Ten Mistakes Service Businesses Make with Customer Relationships (And How To Avoid Them)

Ten Mistakes Service Businesses Make with Customer Relationships!

(And How To Avoid Them)

Written by Lee Pemberton – the eCleanAdvisor at www.ecleanadvisor.com.

Customer relationships are very, very important! Sadly, service businesses like ours really seem to be afraid of developing good customer relationships. And, this is more common than not!

On the other hand, this can be a great opportunity for you! Stand out in this department and the word will get around to both your customers and your prospects.Do your best to avoid the following mistakes and you will be well ahead of the game when it comes to developing good customer relationships.

Mistake #1 – Making It Difficult to Find Your Contact Information!
Prospects and especially your existing customers want to be able to contact you easily. If you hide the contact information from them and don’t give them multiple ways to contact you, they’ll become frustrated and find a negative way – often in public on social media. Not good!

To avoid that, provide simple ways to contact you, such as you responding promptly to email messages. Another is by placing contact information on every page of your website.

Mistake #2 – Inadequate Training of Your Support Personnel
Anyone that is going to help you with customer relationships should be trained about your company culture and how you want to deal with all types of inquiry or complaints. Give them the power to make your customers happy and you’ll be glad you did.

Mistake #3 – Arguing with Customers
When they say that “the customer is always right” it’s true in the sense that you should never argue with them. They may indeed be wrong. They may have used your product wrong. They may be too picky. They may be jerks. But, that doesn’t matter!

It’s important to always treat the customer as if they’re right and act accordingly. The only exception is if they’re trying to commit fraud. In that case, they’re not a customer; they’re a scammer. However, it’s still best to handle every situation very, very carefully.

Mistake #4 – Being Uncompromising
You have rules, that’s true. And it’s good to have some frame of reference of what you expect an outcome to be when there is a problem.

However, it’s also okay to “flex” or break rules on an individual basis if it’s going to be for the greater good. Services businesses like ours run into situations both ways. We sometimes inconvenience customers for no fault of our own and our customers do rhe very same things! Rules should not be walls; they should be “guides” for us to follow.

Mistake #5 – Not Listening Closely
The best thing you can do is to listen to your customer more than you talk to them. Most customers will tell you what they want you to do to make it right – but, only if you’re listening for it. We humans are notoriously poor listeners! Our behaviours usually speak louder than our words!

Mistake #6 – Not Standing by Your Word
When you make a promise to someone, you should keep it. If you told them, “You will be pleased with the results of this service or we will refund your money”, give them their money back when they ask for it. It’s much more effective and expedient to stick by what you say than it is to go back on your word when things aren’t going your way.

Mistake #7 – Making Them Repeat Their Problem Over & Over
Customers hate having to be transferred to other people to help them in the first place, but to add insult to injury by making them repeat everything that’s wrong is a serious problem.

Don’t do this. Train your staff to listen & take notes & do the extra explaining if it is needed when moving the customer to another contact.

Mistake #8 – Failing to Follow Up
When a customer has a problem, even if it’s been satisfied according to your staff (or even yourself if you were the one dealing with it), give it a little time then follow up to make sure that everything really is better.

Mistake #9 – Avoiding Personal Involvement
A lot of business owners, especially service business owners, try to avoid most personal connection or correspondence with their customers.

This is a huge mistake which results in them feeling very disconnected with you as a person, which means that they will feel as if they can easily move on to someone else. Be personal. When people feel as if they know, like and trust you, they want to stick with you.

Mistake #10 – Not Being Polite
– We have courtesy words for a reason, so use them. “Thank you”, “please”, and “my pleasure” are all words that will make the customer happy. Your job is to make your customers happy, and if something so simple will accomplish that practice, do it again and again.