5 Things Businesses Need to Realise About Customer Service
The Military organisation is one of the most structured organisation in the world and a very hierarchical one. For new recruits joining this structure, it’s the beginning of a totally different existence within the structure. A life controlled by others (senior officers, government etc).
This brings me to the relationship between customers and businesses; in this case the new recruits are the businesses and the senior officers/governments are the customers. So for new recruits to survive in the military and be in good standing with senior officers, they have to OBEY, OBEY and OBEY.
For Businesses to be in the good books of customers, the 5 points below underpin the OBEY, OBEY and OBEY in military.
1. You Don’t Make the Rules
Companies are in existence to make profit and to do that, they need the customers. It then begs the question: “WHO NEEDS WHO”. It is fair to say they both need each other but customers hold the advantage. It typically cost businesses around £3k to replace a customer while it cost customers few pounds to nothing to change to another company. Its high time businesses realise they don’t make the rules.
2. Shut Up and Listen
When customers complain, they want to feel like they’ve been heard and understood. As the case with senior officers, when they talk, they expect the new recruits/junior officers to listen and do as they have been told.
Listening to customers is half way to better customer service and obeying them completes it.
3. Prioritisation
Businesses wants to make profits and customers want excellent customer service. In the past, businesses have fallen into the temptations of sacrificing customer service in pursue of profits. Businesses prioritising profits above customers while customer service plummets are bound to lose customers to their competitors.
4. Stay Focused
Companies have a lot of things to look after to stay in business such as regulations, legal, customers, profit etc but only one thing matters, the customer. Without the customers and doing all the other stuffs will guarantee a short life time of the business.
5. Stand Out
New recruits with high ambition try to standout among the rest of the recruits by getting noticed by senior officers and they do that by putting in a lot of effort into all their activities and been better than the rest of the recruits. To standout to customers, businesses need to do something noticeable and different from the rest.