. We’re naturally attracted to others for different reasons. Maybe you’re around people who never swear and you feel really self conscious, or you’re around people who swear all the time and you feel offended. Again, we have different things that we like in people, and we need to kind of remove ourselves as business owners from those things that make us want to serve some people more than other people.
I think how you come up with that is you come up with a baseline standard of service. I know in our case with WebPunch, we get back to people in two hours after they have sent us messages, minimum. And we have certain time periods, time frames where we respond to reviews. And so we have these standards of service that make sure that our clients are receiving the same customer service, whether they’re people that we are more attracted to or not, from a personality standpoint.
So I think that’s one of the best things we can do; come up with some of the standards that every customer is going to receive, and also invite your customers to give you customer feedback.That’s really the best way to tell what kind of experience they’ve had and the best way to measure how well you’re servicing your clients. When they give you customer feedback on a regular basis, you’re able to gauge if their sentiment’s changed, and reach out to them. I think one of the biggest things that people do is they gather customer feedback but then they’re afraid to pick up the phone. They’re afraid to talk to that customer to see where they went wrong and figure out how they can get on a better path to continue that successful business relationship. So again, come up with a baseline standard of service that every customer gets, and then make sure you’re getting customer feedback and then taking action.
That’s really the best way you can make sure that all of your customers are getting treated the same. And of course, we’re going to have people we like more than others, but doing that is really going to make a big difference and ensure that customers are coming back and even those who are lukewarm become brand advocates and continue to make your business thrive. I’m Matt Jones. We’ll catch you next time.
