Business are spending more and more each year to bring in new clients. In management and business courses, one of the classic ideas in business is that it costs much more to bring in a new customer than to keep a customer.

With advertising, online ads, marketing campaigns, etc. It’s each to overlook one of the greatest assets business have in their marketing efforts: the existing customer base.

Your existing customer base represents a wealth of contacts and unbiased reputable referral system. If you can provide such a level of quality and excellence in the service you offer that your customers can’t help but talk about what you offers, you then have one of the greatest free advertising campaigns going for you.

Businesses often fail in capturing this unique prospect becuase they don’t really excel in their service to a point that they wow their customers into saying anything. It’s useless to solicit anything from your client base until you’re blowing people away, then encourage them to talk. Look for review sites online are a third party that you can refer current clients to comment on your offerings, then encourage new potential clients to see what others are sayig about you.

You can talk about yourself and tout what you do better than the other guy all day, but in the end, the potential customer generally wants to know how you’ve treated others because that’s how you’re likely to treat every new customer.

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• Don’t feel restricted by policies. If a customer wants a refund after 40 days (10 days past our 30 day refund deadline), just give it to them.
• Requiring a receipt for a return is ludicrous. You have complex systems for tracking inventory, stocking, pricing, serials, etc. yet for me to return something I need to prove that it came from you by showing you a receipt? Please.
• When a customer is frustrated over chat or just isn’t getting it, sometimes it helps to give them a call.
• If a customer is upset, forget the policies. Give them a full refund. Give them extra SANs on their UC cert. Give them a extra time on their cert.
• If a customer is angry that the product doesn’t work like they thought it would (even if it is a known incompatibility), replace it, better yet give them a new product that works free.
• If a customer goes out of their way to write an email and thank us, send them a package with something free.
• Respond quickly to emails and chats. Give customers on the phone the attention that is needed to quickly resolve the problem.

Winning customers centers on the idea that your customers are not just the customers from the moment they walk in the door to your business or visit your Web site, etc. They are the customer 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They are always the customer. Companies have started to treat people as one time customers, and not as life-long customers. People are loyal to themselves first and if you don’t take care of them, they will go elsewhere.

Remember:

• People don’t know good service until they get it. When they receive good service they go “Wow,” and make the choice to switch to the new service provider.
• The customer is NOT always right, but they are ALWAYS the customer.
• Don’t take the easy way out and say NO, find a way to say YES.
• Don’t hide behind a policy, do what’s right.
• 99.6% of the customer were good compared to those that were bad, why create policies to hurt those good customers?
• Nordstroms once took back and refunded a pair of tires. Nordstroms doesn’t even sell tires. They won that customer.
• Just because we make a special situation for one person, doesn’t mean that everyone else will want that too! Make that customer happy.

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Employee coaching is the business art of helping each individual employee not only fulfill their responsibilities, but also be able to master their role within the organization. It may also be the most effective way to ensure that each employee is progressing in their role and are not becoming stagnant in the workplace.

Coaching is often an afterthought in the work place as many managers either don’t see the value in it, or fail to make the time commitments to following through with their coaching plans. It’s crucial that when managers begin to implement one-on-one coaching with their employees, that they understand that effective coaching requires a commitment to following through with each employee in order to see the maximum return.

Do It

Just staying committed to regular sessions with each employee will ensure that the employee knows that his or her manager is following up on the coaching items and that improvement will need to be demonstrated. Regular coaching sessions also allow for the making of minor corrections and adjustments in the work being done, which is much easier than trying to correct big mistakes that have been taking place for a long period of time.

Focus on the Positive

Much too often, coaching focuses on the negative things being done. Although correction needs to be done when appropriate, the key is “when appropriate”. Don’t let the individual management idiosyncrasies or personal styles force others to have to do things a certain way. Each employee may develop a pattern that is easiest or fastest for them, and this is ok. As long as the work is being done and in a timely manner, one man’s chaos, is another’s controlled pattern.

Guide Towards Empowerment

Too often managers want to exercise control, it’s the natural human tendency. You should build up your employees so that they can do their work almost without their managers intervention in day to day things. That’s the key to employee coaching, developing a master at their specific role in the organization, not drones that need to come for instruction every few minutes and with each individual task. As much as it may satisfy our ego as a manager, it’s poor management and furthermore, you’re not doing the employee any favors. In the end, you will find frustration with long-time employees who never seem to be able to take ownership of their day-to-day tasks and who never become fully comfortable with their roles.

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