Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash
Today let's talk about appearance. I do not mean how a person looks per se, but how a person acts. Today appearances are more important than the workmanship itself. In business, this can be the difference between a customer having a good experience or a customer leaving a bad review. Things such as how the customer is spoken to, the perceived attitude of the employee, and whether that employee is empathetic to that customer's situation.
I have worked in the customer service industry for most of my adult life. Whether it was working for a car dealership, working as a mechanic, running my own construction company, managing a towing company, working as a tow operator, or working facility maintenance, it all has the same basic design. Customer service is the most important aspect of the job being done.
I have learned over the years that it doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do, if you do not treat your customers correctly, they are going to call a different company next time. If that customer has a bad experience, they will not be a returning customer. Many people, across many different industries, lose more customers because of bad customer experience than they do over workmanship issues.
Think of it like this, a customer contacts your company to get a quote on doing a job. Let us use building a deck as an example. The customer is looking for a specific look when the deck is complete, but the contractor doesn’t want to do the extra work that is involved in getting that specific look. The contractor issues the customer a quote for the work he is willing to perform rather than what is asked for. The customer hires the contractor under the impression that the quote is for what he requested.
When the job starts, the contractor tells the customer that if he must do all this extra work to get the look the customer wants it is going to cost extra in labor and materials. This upsets the customer because the design never changed from the quote to the build. This makes the customer feel as though they are getting taken advantage of, and they fire the contractor.
Now the customer is telling anyone that will listen not to hire this company because of this situation. If the contractor was upfront with the customer and quoted them for the work asked for, this situation would have never taken place. If you are not willing to do what the customer is requesting, that needs to be stated upfront. This falls in just about every industry out there because negative customer interactions travel faster than positive ones.
This situation, and so many others like it could be avoided with simple communication. If you do not communicate properly with your customers, they perceive it as a bad experience. It may have just been a simple misunderstanding, but it is still a negative experience to them.