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| This is a weekly column transcribed from my Radio Show. The "Top Story" is the major discussion each week in which I address in great depth and detail, aspects of selling that are pertinent to your job everyday. |
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Have you ever had a bad experience with a retailer? I've got to tell you this story. It's not slander; it's not libel because it's true. It really happened. I have a Volvo. This is my second Volvo. They're more expensive than many brands so there's an expectation when you own a European car, whether it's a BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Volvo, Saab, Jaguar. When you own a car like that, your expectations go way up as far as the service that you're expecting. My car has a lot of miles on it because I live in Fairfield and I have an office in Minneapolis. When I go up to my office one or two times a month I've got a 350-mile commute each way. Also as much time as I spend on airplanes, if I can get to a place by driving, I drive. If it's five or six hours away, I drive there. Needless to say, my vehicles tend to have a lot of miles on them.
I take my car to a particular Volvo dealer, a company I've been working with for five or six years. I get there, they tell me to bring the car in at seven o'clock in the morning. I say that I need a rental car because I have all these things I need to do while I'm up in Minneapolis. They said it was no problem; they'd have a car for me.
So I get there at seven. They say, "Oh, the rental car company doesn't open until 7:30. They probably won't be here till 7:45." I said, "Why didn't anybody tell me that? Now I've got to sit around and wait for forty-five minutes." He said - listen to these words - he said, "That's their policy."
So I thought to myself, "Well, it's your partner. If you knew their policy was that they weren't going to be here until 7:30 or 7:45, why in the world did you ask me to be here at 7:00?" But I'm a nice person. I let it go; I didn't say a word. 7:45 comes and goes. 7:55 comes and goes. 8:05 comes and goes.
I just so happened to overhear the service receptionist say, "No, we don't have anybody waiting today." While she was on the phone I said, "Is that your rental car partner?" She said, "Yes." I said, "I've been waiting for a car since 7:05 this morning." She said, "What's your name?" I said, "Warren Wechsler." She said - listen to this one, "You're not on the list."
Now my blood's starting to boil just a little bit. I go out to the service advisors, Mark and George (not their real names), and I say, "Mark, George, my name's not on the list." Mark said, "Well, that's the rental car company's fault."
So now they're pointing fingers at their partner. Has anybody said, "I'm sorry this has happened to you"? Has anybody said, "We'll take care of you"? Nope. They said, "Look, we don't control those people." It's the classic do anything you can. Blame the other company. Blame your partner. Blame the customer.
So I said, "Mark, I'm the customer. I'm looking for some satisfaction here. You know what? I'm not going to pay for this rental car. In fact, you used to have program where anytime somebody came in for service you gave them a car. What's this business where you're going to charge me?" He said, "We can't do that. You'll have to work that out with them when they get here."
So now my blood is overflowing. I said, "Is Paul Smith (Not his real name) still the general manager?" "Yes." "Is he in yet?" "No, he won't be in till 8:30." I said, "Fine."
They never offered one other thing. No "I'm sorry", no anything like that. When Paul called me I said, "Look Paul. I'm going to come pick up my car. I need to teach you guys lesson. I'm not having my car serviced here. I'll wait till I get back to Iowa. Mark and George need some customer service training.
They basically walked away from a tune-up and a regular repair. And I am proving it right now. If you screw up in customer service, what do people tend to do? They tell their friends; they tell everybody.
We spend a lot of time talking about how to find customers and how to get customers. We talk about prospecting and planning and appointment setting and objectives. Today we're going to talk about how to keep customers. Not how to find them, not how to get them, but how to keep them. So if you've got people in your business who are listening right now, or if you're in your business and you have people who are in your business who interface with the customers, if you've got retail clerks, if you've got customer service people, if you've got telesales people, as soon as we get back from the break, glue your ears to the radio because I'm going to share with you exactly how to create excellence in your organization so that you are known as a great place that gives great customer service.
If you don't take care of your customers two things will happen. Number one: somebody else will. Number two: they will tell anybody who is within earshot about a negative experience that they had.
Generally speaking, unhappy people, if they had a bad experience at your store, or if something didn't go the right way, if they felt that people were rude or weren't acknowledging them or didn't take care of their needs, the disgruntled customer will tell between nine and twenty people about their experience. Or if they're like me, when they have access to a microphone, I can tell thousands of people. Anyway, nine to twenty people will directly hear about a negative experience somebody had doing business with you.
And the other thing that's interesting about this concept is that if you look at the access of new customer side of business, or the acquisition of customer, this side of your business, it is nine times harder to have a brand new person or company buy from you than it is to keep a current customer satisfied. It's nine times harder to go out and find a new person to work with than it is to keep a current customer satisfied.
So how do you keep customers? How do you keep them happy? How do you turn your customers into raving fans of your business? How do you treat your customers so well that people call you and say, "The reason I'm calling you is because so-and-so said you did a great job." In fact it's better than referrals because if you're on a referral call, if you're the person who's trying to offer the product or service, you're usually the person who picks up the phone and calls the other person. You are making the proactive, outbound referral call. If you can be an endorsed resource, other people call you which is incredibly powerful.
Back to the original question of how do you keep customers. I'm going to share some statistics with you. It's a study that was conducted in 1989, 1991, 1994, and again in 1997. I asked the question, "If you were looking for attributes of what your provider of choice would have, how would you rank the following responses?" Ninety-one percent of the people in this survey said that the most important attribute is that the company is there when they are needed. So the response was "be there when I need you". Ninety-one percent of the time that was the number one response. Be there when I need you. Now what does this mean? This means that if you're in a retail environment and somebody comes in and you're working with another customer, and you don't even acknowledge that there's a person in the store with a hand or a wave or a wink or a hello, that person will now get the feeling that you're not there when they need you. It doesn't mean you don't continue to work with the customer who was there first. It simply means that you acknowledge the person.
Let's say you go into the bank and somebody is working on reconciling checks and doing all this paperwork. You're standing there patiently just waiting to be served at the bank. How are you going to feel if that person thinks the paperwork is more important than you? You're not going to feel that good about that experience. So what are we saying? Ninety-one percent of the time it's simply a matter of being there when people need you.
Woody Allen was in movies like Annie Hall, Play It Again Sam. He was in a bunch of movies. He always played the same character, that kind of nerdy, neurotic, New York liberal who doesn't have a clue about real life, but is always in his head. In one particular movie, Play It Again Sam, he says to the character played by Diane Keaton, "I've figured out the secret to being successful in life." She looks at him as if to say, "You can't even tie your shoes. What do you know about the secret to being successful in life?" And Woody Allen utters the following words, "Being successful is eighty percent showing up. Eighty percent of being successful in life is showing up."
Now what does mean in terms of this survey I did? It's very equivalent. Ninety-one percent of the time people say, "Just be there when I need you." It's not rocket science, folks. It's really simple.
Eighty-three percent of the people in the survey placed the next item second, and that is return my phone calls promptly. If you call up and you need service, you need your car serviced, you're looking for a new investment advisor, you're looking to rent an apartment, you're looking to buy drapes, you're looking to buy a new car. If you make an outreach to one of your potential vendors, aren't you saying to yourself, "OK, I made the call"? We're running this relay race together, and I just handed the baton to you." Of course that's what you're saying. That's what I'm saying, that's what Lee Munce would say, that's what Steve Smith would say. We're running this race together and I just handed it off to you, and I'm waiting for you to get back to me. If you don't get back to that person, you are proving that by your ignorance and by your nonchalance about their inquiry that you don't care about them. So eighty-three percent of the time the people said, "Return my phone calls promptly." So all of us who are in some type of service business or inbound sales, we have to make sure that if somebody asks us to do something, we absolutely get back to them in a timely manner.
Related to that statistic is the next one. Seventy-one percent of the people surveyed said, "The third most important thing to me is on-time performance." What that simply means is…What we're doing now reminds me of that game show Family Feud, where Richard Dawson said…Well, this is another game show idea. Most people, when they say on-time performance, it's like that game Name That Tune. They're not saying you have to name that tune in two notes or one note or before I can even get the note out. All they're saying is if you can name that tune in six notes that you'd better be able to name that tune in six notes. It doesn't mean you have to be the fastest. It means you need to be able to deliver on your promises. Simply put, on-time performance means that you do what you say and say what you do. You walk the walk, you talk the talk.
Sixty percent of the people surveyed said, "In order to earn the right to my business you have to tell the truth." Now this is an alarming statistic because what it's saying is that there are a whole lot of people out there who don't trust the salespeople, the businesses, the service providers they're working with. They have a general mistrust of that person, and all they're asking is that in response to questions that you tell the truth. "Can I get it on Wednesday?" Well if you know that it's out of stock and you're not going to be able to get it to them on Wednesday, then you have to say, "No, it's not in stock. I can get it to you on Friday." So all they're saying is, "Tell me the truth. Don't lie to me. I'd rather have bad news than the wrong news." That's what the buying public is telling us.
Those are the statistics we have to keep in mind. In order to keep your customers happy be there when they need you, return their phone calls promptly, do what you say - in other words, practice on-time performance, and tell the truth.
OK, let's look at the flip side. What are you going to do that's going to drive your customers absolutely batty so they're not going to want to do business with you any more? There's another study that was done by Business Week magazine. They found that generally speaking one percent of the people who stopped business die, three percent move away, five percent give business to a friend who gets into the business, nine percent receive better prices, fourteen percent are dissatisfied with the product or service - they have a bad experience with the physical thing or the intangible that they bought. But the number one statistic that should amaze and shock you is that sixty-eight percent of the time when people change vendors, dry cleaners, real estate companies, radio stations it's because they feel that their needs are being treated indifferently. In other words, they feel that the company is indifferent to what's really important to the customer. It doesn't mean that you are indifferent. It's called perceived indifference.
It's like the story that I opened up the show with. It doesn't mean those people are bad people; they're really nice people. And they really did care that I was having a problem. At least I hope they did. But the fact is that the way they were relating to me proved to me that in my perception they were indifferent to the concerns that I had. So reality is based on the customer's perception which means that if somebody walks into your store and they're very well-dressed and look like they have a lot of money and you fawn over them and give them all this attention, but another person walks in with dirty shoes and torn clothes - I'm making the example dramatic - and you don't treat that person in the same way, you are proving by your actions that you are indifferent to that person, even though maybe you aren't. But that person has the perception that you are indifferent to their needs. So in order to not chase customers away we have to understand that we always have make customers feel legitimately that they are the most important thing. In fact, I work with a lot of inbound telesales organizations that support the outbound sales groups that I work with. It's amazing how many laughs I get when I say, "You know, on the inbound side I could get all my work done if those darn customers wouldn't call me all the time." People can relate to that. They laugh and say, "When you think about it, the customer is the absolute most important thing. And yes, they're interrupting us and I might not get my work done because I have to deal with customer needs. But you know what? The other stuff can wait as long as I'm delivering on my promises and taking care of my customers."
Let me tell you two phrases you can use that can help you in an unbelievable way with your customer base. They're both two-word phrases. The first one is "Thank you." I called a couple of my clients this week. It's Thanksgiving time. People are kind of winding down, getting ready to be in holiday mode. I basically just sat by the phone the last couple of days calling my customers up and saying, "I just called to tell you I appreciate the business we do together. Thank you so much for being a client of Total Selling Systems." My clients were shocked and amazed that somebody would simply pick up the phone and call them to thank them for their business. I had no other agenda. I wasn't trying to have them buy any books of mine for Christmas gifts or Hanukah gifts for their staff. I wasn't calling to find out what their needs were for next year. I only called them to say, "Thank you for being a client. Thank you for working with me this year." One company I called today I've been working with for eleven years. And my only reason for calling was to say, "Look, Chuck, I really appreciate the time that I've gotten to know you personally and professionally. And thank you so much for the commitment you've made to my company and me over the last eleven years. I really appreciate it." What are the two words? Thank you. "Thank you for buying that. Thank you for coming to the store today. Thank you for whatever." Thank them for all kinds of things. But just remember to say thank you. Those are probably the two most underutilized words in the salesperson's repertoire.
The other two words that are underutilized are I'm sorry. Imagine what would have happened in my experience at the Volvo dealer if one of those two guys simply would have said, "I'm really sorry this is happening. I'm sorry the car's not here. I'm sorry there was a miscommunication. I'm sorry they didn't get the information we needed. I might even have forgotten to call them. I'm sorry I forgot to call them. I'm sorry you had to wait for an hour and five minutes." Not one person apologized until finally the general manager, after he got my voice mail, called me back, and the first thing he said was, "Look, Warren, I'm really sorry this happened to you." And that took so much of the sting away from the experience I had earlier that day. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry this merchandise is going to be late. I'm sorry it came in the wrong color. I'm sorry you had to wait. I'm sorry we didn't fulfill your needs. I'm sorry you feel that this is not what you thought it was. I'm sorry it broke. I'm sorry it was defective." I'm saying this over and over again to get us used to hearing and using those words. Most of the time we blame other people in our own company. "I'm sorry that delivery was late, but you know those people in the warehouse they never get it right." Imagine! You're slamming your own people within your own company. It's ludicrous.
If you're going to run into a situation where you're going to have to apologize to someone, I'll give you two other ideas. Number one: don't argue or challenge their emotions. That's what happened to me when I was in Minneapolis. They argued with me and they challenged my emotions. "Why do you feel that way?" Well, I don't have to tell you why I feel that way. I'll feel however I want. I'm allowed to be mad. I'm allowed to be upset. I'm allowed to be anything I want because I have feelings. You don't want to deny or challenge the feelings of the person who is upset.
What you have to do is empathize. "Hey, I'm sorry. I can appreciate what's happening to you. I hear what you're saying. I can see that you're upset." You demonstrate empathy so the person sees that you're not angry necessarily like they are, but at least you care enough to see what it's like to stand in their shoes.
And finally, when you're putting the finishing touches on making things right for someone who is unhappy, you say basically a variation on these three ideas. "Here's what I heard you say." So you review what the problem was and what the solution is. The next part is, "What we agreed is…" So you bring closure to it. Then the third part is whatever you're going to do. "I am going to…I will do this. I already have done this." So it's basically, "Here's what I heard you say; here's what we agreed to; and here's what I'm going to do about it." If you can do those three things you will turn unhappy customers back into those raving fans that we're all looking for.
Those are all my ideas today on how to keep the customer. It's not usually what we talk about, but you can tell it's in the front of my mind today. I think it's real important to take a pause once in a while and remember how important it is to keep your customers happy.
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| Warren's Favorite's |
Customer Care
What's the best way to take care of our customers? I conducted a survey in 1991, again in 1994, and again in 1997....
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Obligating Questions as a Selling Advantage
Ask an obligating question and then be silent, but not because you're trying to create a win/lose situation. What...
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Unlearning
We sometimes have to unlearn to become a better salesperson. Not learn, but unlearn. Think about that. Think...
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Keeping Score
Keeping score in selling is as important as keeping score in a baseball game. Knowing what statistics to measure...
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– Warren
Wechsler |
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