A few years after we opened Alexander’s, I became acquainted with a printer from California who called himself “Kenny the Printer”. Kenny was kind of wacky in some ways, but he had some great management and customer service ideas. Kenny quickly became the guru of the quick printing industry, and many companies visited his location to learn how he grew his business.
One of the sayings Kenny used was, “Make shopping easy.” This was a little perplexing since I hadn’t really considered that people were coming to a print or copy center to shop. People knew what they wanted, and they just came in to place their order. After a little thought, it was easy to see that Kenny was right. My customers needed to have a pleasant and convenient experience in dealing with our company. In fact, no matter what type of business we have, we all need to make it easy for our customers to do business with us.
As I began to personalize what Kenny the Printer was saying, I could see that we had plenty of policies and procedures to help a job get done right and run smoothly through the plant, but those same processes were making it just the opposite for my customers. As I stepped back to look at what we were doing, I found another book titled “Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless.” The picture began to get clearer, and I knew that if we could just marry these two ideas together, by “Making Shopping Easy”, we would have “Loyal Customers”. Even to this day, we are constantly working on achieving this goal, but I’d like to share some of the ideas that are helping us, and might help you.
Think about it, we all have policies or procedures in our businesses. Some are intended, and some just become processes because an employee thought it was a good idea. Whatever the reason, it is good to step back and see how our procedures affect the customer. No process in a business should be such a sacred cow that it can hurt the customer, and EVERY policy and procedure must have a regular review to see what it have evolved into. At the same time, every good process must be scheduled for training and retraining. It is amazing how quickly no one in the company remembers some of our vital customer service procedures.
In the printing industry, and maybe in yours, we have learned that the ordering process can be a scary proposition for many people. The printed piece represents their company, and they can visualize what they want, but the exact terminology and details may not be understood. So, when a customer comes into our business, if we start using too many printing terms and complicate things, we can confuse the customer. They may not know what we are talking about and may begin to believe we don’t understand their needs. Additionally, if they start to worry about whether we will get the job right, they feel personally threatened, and they won’t stop worrying until the finished work is in their hands. Was shopping easy? Emphatically, NO. And next time, that valued customer will be looking for an easier place to shop. A wise man said, “Our customers are looking for Help, not Hell.” My wife said it best, “Why does it have to be so hard to get what you want?”
How many times have you become frustrated when you have called a business and got an electronic answering machine? How did you feel when Options one through nine still didn’t address your need? It may have seemed like a good idea to take a person away from answering the phone for productivity’s sake, but how many customers have gone away frustrated.
I attended a meeting a few weeks ago and had the opportunity to hear Brent Brown speak about his business. Brent Brown is a Utah County car dealer who is becoming well-known for bending over backwards for his customers. Many might believe this is all for publicity, but Brent explained how this idea is changing his business.
When Brent first took over his Toyota dealership in Utah County, it had one of the worst customer service ratings in the country. In fact, half of the Toyota owners in Utah County bought their cars outside the county. Brent had to figure out how to get them to come back home and buy from him. He decided the key was better customer service.
Brent’s strategy became putting the customer first. To get his employees to understand how important this was, Brent began to make himself more available to the customer. He started advertising ways people could contact him personally. This included putting his cell phone and home phone numbers on his business card. He also installed two red phones in every dealership that rang directly to his cell phone. Brent made it very clear to his employees that if the customer wasn’t feeling well served, he would serve them himself. The idea worked. His employees stepped up to the challenge to treat the customer right, and today Brent Brown Toyota’s customer service surveys are very positive, and Brent’s customers are returning to buy cars from his dealerships. What a simple idea to make shopping easy.
During that meeting I remembered somebody calling me one day and telling me how well my staff protected me. He said he couldn’t get my cell phone number from them. I knew that I hadn’t told anyone to not give out my cell phone number, but obviously I hadn’t told them they could. Immediately after the meeting I called our receptionist to make sure she knew she could give my number to anybody who was looking for me. I have always had my number on my business cards, but obviously I need to figure out how to be more accessible. So, friends, here it is: 801-318-3000. And my email address is jeffa@alexanders.com. Contact me. I want to hear from you. Accessibility is a great way to make shopping easy for the customer.
I have always believed in customer service. That is what got us started in our business and that is what will keep us in business. However, since listening to Brent Brown, we have reevaluated again what we are doing and how we can make shopping even easier for our customers. Our first step will be to make our management team more accessible. I want to make it easy for anybody to contact us in the event we don’t get your order exactly right, it isn’t on time or we didn’t respond quickly enough when you have an emergency. We know that nobody orders printing unless they need it now. Our goal is and always has been to get you what you want, when you need it. We just need to be sure we are keeping the needs of the customer in mind all of the time.
In conclusion, providing great customer service is not simple or easy. but if we take a few minutes and look at our businesses from the customer’s point of view there might be many changes we could make. Take a little time to talk with your employees. What do they see? I can guarantee you that if they feel they can speak freely you will learn many ways to make shopping easy for the customer. Equally important, take some time and listen to some of your customers. They would love to tell you how to make shopping easy. Good luck and have fun.