When a customer comes into your business and states that they need your product or services by a specific date, it’s probably wise to adhere to that date. If you’re a plumber and they say they need the new dishwasher in by Wednesday because family’s coming in, if you want their customer loyalty, you install the dishwasher by Wednesday.
Our customer service horror story today is one that’s a little hard to believe is true. It revolves around an event planner and her catering options. She had an event she was planning, obviously, and she went to several venues and their caterers to take bids for the job she was working. She told each of them the drop-dead date that she needed the bids by so that prices and services could be reviewed accordingly. All of the venues’ caterers, save for one, responded on time.
When the event planner’s schedule allowed her time to try get in touch with her contact that had not submitted their bid, she was told they had left for vacation and that no notes regarding the bid. As you can probably guess, the event planner was furious.
But it gets better (or worse, depending on what side of the story you’re on).
The planner’s contact finally returned from his vacation. What, you might ask, could be so important that he didn’t complete the bid and contact his client? His words, verbatim, are “I decided you didn’t need it by your due date.”
That’s the same as saying “I didn’t forget about you, I decided that you’re an idiot and I know your business better than you do. You’re welcome!”
Luckily, they were fired immediately. But you’d think the venue who employed the caterer would have cared a little more about customer loyalty and would have thrown the prospect a bone considering how closely knit the event planning business is, and how massive their screw-up was. But no, they offered nothing except “better luck next time.”
Customer loyalty spreads or dies very quickly in the event business and this screw-up cost them a sizeable amount of future revenue. But isn’t that how all business works? If you want real customer loyalty, you meet and exceed your customer’s needs, and you make up for it when someone in your company messes up. It’s not rocket science. Here at Loyaltyworks we even advise that you put a customer loyalty incentive program in place to give your customers rewards for their business, or to say “I’m sorry” when you mess up. You’ll see much higher levels of customer loyalty if you do this.
Also, upper management must prioritize things like customer loyalty for employees to get the message and take action. If management doesn’t relay the message that customer loyalty is priority number one, then no employees will treat customers like they’re priority number one.
Employee recognition incentive programs and customer loyalty incentive programs like the ones we provide here at Loyaltyworks are only one step in the right direction towards good customer service, which then leads to customer loyalty. If you tie an employee recognition program to customer service, and reward your employees for providing good service, your customers will notice the difference. And if you tie rewards to your enhanced shopping experience, your customers will remain even more loyal.
Call Loyaltyworks at 1-800-844-5000 and we’ll show you exactly how our customer loyalty incentive programs and our employee recognition incentive programs can show your customers and your employees that you value customer service over everything else.
