An Attitude of Gratitude Can Help You Better Serve Your Customers:

8 Ways to Ensure Quality Customer Service (Part II of II)

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire anybody from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” –Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club

It’s important that your clients know you appreciate their business, because without their business, yours wouldn’t exist. And the best way to show them your gratitude is to provide quality customer service. Last week we talked about the importance of: 1. committing to provide good customer service, 2. treating each client with respect, and 3. assuming that each client is telling the truth. But that’s not all you can do to ensure your clients keep coming back for more of your services. Here are 5 more customer service tips:

4. Keep all your promises.
Nothing looks worse to a client than a broken promise. If you promise to file their taxes by a certain date, you must file those taxes by that date—your reputation depends on it. You’re only as good as your word; make your word as good as gold.

5. Respond to complaints immediately.
In this day and age of the internet, FedEx mailings, and 24-hour help services, people will expect you to respond to their complaints quickly, regardless of whether or not that’s been your policy. So you might as well make a 24-48 response time to complaints your newest policy in order to keep well ahead of customer expectations. And that doesn’t mean you must resolve the concern in that amount of time, you just need to contact your client within that time frame to gather more information and let them know you’re addressing their concern.

6. Over-communicate.
George Bernard Shaw once said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has occurred.” It’s important to communicate, communicate, and communicate some more with all your clients. We’re not asking you to stalk them; we’re just recommending that you let them know the status of their accounts. It’s good to send monthly emails updating clients, possibly with reports or related files. But never assume that your clients are under the impression that “no news is good news.” They’re paying you for a service and that includes communication about that service. Clients can choose to disregard emails with too much information; they can become a bit more annoyed with no emails and no information.

7. Make it easy to access your services.
We’ve all been to websites where it’s difficult to determine what services are being offered and how much is being charged. Don’t make it that difficult for current and potential clients to request your help. From your contact information to the description of your services on a website, it should all be clear and point right back to you. And you must be easy to contact. If you get a voicemail or email, respond within 24 hours (see #5). Anything else makes you appear too busy, or worse yet, too apathetic to take more clients.

8. Go the extra mile.
When I was in high school I worked in the bookkeeping department of a tire company, Bruneel Tire, and their advertising slogan was: “We go, go, go, go, go the extra mile.” That’s fitting for a tire company, but the idea translates well to any service you might offer. When a business gives customers more than they expect, even if it’s just free electronic filing, or a complementary dessert at a local restaurant, they feel the business values them beyond the final balance on their bill.

You want to keep each client you earn, and that requires you to continue to earn their business with quality customer service. When you provide quality customer service to your clients, they will feel valued in return, which means they will return for your services again and again and again. Not only that, but they will become your walking billboards, notifying anyone who’s interested that you provide quality service with a component of care, saving you hundreds, possibly even thousands of dollars in marketing fees. That is a lot to be grateful for. Now go and show your clients how much you care! It will return to you tenfold.

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