SBE Marketing SBE’s How to Provide Great Customer Service Learn to Raise your Customer Service to a New Level of Superiority SBE Marketing PENNSYLVANIA SBE SUPPORTIVE SERVICES CENTER A Shared Initiative between Cheyney University of Pennsylvania and The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Facilitator -- Mark Corbin, Director

Table of Contents The Core of Your Customer Customer Delight Better Customer Experience EXTRA-Value for the Customer V.I.P – Customer Party Thank You-Come Again What Kind of Help Do You Need?

Customers “Do what you do so well that they(customers) will want to see it again and bring their friends.” WALT DISNEY 3

The Core of Your Customer You cannot strategize to delight the customer if you do not understand the customer's fundamental expectations. You may get lucky and stumble onto attributes of your performance that do delight the customer, but you cannot consistently expect to do so unless you have deep customer insight. 4

Customer Delight Customer delight occurs when the customer's perception of their experience of doing business with you exceeds their expectation. This implies that customer delight can be influenced in two ways: By Managing Expectations By Managing Performance It is critical to meet customer expectations on attributes that are important to the customer. 5

Better Customer Experience Exceeding expectations need not be costly. For example, a sales representative could do a number of simple things such as:   Volunteer to collect and replace a faulty product from a customer rather than waiting for the normal call cycle to schedule a call on the customer.   Offer better, lower cost solutions to the customer, even though that might reduce profit margin.   Provide information about the customer's served market. A packaging company, for example, might alert a fast-moving consumer goods manufacturer to competitive initiatives in their served markets. 6

EXTRA - Value for the Customer Make it easier for customers to buy from you. Develop outside of customer loyalty programs. Responsiveness to requests, calls, emails Accessibility to the customer’s primary contact Consistency in offering Follow-up and follow-through on meetings Accurate and timely billing. While these may seem like common sense, consider how many vendors you no longer use because they were too difficult to do business with. 7

V.I.P. Customer Party “Membership Has It’s Privileges'” This is a great way to connect to potential new customers a few value-add strategies that you can use include: Membership Cards and programs that entitle your customers to special offers, discounts, or preferential treatment. Long-term customer acknowledgement through priority shopping events. Enhanced and empowered customer, after sales, and technical support. 8

Thank You-Come Again! Gratitude a Different Path You would be surprised at how many business owners do show their gratitude to customers. Send a hand written note of thanks or a simple holiday card. “Taking time to say thank you goes along way towards deepening that all-important relationship with your client or customers. Also you could add a discount coupon inside of the card that should draw repeat business. 9

What Kind of Help Do You Need? Only - Two Questions That Matter To Grow or Start Your Business? What would you do with the help if you could get it? 10

Source Customer Relationship Management, Second Edition Chapter 9, Managing the customer lifecycle: Customer retention and development; http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/feature/Creating-positive-customer-retention-strategies All Photos by http://office.microsoft.com/ Walt Disney Quote - http://www.customerservicepoint.com/customer-service-quotes.html

SBE Supportive Services Center Contact Information: Mark Corbin: mcorbin@cheyney.edu Telephone: 610-399-2178 Dominique Smiley: dsmiley@cheyney.edu Telephone: 610-399-2473 SBE Website: http://www.pennsbess.com Twitter: @SBESSCPA