Boost Your Business Success By Making Your Customers Happy.
Driving Up Your Customer Satisfaction Rating Will Drive Up Your Customer Numbers.
More Customers Will Mean Greater Sales And Greater Profits.
When a customer is happy with a certain business, that customer will support that business much more, through buying more and telling others about it.
This may seem obvious, but so many businesses just don’t understand how important having happy customers is to their success.
I constantly see BIG and SMALL businesses with obviously unhappy customers and no efforts on the part of these businesses to improve things.
In my view, this is ONE BIG REASON why businesses fail.
And to be honest, any business that neglects its customers, deserves to fail.
Every Customer Deserves To Be Looked After
Every customer to every business deserves to be well looked after, to have their needs and wants satisfied completely and to be made to feel valued.
If a business is not doing this, then it does not deserve to be blessed with customers buying from it.
If you are not making your customers happy in your business, then you need to take a long hard look at yourself and start to change things.
My Objective Has Always Been To Have Very Happy Customers
With every one of my businesses, I have always strived to make my customers VERY HAPPY; and, that has been a big reason for my success.
My ultimate objective was to always achieve a HIGH CUSTOMER SATISFACTION RATING.
I have achieved that by focusing heavily on my customers and their wants, needs and desires and by delivering an EXCELLENT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.
In simple terms, I worked out what they wanted and gave it to them.
It Is Not That Difficult To Do
It is not that difficult to do.
Any business owner can do the same as I did - work out what your customers want from you and give it to them in the best way possible.
And, then focus on this process intently, day in and day out, and make it central to everything you do.
Every Business Needs Customers
Every business needs customers to survive.
Without them, there are no sales and no profits.
The more customers a business has, the more sales it will have, so it makes sense to drive up your sales by driving up your customer numbers.
And, the best way to drive up customer numbers is through having HAPPY CUSTOMERS.
In An Earlier Article, I Described How An Excellent Customer Experience Will Attract Customers
In an earlier article, I stated that you would never have to search far for customers if your customer experience was excellent. I said that happy customers will return to buy more from you and they will tell others about you and your business, creating good ‘word of mouth’.
In the article, I describe how I used intense focus on the customer and the delivering of an excellent customer experience to acquire large numbers of customers and high sales for my seven businesses in 30 years.
You can read the article here:
Please read it now.
Within the article, I explained a procedure that you can adopt to improve your customer experience.
I emphasised the importance of knowing and understanding your customers and their wants and needs and of providing products that satisfy these. But I also emphasised the need to always send your customers away really happy, so that they become loyal to your brand and they tell others, creating ‘word of mouth’.
Customer Satisfaction Must Be Measured
Again, in the same article, I said that once you have enacted a strategy to create an excellent customer experience, you must appraise it and monitor it, continually.
When the customer has an excellent experience, their customer satisfaction rating should be high. But you should never assume your rating.
It should always be measured.
As part of my strategy, I have always measured how satisfied my customers were.
I Did Not Just Want To Hear The Good Stuff
Crucially though, I have not just wanted to hear the good stuff and know that my strategy was working but, also, I wanted to hear the bad stuff too.
Through the bad stuff , I could see where things were not working right and I could work out how to rectify things.
And, I always did and I always did it quickly.
I Had A Strong Message For My Customers
In my businesses, I had a strong message for my customers.
I used to say to them:
“If what we do makes you happy, please tell your friends. But if what we do does not please you, then please tell us, so that we can correct things”
And, our customers did help us here.
Most were very happy and did, indeed, tell others but occasionally our few unhappy customers did tell us about their poor experiences and we were able to rectify these.
Importantly, by talking to our unhappy customers, I was able to put things right and to make them return again to purchase more from us.
In fact, in most cases, I was able to convert unhappy customers into loyal and happy customers, over time.
I did not lose them.
Things Don’t Always Go To Plan
It is almost impossible to run a business where things do not always go to plan and where the customer experience suffers.
But many businesses have a poor contact with their customers and this makes it difficult to quantify how happy their customers are.
They are ignorant of their true Customer Satisfaction Ratings.
Some Business Owners Don't Want To Know
Some business owners don’t want to know what their customers are thinking, hiding their heads in the sand, not able to confront their customer dissatisfaction.
That is not the way to trade a business.
As Bill Gates of Microsoft once famously said:
“Your unhappiest customers are your greatest source of learning”
You Must Know What Your Customers Are Thinking
Customer numbers and sales will only grow, significantly, if you know what your customers are thinking about you and you can address the concerns of your unhappy customers.
You will lose your unhappy customers and you will not attract new ones and eventually your business will die.
Furthermore, your unhappy customers will tell others and that will create negative ‘word of mouth’ – something that can seriously erode and hamper the growth of a business.
How To Achieve A High Customer Satisfaction Rating
It is much easier than you think to change things and here I present a good way to do it.
Set One Big Objective
Set yourself one BIG OBJECTIVE of creating and achieving an excellent CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE and an EXCELLENT CUSTOMER SATISFACTION RATING.
Set the objective of achieving excellent experiences and an excellent customer satisfaction rating
In short, set yourself the objective to make your customers VERY HAPPY.
You should keep thinking about this, over and over again, until it sticks in your mind.
Then, start thinking about your customer experience and how you can make it better. If your experience is already good, you should still think how it can be improved.
In my view, every business can make improvements.
Set A Strategy To Optimise Your Customer Satisfaction Rating
It is very possible to make your customers happy and to optimise your customer satisfaction rating and to minimise your number of customer complaints.
Here is a 9 Step Strategy that you should implement:
Create a strategy to provide an excellent customer experience. Use the procedure that I suggested in my article -
Provide An Excellent Customer Experience & You Will Never Have To Search Far For Customers Again.
Ask your customers for their comments and their reviews.
Invite your customers to tell their friends if they are happy and to tell you if they are unhappy.
Analyse the reasons for your customers’ unhappiness.
Make changes to what you do, to improve your experience.
Compensate your unhappy customers and encourage them to return.
Set an objective to reduce the number of customer complaints.
Don’t get complacent when you achieve a high overall customer satisfaction rating.
Keep working hard to create happy customers, excellent customer experiences, a high customer satisfaction rating and a low customer complaint ratio.
Central to this procedure is understanding your customer and their needs, wants and desires and to giving them the products that satisfy these, in the way they want to receive them and at the prices they want to pay.
Once you get this right, you can then look to making the experience EXCELLENT.
Talking To Your Customers Is Key
Whether your business involves face to face contact with your customers, such as retail, or distant contact with your customers, such as an online business, you must devise ways to talk to your customers and to ask them for their views on what you do.
You must listen to both the good and bad comments but, in particular, you should listen to the bad comments and you should take action that effect changes to improve your customer experience.
Your unhappy customers should be compensated and appeased and you should attempt to encourage these to return and to become loyal customers - this is very possible, if complaints are handled in the right way and quickly.
Over time, the number of customer complaints should diminish but you should set a low complaint ratio as your objective.
Don’t Get Complacent
It is important that you don’t get complacent when you achieve consistently high customer satisfaction ratings.
You must continually work hard to provide an excellent customer experience and high customer satisfaction rating and low a customer complain ratio.
Start Doing This Today
What I advise here does work, as I have done it myself over many years and I have advised others to do the same.
So, please start today, copying my methods.
Today, set yourself the BIG OBJECTIVE:
Set the objective of achieving excellent experiences and excellent customer satisfaction
Then, set about implementing my 9 Step Strategy.
If you can do this right, your customer numbers should go through the roof, as will your sales and business profits.
I Want To Inspire Every Business Owner To Focus On Customer Experience & Customer Satisfaction
The purpose of this article and all my others is to encourage every business owner, to do better in their businesses.
If you have found the article useful, then please copy what I have done and make your customers really happy and drive up your customer satisfaction rating.
Also, please circulate it to other business owners and business friends, too, so that more can benefit from this.
Best Of Luck Everyone
Best of luck to everyone and please let me know how you get on.
I Coach Business Owners To Think And Act Differently
Having sold my businesses, I now coach other businesses on the tried and tested methods that I have used for 30 years to drive my own success. I have many methods to teach, but focusing heavily on the customer, customer experience and customer satisfaction is a principle one.
Business success is down to the quality of the thinking and the quality of the actions - the better both are, the greater the success potential.
Also central to much of what I coach is changing how and what business owners think and how they act. The ultimate goal being to achieve far better results in less time and with greater efficiency.
If you would like to learn more about these processes, I include links to articles that should help you in your business, here.
For Greater Business Success, Change Your Thinking - Create Smart Business Thinking
For Greater Business Success, Change Your Thinking - Create Smart Business Actions
Become One Of the 10% Most Successful Business
If you would like to talk to me about this or you have any comments, please contact me here. Also, if you have your own stories of how you have achieved an excellent customer experience, I would love to hear them.
