The 2009 90-day Challenge 2
by Bruce Wade on 12/10/09 at 6:00 am
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With only 80 days left in 2009 we look at the second of the 90 day challenge projects; Customer Service. There is a lot of information about customer service and loyalty that we read today but a lot of it always tends to lead to ‘how much more money can we screw our customers for’. We are beginning to see the emergence of a better informed, more proactive customer in the market today. People are doing their homework before shopping and asking the right sort of questions of the retailer before making their choice.
I believe that the days are over of being able to ‘con’ customers into parting with their money. We need to begin to add real value that is perceived by the customer as true value not just by our marketing department. A simple exercise to do for this part 2 of the 90 day challenge is this; ask each customer you have 2 simple questions.
Question1: Please rate our service/product/experience from 1 to 10, with 1 being Crappy, I never want to come back here and 10 being Wow, I will be back later today? The answer to this is important but just the beginning to customer service transformation.
Question 2: What would make it a 10? This is an open ended question and not easy to ask. It requires a brave business owner to ask and then to listen to the answers. The issues raised here are what customers want and need that you have failed to provide. To get this list and be able to act on it will set your business ahead of many others who are content with only the answers from the first question and then to report on the average score to the partners or board members.
Be different dare to bare your soul and learn to grow. You have 10 days to make this happen before the next challenge. Let us know of your progress.
Bruce Wade is a survivor of the corporate and NGO world, author, speaker, business owner and entrepreneur, Bruce now runs the Entrepreneur Incubator; a member based organisation dedicated to serving those in the trenches of business through coaching, mentoring and leadership education. View more articles by Bruce Wade.
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Tags: 90 day challenge
