Friday, June 12, 2009

10 Outrageous Customer Services Ideas for Kick Ass Friday


1. Make the information that your customers want easily available to them

The nutrition box on food is simple and to the point and everyone knows to look for it and how to read it. How can you apply this to your products and services. Get rid of the fancy tri-fold brochures -- make it a simple easy to understand post card.

2. Each employee takes personal responsibility for your customers


In Ritz Carlton hotels if an employee hears a customer complain that employee is now in ownership of resolving that complaint. If they can do it, so can your people.
It's all based on leadership expectations. What are you service expectations you back up with action?

3. Make an outrageous, extravagant effort to serve a customer

Going above and beyond the call of duty only happens when people are aware this is a desired and supported behavior. How far do you let your employees go in outrageous service? Have a teller offer in home transactions for shut-ins, Go to the local senior care facility with DVDs of movies from their time. Outrageous in good taste always works.

4. Customers have a strong sense of fair play


Honor competitors coupons, if you make customers wait give them something extra. Wouldn't you love to know when you had to pull out of a drive-thru to wait for your order they at least gave you an extra French fry order free? How can you deliver this in your business?

5. Differentiate your business

In a large mall in St. Louis a fudge shop has employees who "perform" and crowds gather to hear the performance just as the new fudge is ready. Free samples all around as well! It's the one shop in the mall everyone knows. What makes your branch, office, store, or location any different? An inflatable gorilla doesn't mean anything unless it means something to the customer. Be different in ways the customers will love.

6. The insider club


Frequent flyers, hotel points, and coffee drinkers love to be part of the inside club or the frequent user club. Customers want to feel they are considered regulars. Panera Bread got rid of their coffee cards because someone was selling the stamps on ebay and too much free coffee and bagels were leaving the store. Don't end the program, revamp it. Outsmart the crooks, but don't give up on your insider customers.

7. Be responsible for uncompromising levels of cleanliness


The best judge of management's customer care in a restaurant is the cleanliness of the bathroom and the legs of the chairs. If they are filthy the customer care will be just as bad. If retail shelves are a tangled mess, if hotel lobbies are sloppy, and delivery trucks look like moving landfills, customers will look for someone else to take their businesses to.

8. Encourage your customers to share photos of your products in use

Post customers vacation pictures of them enjoying your product in your customer traffic areas. Everyone enjoys these kinds of pictures and they are not professionally crafted photo shoots. These are normal people enjoying what you sell. Beat that!

9. T-shirts or buttons with online feedback


A restaurant has an uncensored section of their website for customer feedback and they make t-shirts and buttons for the employees to wear of the comments. Good and Bad. One shirt read, “The pizza was soooo greasy. I am assuming this was in part do to the pig fat.” With the person's name who submitted that review! Who can't laugh at that? Show that you listen to the online Yelps! It means you care and have a sense of humor about yourself.

10. Send the note

One of my clients has employees who receive wonderful letters from their customers about great service. The personal notes are gold to those employees. Why not send hand written notes to the best customers you have? We all know we have to deal with the cranky pain in the ass customers, so why not thank the ones who are a pleasure to work with?