Who is talking to your customers and what are they saying? 4

“Who is talking to your customers and what are they saying about your product/service quality?” The third of the five critical considerations in helping the people who communicate with your customers is:

3. Give the people in your organization the best products/services to represent. Give them something to be proud of. Give them products/services that make your customers happy. Give them something to talk about and train them on how to talk about it.

Can you say to your customers: We care enough about you to give you the very best__________.

In some situations, it may be really easy for people to talk to their customers if they work for the most exclusive manufacturer, dealer or distributor. They can be confident that they are the best and sell the best. It may be a lot easier if you can say: We are at the top of the list according to consumer reports; We are at the top of the list of the Fortune 500 in our category for five years in a row; We received an international award for manufacturing excellence; We won the Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award.

In some businesses it is easier to develop pride in your company because your products/services are world class. The caution with too much pride is that it can come across as arrogance. Excellent customer communicators are not arrogant.

Now what about the people working for average businesses with average products/services? How do you get up in the morning and go to work for an average organization with average products/services and get excited about talking to your customers?

The answer: Leadership, personal pride, and a constant effort to improve the situation. Be the best that you can be and challenge the leaders of your company to improve. Initiate customer feedback so that the voice of the customer is heard within the organization. When customers give negative feedback about your products/services; listen and apologize (and mean it) and offer a resolution.

Who is talking to your customers and what are they saying? 3

“Who is talking to your customers and what are they saying?” should be a concern to everyone in your business. It is easiest to start training those people who are in your sphere of influence on your organizational expectations for customer communications.  Think about the cost of retaining a customer and the cost of new customer acquisition for your organization. You want top notch people talking to your customers. 

The second of the five critical considerations in helping the people who communicate with your customers is:

2. Are the people who communicate with your customers: trained, intelligent, efficient, effective, customer-friendly, honest and customer service oriented? If they are, did you hire them with those skills? Do they have the right attitude? Did you train them to meet your company requirements? Did you train them to know their products and services? Did you train them to know company policy? Did you train them to handle complaints? Did you train them on how your products are better than the competition? How are these skills monitored? Do these representatives have exceptional verbal and written communication skills? Have you trained them to handle customer issues without always going to a supervisor for resolution? Are there systems in place to support their communication needs? Do they exceed customer expectations? If so, how do you know?  

Just a note on the communication skills, I need to say this….I want to communicate with someone who speaks my language so that I can understand them (regardless of what “my language” is) and they can understand me.  If I have to speak with a representative and we can’t communicate, the message to me is that the company doesn’t care enough about me to make it easy to communicate. 

In your organization, how long does it take to prepare your representatives for customer interaction? What happens to these representatives if customers complain about them?  What happens if your representatives are rude and are not customer-friendly?

Who is talking to your customers and what are they saying? 2

The first step in determining “Who is talking to your customers and what are they saying?” is to identify the more controllable customer communications. Let’s start at the top with the business leaders. The leaders must have full ownership and accountability for their customer relationships. These business leaders could be a CEO and their executive staff or a sole proprietor. Do the leaders in your business (this may be directed to you) spend time on the front line with your customers? Do they make customer visits, have customer relationships that they personally manage, listen to other employees in the business talk to their customers, get personally involved in new hire training on the subject of how to communicate with customers? 

The “how to communicate with customers” may vary by business and customer type but there are some basics that need to be taught. Don’t assume that every employee who joins your company will know what to do. The customer communication may also come through business partners such as dealers, distributors, and value-added resellers. What customer communication process  is in place for training these partners? Not only are the business partners your customers but their customers are your customers. And what about vendors? If you treat your vendors poorly, they may tell your customers how they were treated by your company. 

For this discussion, I want to focus on verbal communication, face-to-face or on the telephone. You may be thinking, Hey, we don’t ever have to talk to our customers because everything we do is online or automated. To that I would say, Really….you NEVER talk to your customers? You might be missing an opportunity. 

Here is the first of five critical considerations in helping the people who communicate with your customers: 

1. What is the attitude of your organization toward your customers? Do you have the attitude that the customer is critical to the success of your business or are the customers an annoyance? How is this attitude demonstrated and communicated? Your company may spend a significant amount of money on marketing communication, product development, pricing strategy, distribution, technology, employees and systems but if your customer communication falls short of their expectation, they may do business elsewhere. Attitude comes across in so many different ways and is evident in all types of touches with your customers.

Who is talking to your customers and what are they saying?

“Who is talking to your customers and what are they saying?” is a relevant question for large corporations, small businesses, franchises, or any business type or size. Even if there is a business with just one person, that person has to consider that competition may be talking to their customers or that their customers are talking among themselves. Are the people talking to your customers representing your business as you want it to be represented?

Let’s think about this subject in terms of who is doing the talking and approach it as such. The people talking to your customers could include the following types of people: sales representatives, service representatives, customer service, credit/accounting, order administration, managers and supervisors, technical support, cashiers, retail associates, distributors, value-added resellers, dealers, delivery representatives, receptionists, online/email responders,  and perhaps less frequently senior management.

What type of training have you provided for these representatives? Do these representatives know what to say to customers? Do they have the appropriate reference material for guidance? Do these representatives know your company mission and vision? How are you managing the process to guide communication to your customers? Are the leaders of your business setting the right example of how to talk to your customers?