As discussed last week winning the customer is just the first hurdle we face as service providers. Keeping the customers after you have won them is another task completely. Foremost in this task is communicating with the customer, constant communication is a must and helps remove any possible misunderstandings between you and your customer.
Even if your customer struggles with your pricing, if you are up front with them and explain to them in detail the customer most of the time will understand and see things your way. It is because you have built a trust with your customer and they have come to rely on you as one of their problem solvers.
Don’t we all just love the problem solvers? Think about the last storm that blew through and knocked out power. Didn’t you feel better when you saw the power company truck roll up? Why? Because you trust that they are going to fix the problem before they leave and your power will be restored. How would you feel if you the power company truck pulled up in front of your home worked a while and without saying a word drove away? You would be picking up the phone and making a call to the power company’s office within seconds demanding answers. Your trust had been broken. What was the one thing that was missing? Communication.
How do your customers feel when you arrive on site? Are you their problem solver?
It amazes me how many people think once you obtain that first job that you are guaranteed to be doing all the work for that customer till the end of time.
Being honest and up front with your customers is another key part of keeping the customer coming back. How many times have you heard about a service provider getting a call from a “new customer” and asked to price something. As with most service providers they got a great deal of communication and honesty when the price was turned over, an effort to impress the new customer. One of two possible situations will happen at this point, the “new customer” explains their “regular” guy’s price was about the same, a few dollars more, or a few dollars less and they went with him. Or, the worst case for the “regular guy” is that his price was way out of line and he lost a customer to the “new guy”. A great deal of the time in this situation one ends up giving the customer a breakdown of the lump sum price and the “regular guy” will get nervous at this point and sometimes discover a “big” mistake was made and the price should have been “X” not “Y”. But if you are the “new guy” you are in a good position to win this customer over and start building a relationship.
Part of communication is keeping the commitments you have made to your customer, whether it is something as simple as when you will arrive, when the parts will be in, or when the pricing will be sent to them. In today’s world of electronic communication it is so easy to send an e-mail or text message to a customer, that small effort can go so far as to keeping the customer and keeping the customer happy. It’s the old joke with the cable guy, “He said he will be here between 7 and 12:00 so I took the day off and he showed up at 11:59. Or the other side of that situation is “He said he would be here between 12:00 and 3:00 and I got home at 11:30 to find a note he was there at 11:25, sorry, please call back to re-schedule.”
How did that make you feel? It is the same with your customers when you don’t keep your commitments or don’t keep them updated, they get just as upset.
I remember years ago I was still in the field and I was installing a data system for a local government client in a new building. It was apparent from the beginning that the customer’s representative expected to be kept up to date on the daily progress of the job. So every afternoon I stopped by his make shift office and left a note or told him face to face what was accomplished that day. At the end of the project I was called to my office to meet with the owner of the company. I was presented with a letter that was copied to the main office, but sent to the government department headquarters Chief of Operations praising me for the outstanding job I had done, how well informed I had kept him on the progress of the project and was a pleasure to deal with.
That small effort made the biggest impact and it was nice to be appreciated for my work by the customer and my supervisor as well.
Keeping a customer is just as important as landing a customer and to keep a customer it requires one to be mindful of the little things. If you pay attention to the little things the big things are easy to deal with in the long run.
Some people might think it isn’t costly to lose one customer, but it is much more expensive than we realize. Besides the lost revenue which is up front, what about the hidden cost. Something we can discuss next week.
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