Kevin Stirtz’s Amazing Customer Service Rule #44

Do something extra.

One of the easiest and fastest ways to make a customer smile is to do something extra. Because it’s unexpected, it’s a pleasant surprise. It’s something they’ll remember and talk about.

When you do something extra, it’s like giving your customer a gift. It’s a wonderful way to show you care about them as a person as well as a customer.

I have published a free resource useful for anyone who wants to improve customer service in their organization. It’s called:

“The Amazing Customer Service Toolkit” and you can download it here for no charge.

It contains advice and ideas for people to understand their customers better so they can offer better service than their competition.

We all know it’s important to have loyal customers. But do you know how important it is? A study by Bain & Company suggests that a 5% increase in customer loyalty can improve profitability by anywhere from 25% to 95%. It shows us there are big opportunities available for owners and managers who are willing to do what it takes to increase customer loyalty.

Challenging economic times can be scary. Every day we hear news about lay-offs, company closings, mortgage foreclosures and more.

But no matter what’s going on around us, we all have the ability to make our lives less stressful and more secure. An excellent way to do this is to increase our own job security. (It’s not hard to do.)

Remember, in tough times it’s even more important for companies to make their customers happy, so they keep coming back.

The buzz in the world of coffee these days is not being produced by caffeine intake. It’s generated by the swirl of news reports and comments about Starbucks plans to close over 600 stores.

For me this begs the question: Did Starbucks stumble on their vaunted customer service? As Starbucks has become an American icon, as much a part of our landscape as McDonald’s and Wal-Mart, have they lost their customer service edge? Has growth come at the cost of serving their customers in their unique way, the way loyal Starbuckians have come to expect?

Yesterday my latest book was reviewed by Glenn Ross, a writer for the AllBusiness.com website. AllBusiness.com is a busienss information website with several million readers every month.

Glenn writes about customer service and customer experience so he felt my book was a natural for him to review.

Here are some of his comments:

The book is only 81 pages long and while I wouldn’t call myself a speed reader, I did finish the book in about 45 minutes.

This fall I will be speaking at three business conference. They are open to the public and the registration fee is quite reasonable for what you get so you might want to consider going to one of them. Plus it makes a good excuse to get out of town for a few days!

Here’s some fun news. Recently I have been named a Top Ten Customer Service Author on one of the Internet’s largest websites.

The site is called EzineArticles.com and it’s the largest of it’s kind in the world with millions of readers. In fact, Alexa.com, a website ranking service, rates EzineArticles.com as the 322nd most popular site on the Internet. This makes it more popular than well known media sites like USAToday.com, BusinessWeek. com and Forbes.com.

Kevin’s Amazing Customer Service Rule# 16:

“Discover what your customers want.”

I admit, this seems overly simple. To run any successful business it’s a given we need to know what our customers want. But do we always know?

My answer is: “No we don’t.”

We think we do. We hope we do. Or we never even think about it. We just assume we do. And if we don’t really know, we risk focusing our resources on things our customers don’t care about. That opens the door to more competition and fewer loyal customers.

Kevin’s Amazing Customer Service rule# 31:

The economic impact an event like the Republican National Convention has on a host city is tremendous. But if the event is done extremely well, the benefits can go on for years.

Here are ten customer service tips to the people hosting the 2008 RNC to help the event be spectacular in the eyes of the delegates, media and others who make the event what it is.