What you need to do is make sure you are noticed for all the right reasons, rather than being remembered for any negatives. And don’t forget it’s easier for people to remember and talk about the things that go wrong, than it is for them to praise you for perfection.

There is a simple approach that can get you noticed for all the right reasons - The Service Approach.

Deliver excellent service, every time. Very easy to say and very difficult to achieve. But if you build into your business an ethos of quality, and encourage a full time, permanent focus on the customer you’ll be well on the way to delivering the service approach, every time.

Here are two practical measures you can take to improve service – and they are not perhaps the most obvious ones.

1. Recruitment, selection and induction

A thorough recruitment and selection process will deliver the right type of candidates for your business. This is your opportunity to check out things like attitude, commitment and ‘fit’ with your business philosophy. If you haven’t decided what that philosophy is you might come un-stuck.

But even those you’ve hand picked will need some help and guidance on what you expect within your business. So, make sure all staff receive a thorough induction to the company – and certainly one that goes beyond telling them where the coffee machine is and what to do if there’s a fire alarm. Not that these things aren’t important – after all you want to be sure that any customers, suppliers or partners are offered refreshments when they visit, and that they don’t get left behind of there’s a fire drill. But of more importance is making all staff aware of your standards of business. Letting them know what’s expected of them, in terms of the way they behave, the way they deal with customers and the way you want the company referred to. Let them know your standards, whether that is product quality or service standards, for telephone answering, or the way visitors are greeted in reception. And don’t take anything for granted, all organisations are different, you shouldn’t be afraid to set specific standards for yours.

2. Complaints

The first thing is don’t do anything that can be avoided, to cause complaints. But let’s be realistic, that’s not easy, customers can be very demanding and sometimes even downright unreasonable. So make sure you have a simple, and customer centric complaints procedure.

Customer centric – it should be about solving the customer’s problem, not about apportioning blame, passing the buck or saving face.

In research, customers who’ve had a complaint resolved are found to be more loyal than those who’ve never had cause for complaint. So this is something that’s worth doing well.

If you deliver excellent customer service every time your customers, suppliers and partners will notice and they’ll feel more confident to continue doing business with you, give you new orders and recommend you to others.

Once you’ve got service right then you might want to move on some of the more obvious ways of getting your business noticed through advertising, press releases, exhibitions, direct mail etc. All too often businesses start the advertising and promotional efforts without making sure their business is prepared for the customer.

Article written by Teresa Harris, Second Opinion Marketing. Teresa is an independent marketing consultant specialising in communication solutions and the customer experience. To contact Second Opinion Marketing call 01789 740396 or email tah@secondopinionmarketing.co.uk.

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