Everyone in business talks about the need to give great customer service and to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction, but what does that mean in practical terms for your business?
Some important questions:
Let's look at these questions in more detail.
Talking to your customers; this is not just how you communicate in a marketing sense, but getting to know your customer's business and its needs in more detail. Thinking back to our article in a previous newsletter about up-selling and cross-selling, there could be additional sales opportunities; you might even spot sales opportunities for other businesses that you network or collaborate with. Asking your customers periodically about what they think of your service will help you to improve and will also help you to personalise the service for each customer.
Stay close to your customers to develop good customer relationships and build loyalty.
What does good customer service mean to them? The only person who can truly define good customer service is the customer. It's usually not as simple as being friendly and approachable and flexible in your dealing with your customers; that is the minimum standard. But also:
So whether your service is superior, good or zero is judged by the customer not you or your team. Superior service is often defined as exceeding customer expectations, but first you have to know what their expectations are.
Be seen as a solution instead of just a supplier.
Who is responsible for customer service within your business?
The short answer is - everybody.
If you employee five people or more than 50 people everybody should be contributing to customer service either directly or indirectly. If that is not true of every single role in your business then what is the purpose of that role?
Successful businesses put the customer at the heart of the business.
Some components of superior customer service:
That's all for this month.
Peter Mulhall
Business Adviser
Business Link - the place to go for business support
Online: www.businesslink.gov.uk
I met someone at a networking event recently and we have decided that our companies should work together. Do you think that business co-operation or collaboration is a good idea?
In short: you can't be good at everything, so yes it may well be a good idea.
However, let's look at a few of the things that would be involved.
You will need to identify an opportunity. This might be submitting a joint bid on a tender, or entering another market sector, or a particularly large customer to target which otherwise you would not have the credibility, skill or the resources to convert into a customer. You may not identify a specific opportunity at the early stage, but all parties should have a purpose for wanting to collaborate.
The choice of collaborative partner is critical. Sometimes the criteria for partner selection are woefully inadequate and more suitable to choosing a golf partner than a business partner. Getting on with business partners is essential, but more is needed.
Trust; this is a difficult one as it only truly forms with experience. There will be issues possibly, for some, on intellectual property and the need for confidentiality and confidentiality agreements. But ultimately you will need to trust partners, sometimes with sensitive information about your own business as you proceed to collaborate. Not only that, you will need to trust that the other parties will fulfil their responsibilities on the projects or ventures that you undertake; there will inevitably be division of labour and you are unlikely to be in a position to supervise, hands-on, the things that others are accountable for.
One of the big advantages of business collaboration is that you gain access to skills and competencies not available in your own business i.e. the other party excels in areas where you are weak and vice versa. This doesn't happen automatically; drawing up a skills map and skills-auditing each potential partner in order to match skills required with skills available is a crucial part of the preparation stage.
If you, as a sole trader, are wanting to collaborate with other sole traders, understanding the other party's style of doing business, vision, view of the world around them, their values and beliefs and behaviours will be important for effective collaboration.
If you are a larger business with staff and even possibly a management team, how you go about understanding each other's business culture will need a lot of careful thought. Each MD spending time at the other's business getting to know people and processes is a good place to start.
This is about how you or your company actually works from end to end. How you sell, market your products & services, communicate internally, & externally, deal with suppliers, customer relationship management; how you actually make the products and provide the service, how you run your admin and finance functions etc. Don't assume that because your own business runs effectively and smoothly that there will be no difficulties when you collaborate with others even if they too have a smooth running business.
Collaborative agreements or even legal entities may be needed depending on the depth of the relationship and complexity of the work being undertaken. Seek specialist advice.
It is widely accepted that business cooperation / collaboration is a valid strategy for growing a business. There are huge benefits to be had from utilising the synergy of complementary businesses as well as potential economies of scale.
We have only scratched the surface and looked at a few aspects, but even so it should be clear that some form of due diligence is needed before any decision is made. Good advice is essential for each party separately and, if the idea progresses, possibly a facilitator, either internal, or external to mediate and to project manage the formation and early stages of the partnership or joint-venture.
A sobering thought is that the majority of collaborative business relationships fail. So do your groundwork first, be prepared to put the time and effort into making the partnership work and you stand a chance of being one of those businesses that succeed with collaborative cooperative relationships.
If you think that collaborative co-operative working is a possible strategy for you but you're not sure where to start, talk to one of our business advisers.
That's all for this month.
Peter Mulhall
Business Adviser
tel: 07717 290309
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Business Link - the place to go for business support
Online: www.businesslink.gov.uk/east
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