“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else”. – Sam Walton
There could be many things to ensure customers choose your company. They are always in need of professionals who can handle their specialized needs and perform tasks faster and more efficiently than they do internally. With the rapid rise in competition and similar products, a company must pay more attention to satisfying their customers. This will ensure customers choose your company for anything they require help with and do not think of going elsewhere. The role of top class customer service is indispensable towards this end. The fact is that competition has increased for your customers too and hence they would require a value-added partner, who can be a single point of contact and management for a host of services and products.
Given the rise in technology, every business is in some way or the other connected, increasing operational and system interdependence. Customers therefore want a single source that has the knowledge and expertise to address and manage these issues. As mentioned, technology has ‘shrunk’ the world – people are able to connect with each, businesses now have customers across the world and conduct more business online than offline. This in turn means that customers want to associate with a company that can manage this network. So in order to ensure that customers choose your company, your business must have the operational capability and reliability to work round the clock – 24×7 for all days of the year. Customers would choose your company if you have had proven capability of innovation, business development and a workforce that is highly trained and knowledgeable. Customers choose your company if there a robust infrastructure and streamlined processes to support and manage the tasks they want to outsource.
Your company would need a change in mind-set and culture in order to become the preferred vendor and customers choose your company when they want to outsource or enter into a business alliance. The company they choose must help them to generate a steady stream of income, high profit and help them with business development and successful marketing. If customers choose your company, it would be because they believe that your business can help them become more lucrative and gain sustainable success. It would be your responsibility then, to ensure that your company delivers on these expectations. Customers now want to know that their service provider and ‘business partner’ would foremost provide them with top class customer service and support.
Clearly understanding why customers choose your company over another would be crucial to a company’s success. This understanding would help to create better advertisements, marketing and promotional campaigns. Your company would be able to devise these ‘messages’ more effectively by ensuring that the image it portrays of itself would be in line with the customer’s needs, preferences and wants. While communicating to existing customers and prospective ones, the message must reflect a friendly and empathetic company that makes every effort to understand its customers and provide them with the service and offerings that would be most beneficial to them.
Customers choose your company if the business operations and practices make it easy and convenient for them. Your business must be flexible, adaptable, open and most importantly accessible when they need. It must be located in an easy to reach locality and must cater to things like parking, range of products and with helpful and friendly staff. In addition, the information provided online via the website and social media sites must remain constantly updated such that customers can make informed decisions related to buying. In order to ensure customers choose your company, your business must have a unique selling proposition – something it can offer that customers will not get elsewhere. This distinction could prove to be a ‘crowd puller’. While competitive pricing is also something customers seek, your company cannot ensure that customers choose your company only on that basis. In addition to pricing, your company must provide several benefits and offers that would add value to customers.
While all the points mentioned could help your company to become the preferred vendor / business partner for customers, nothing would suffice without outstanding customer service. Research has constantly revealed that top class service is what customers want from any company they do business with and is an indispensable part of the business relationship. If your company has built a formidable reputation of serving its customers in an outstanding manner, you can be sure that customers choose your company over others in the market. Customers that receive poor treatment or have even a single shoddy experience are sure to share these experiences with others. This bad word of mouth can largely damage your company’s reputation and future prospects. In the words of Warren Buffett – “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently”. When a company thinks about its customers and maintains a customer focused approach, it would get customers to choose them over others.
In order to ensure customers choose your company, a provision for customer service is not enough – it should follow some high standards. Most importantly, your company must remember to keep all its transactions and business dealings honest and open and conduct itself with the highest standards of integrity. It would be imperative that your company owns up to its mistakes and makes swift and effective amends when things do go wrong and does whatever it takes to ensure that the same mistakes are not repeated.
Customers do not like to be uninformed. It is imperative that your company communicates regularly with them on various subjects – updates, new products, amends underway on any problems, customer service related issues and other such information. Without such information, customers cannot gain confidence or trust in a company and with time would possibly defect to another company. Such transfer of knowledge would also ensure that your company would set realistic expectations leaving no room for ambiguity or expectations that the company may not be able to deliver. It is important to set correct expectations since a single default can possibly negatively affect all the efforts of service made by the company and could result in customer churn.
Anyone running a business would know that serving customers should be everyone’s responsibility to ensure that customers choose your company over others. Leaders of the company must show respect and courtesy to customers – both internal and external. This would ensure that people emulate their actions, show respect to one another, and treat the company’s external customers the same way. Any company would always have difficult customers and there would be times when there would be internal conflicts too. However, with a genuine effort at respecting others, these stressful situations would become more easily manageable. A happy workforce would serve customers well, which in turn would lead to highly satisfied customers who would contribute to the success of the company. As your company gains a reputation for top class service, you can be sure that the existing customers would make every effort to ensure that other customers choose your company too. It is extremely crucial that your company never loses focus on its customers. If you ensure that your company has a sustainable model that stresses customer-centricity, the chances that customers choose your company will be extremely high and almost certain.
