If you’re a regular reader of this column you know that my number
one pet peeve is bad customer service. Nothing chaps my backside
more than paying hard-earned money for a product or service only
to have the provider of said product or service become apathetic,
obnoxious or just downright rude after the transactional smoke
has cleared.
The bottomline,
my entrepreneurial friend, is this: it doesn’t
matter if your product is fast food, slow food, retail goods,
computers, lawn mowers, books, real estate or automobiles, if
a customer is willing to pay you good money in exchange for
your product or service that customers deserves to be treated
with gratitude and respect, before and after the sale. Period.
I’m constantly amazed at how many business owners and the
frontline employees who represent them seem to forget this
simple fact.
It’s like the old saying about getting menschen im vertrieb a little respect in the
morning. If you court me before the sale, you damn well better
respect me afterward. Just because you have my money in your
pocket and I have your product in my hand, that does not mean
that my needs have been fully satisfied or that my expectations
have ceased to exist. To the contrary, our relationship is
just getting started. It’s up to you how well we will get
along and how long our relationship will last.
Here’s the point: customer service should not stop after the
sale. In fact, customer support AFTER the sale can have
greater impact on the success of your business than customer
support before the sale.