“Helping customers not only renders more sales, but also stimulates positive word of mouth” – Mark Joyner
As a small company, customers are our life blood. No customers, no business. They are what keep any business alive, and when you are starting out you can’t afford any bad word of mouth. The way to militate against that is by taking care of your customers, which you should be doing any way! Right?
The reality is, it shouldn’t be a question. Excellent customer service should always be a top priority and executed at the highest level. It doesn’t matter what size or type of business you are, quality customer service should be woven into the fabric of the company and culture.
When Go-Go Babyz started out we didn’t have much of a budget to speak of so we couldn’t afford much marketing. We used to get calls about marketing services and they would always ask “what’s your marketing budget?” or “what do think you can spend on our service?” Our response was usually asking them us to tell us what it would cost and then we would look at the bank account to confirm or deny if it was “in the budget.”
Marketing is a vital part of any business, especially new ones, but many times we just couldn’t afford the advertisements or other expensive marketing activities. That resulted in placing a lot of value in word of mouth. Obviously, what we needed was positive word of mouth. The problem is, a small percentage of happy customers actually go out of their way to provide that. I understand, treating customers well is what all companies should be doing and customers expect that so why should they spend their precious time telling people how good of a job we did doing what are supposed to be doing anyway?
Because, I can guarantee that a high percentage of unhappy, disgruntled customers will shout it from the roof tops. There’s no excuse for poor service but it would be great if customers would give businesses the benefit of the doubt and contact them directly to resolve their issue instead of taking it to the streets. In my experience, most bad reviews are knee-jerk reactions usually posted while a customer is still in the red zone, feeling the blow of disappointment. They just want to be heard. Once they get it out it usually fades.
We always do our best to resolve any issue and take care of our customers so they will keep coming back and, because it’s the right thing to do.
Talk Soon,
Kevin W @LEAP272
Owner-Operator
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