This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Micah Solomon, co-author of "Exceptional Service, Exceptional Profit," says that now more than ever businesses must focus on customer service to stay in business.
How can companies offer good service before a customer enters the door?
Psychological research shows that customers remember the first and last minutes of a service encounter more vividly and for much longer than the rest of it. The first impression you make may start well before the customer actually enters your place of business. Are your hours correctly listed on GooglePlaces? If not, fix them or the customer will blame you, not Google. Does your parking lot appear attractive and appealing from all angles? Once the customer is inside your office, is the greeting warm and immediate? (Note: The same principles apply online in terms of Web design and usability.) Make sure that the first and final elements of your customer interactions are particularly well engineered, because they are going to stick in the customer's memory.
What's the importance of speedier service?
Modern customers expect things more quickly than did any generation before them. Not only speedier than their parents expected, but even more than they expected this time last year. In this age of iPhones and Amazon.com, Twitter and Yelp, you may as well not respond to customer inquiries if you're going to respond late. Respect for customers' sense of time urgency is a crucial competitive advantage in today's marketplace.
How can a business anticipate a customer's wishes?
Meeting desires before they have been expressed sends the message that you care about the customer as an individual. This requires aligning your systems and your people to anticipate customer needs, and it involves subordinating your skills-based hiring requirements to customer-centric traits. Specifically, focus on warmth, empathy, a bias toward teamwork, conscientiousness and optimism. To align your systems to center on what customers really want, endeavor to experience your service the same way your customers do and then fix what is broken. Most of all, great service requires custom fitting. Otherwise, you're just offering an easily-replaced commodity.
Describe how language can fit a business brand.
The language you use in your business matters. Don't leave it up to chance. Develop and rehearse a list of vocabulary words and expressions that fit your brand perfectly. For instance, should an oncology receptionist be telling a customer, "No worries!?" Intentionally choose the type of language impression that fits your particular brand, and spell it out in a wordbook and phrasebook for your staff. Just as important as using language is to search out and destroy any vocabulary words that could hurt customer feelings. For example, avoid telling a customer, "You owe us X." Try instead: "Our records show a balance of X." Language engineering prevents language defects and defects are always bad for business.
Twitter: @DawnHouseTrib Micah Solomon, author