During difficult economic times is critical to conserve cash. It is also critical to retain clients and if at all grow your client base.
I find it rather peculiar that most businesses and especially small businesses cut their marketing budget almost immediately when times are tough. Shouldn’t this be when you want to reach out to your clients and potential clients most? Isn’t this when you want to make sure you do everything possible to spoil your existing clients and over serve them?
Customer service needs to be off the charts during these times. Frankly, it should always be, but certainly during times when every consumer is evaluating their purchases with extra scrutiny. So where does customer service start? I like to look at interactions in the context of an assembly line. Where does the interaction start and what is its path to completion?
Even in today’s automated world, most small businesses still communicate with their prospective and active clients via telephone. When the phone in your office rings, who answers it? In this particular communication, isn’t that where the process starts? How critical is that first voice, those first words, that FIRST IMPRESSION? What is your clients and prospective clients first impression when they call or come into your workplace? Have you put your best foot forward? Have you spent time making absolutely sure that when that client or prospective client interacts with your business, the first person they see or talk to is making sure that person is having the best experience possible? I suspect not!
Again, when it matters most, most small business cut the cost of their receptionist or “administrative” help instead of investing in the person that has the best chance of setting the tone for a great experience or a mediocre or even bad experience. If you haven’t heard the terms, “director of first impressions” or “chief experience officer” or the various other creative names people have been assigning this critical role, you should really think about the concept. Don’t take lightly the value a well-trained, enthusiastic, intelligent “receptionist” can make. Evaluate what your clients see and experience, don’t fall into the trap of assigning little or no value to the person that has more to do with what our clients “see” than anyone else in your organization and invest in and train a high performing “director of first impressions”.
Victor
