10 ways to support your best customers

8/9/2019 10 Ways to Support Your Best Customers

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10 Ways to Support Your Best Customers

Every company is in the service industry, right? Expertpointers for how to best perform for your best accounts.

ByInc. Staff | Aug 3, 2010

Even if you're not in the customer service business, there's one clear way to please your

customers: act like serving them is your first priority. We've compiled tips from expertinterviews and articles that have appeared in Inc. and on Inc.com to find the mostpoignant pointers for pleasing your most valuable customers.

1. Be accessible. Be very accessible.When dealing with large clients, small businesses can get self-conscious about their size.

But the dexterity of start-ups and flexibility of lean operations is exactly what drawsaerospace giant Northrop Grumman to work with small companies. "In 2009, wesubcontracted $4.5 billion worth of goods and services to small businesses," says GloriaPualani, director of socioeconomic business programs at Northrop Grumman. "Becausewe're such a large company and we have so many commodity lines, we ask that our

suppliers really target their outreach." Pualani adds: "Also, the advantage to us ofworking with a small business is the flexibility and agility they offer. Many times wehave orders that require very quick turnaround.

So it helps when it is the decision makers that we are talking to, and we don't have to gothrough three or four layers of people to get a decision made. We like to have access tothe CEO or CFO of a company, the person who is actually making the decisions."

2. Mind the customer's mood

Perhaps you can learn something from a tactic used at the world-famous Inn at LittleWashington, where it's been said the tastiest thing served up is the service itself. It wasfounded in 1978 by chef Patrick O'Connell, who believes people aren't impressed bywhat you know or what you can offer until they see that you care. And you can't possiblycare in any meaningful way unless you have some insight into what people are feelingand why. Enter the "mood rating." When a new party arrives in the dining room, thecaptain assigns it a number that assesses the guests' apparent state of mind (from 1 to 10,
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with 7 or below indicating displeasure or unhappiness). The mood rating is typed into acomputer, written on the dinner order, and placed on a spool in the kitchen where theentire staff can see and react accordingly.Whatever the circumstances, O'Connell's goal is crystal clear: "No one should leave here

below a 9." To that end, restaurant staffers spare nothing in their attempt to raise thenumber be it complimentary champagne, extra desserts, a tableside visit from one of theowners, even a kitchen tour. "Consciousness to the extreme is great customer service,"O'Connell says. "If guests ran into terrible traffic on the way over here, or are in the midstof a marital dispute, we need to consider it our problem. How else are we going to ensurethat they have a sublime experience?"

3.Bring expertise to the table.

Aside from being flexible, the most important thing a small business can do todifferentiate itself is "having deep expertise that can give us knowledge about a particularcustomer segment or a technology." That's according to Larry Wood, Intuit's director ofsourcing. "Several years ago, I did an RFP for a hardware bundle comprising fivecomponents.

We were interviewing suppliers for each of the components when one of them took achance and said, 'You don't know anything about this market. Let me step up. I know allthese other providers. I can buy these other components and bundle it for you.' That wasamazing. They addressed a lot of our needs and took a lot of things that we weren'tfamiliar with off the table. I have to admit that I see very few companies do that."

4. Make sure your staff is equipped.

Your customer-service team is your frontline in making sure customers are not justsatisfied but are genuinely happy to work with you. The most critical person to hire inthe customer service schema is the manager, says Andy Fromm, president of ServiceManagement Group, a Missouri-based firm that works with retail and restaurant chainson improving customer service, since employee turnover is directly driven by managerturnover. You want someone who'll stick around, because otherwise,From cautions, "itwill be almost impossible to keep up with the hiring challenge." But everyone should careabout the product at hand: "Make sure that pet retailers like pets. It's not rocket science."

Other qualities to look for, according to V. Kumar, author of the book ManagingCustomers for Profit, include empathy, consistency and patience. Experience is vital, too,but it can be a double-edged sword: too much, and the representative may sound pedanticor condescending; too little, and the representative won't know how to handle delicatesituations. The ideal? Three to five years.
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5. Know the competition.

In Inc.'s series of sales tips from the world's toughest customers, Kathy Homeyer, directorof supplier diversity for UPS, gave a helpful tip on what notto do. "The biggest no-no isnot knowing our competition. People will say, 'I've got this really exciting proposal Iwant you to look at.' I'll say, 'Go ahead; send it to me.'Then they send it to me by FedEx. It happens every day. Just be smart. Know the

company you are pitching to and know their likes and dislikes. You get such browniepoints with me when you come in with a UPS envelope and have an account all set up.It's just the little things like that, the icing on the cake."

6. Be innovative.

After you know the competition, you simply have to do better for your customer than thecompetition would. Inc.com compiled video clips of tips on how to build customerloyalty from Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, JetBlue founder David Neeleman, and othersuccessful CEOs."We're not waiting for them to call us This is hand-to-hand combat outthere, folks: you have to do a better job," said Jay Myers of Interactive Solutions Inc.Watch the video.

7. Don't fear the online tools.

Your website is usually the customer's first exposure to your company, so your homepageshould be personal and user-friendly. Include staff bios or embed a Twitter feed to buildan intimate relationship with your customer, and consider other social media. Think ofFacebook and Twitter as listening posts. People love to chat about their recent

purchases and experiences, so why not tune in? But, she cautions, be mindful that thoseconversations may not represent the majority and should be put into context. "If you havea large group of people on Twitter talking about their problem with pairing their headsetto their phones, you want to be able to grab those Tweets and route them to theappropriate person in your company so the customer can get the answer they needdirectly from the source," says Sean Whiteley, vice president of product marketing forSalesforce.com, a San Francisco, California-based CRM provider.

8. Nurture your relationships.


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When companies build relationships with their clients and suppliers, "it's a hugecompetitive edge," said Kathy Homeyer, the director of supplier diversity for UPS. A lotof large corporations offer mentoring programs, which many entrepreneurs don't realizeare available. At UPS, we do outreach programs and external mentoring. We go to a lotof workshops, expos, and networking events.

When a manager here comes to me and says certain commodities are going to be put upfor bid in the coming months, I go through my files of people I have run across over thecourse of the past couple of years. We'll also reach out to the other large corporations,like Time Warner, and ask, 'Who are you guys using? Do you have someone that wedon't know?' It's almost a small family."

9. Add value to your relationship.

Even if you planned for the possibility, no one wants to lose big clients. So, how do youmake sure they hang around for as long as possible? Big companies are looking for value,says Constance Bagley, a professor at Yale School of Management. Figure out yourclient's immediate concerns. "Make sure the information is flowing both ways," she says."What info can you bring them about their costs and competitors? Have your accountmanager talk to their counterpart; have your salespeople talk to their R&D." ErinEnriquez, who manages a Red Bull account for Terralever, says with Red Bull thecompany focused on the client's desire to be perceived as technologically forward in itsonline marketing."The No. 1 thing is to be aware of the competition and what they're doing, and what newtypes of technologies are out there," says Enriquez. "Red Bull appreciates us coming tothem and pitching them and usually agrees to let us do a portion of that work." Plus, onceyou have that competitive insight, you can use it to attract new clients especially if yourcontract isn't exclusive. "It's a lot like high school dating," says Bagley. "Nothing makesyou more desirable than the fact that someone else wants you."

10. When in doubt, ask what your customers want.When Norm Brodsky looks back to his first year of doing business, one instance ofimpromptu customer satisfaction stands out. As a transit strike appeared eminent in NewYork City in 1980, Brodsky wrote: "I realized I was facing a potential disaster. PerfectCourier was barely seven months old. We were doing about $30,000 or $40,000 a monthin sales." Then he went to a person he respected in the office of a client and was handedan idea: use the existing company vehicles to not just deliver packages during the strike,but also help Perfect Courier's clients get theirpeople where they needed to be. And ithelped Perfect Courier grow much closer to its best clients. Brodsky writes: "During thestrike, we saw them every day, and they became our friends, as did the executives at


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other accounts. They came to our office for coffee and doughnuts." Also: "Aside from theadditional cash and the new sales, I took away from the episode one of the mostimportant lessons I've learned in business: When in doubt, go to your customers. Theywill tell you what they want and lead you to solutions you'd never come up with on yourown. Indeed, just about every successful new initiative I've taken in business since then

has come from listening to customers."

10 ways to support your best customers

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