Am I a good customer?
by Andrew Smith on 30/03/06 at 2:04 pm
1 comment
The Ideate team spends a lot of time talking about business, cool “brands” (we have Fred “Brand-meister” Roed in our midst), and how most companies that we deal with seem so incompetent. Customer service seems to be at an all time low, particularly with the recent monumental hash-up that Standard Charted seems to be making of the old 20Twenty (read complaints here).
In our own businesses we seem to be going through a bit of difficult patch as well. Inboxes are filling up, deadlines are slipping here and there, and every now and then a client has been voicing their concern that we’re dropping the ball. Then on Tuesday one client goes out of their way to tell us how wonderful it has been dealing with us. She feels that whenever we speak to her we give her the impression that she’s the most important person in our days. Why the difference? I think it’s because we like dealing with her. She is always friendly and polite, pays on time, she respects our opinions and expertise. It’s not hard for us to treat her well because of the way she treats us. The spin-off for her is that I’m sure we subconsciously (and consciously) put in a little bit extra effort in everything we do for her.
Which got me thinking about my suppliers (the banks, phone companies, hosting companies, printers, cleaners, gardeners). Do I make it easy for them to treat me well? I know it really should be up to them, seeing as I’m the client, but is it not worth a little bit of my time and effort on my part to become one of their “dream clients”?
Andrew Smith is the pedantic systems guy behind Live Alchemy, a SA e-commerce company. Andrew writes for Ideate in an attempt to make the world a more efficient place. View more articles by Andrew Smith.
Jon
Mar 30th, 2006
i don’t know, you tell me? Jokes!
Good point, well made an excellent use of grammar.