We just had to share the article below from Mark Sanborn. Enjoy!
How To Deal with Increasing Customer Expectations
The more you do for customers, the more they expect. That is the nature of customer service.
Excellent service providers scramble to meet the expectations of customers who have become accustomed to great service. Aggressive competitors continue to bump up their offerings in an attempt to take your customers from you. This has resulted in a perpetual desire by customers for more, better, different and/or improved.
In most cases, good enough isn’t.
The great art and science of business is to improve product and/or service offerings without giving up margins or increasing prices beyond what customers are willing to pay. It really is about adding value without spending too much to do it.
Any business that can’t do this will be relegated to competing at the low end of the market on price alone, and that is a difficult place to be.
Rally your team, from engineering to manufacturing to sales and support to regularly brainstorm how you can profitably grow your value proposition. Customers will increasingly demand it.
Here are eight things you can do about them.
1) Find out what is important to customers: what they require and what they desire. You’re not clairvoyant so routinely ask customers for input.
2) Explain your value proposition when you must say no. If you can’t do something the customer wants, explain why. But see if there is something acceptable you can do instead.
3) Educate customers about the value you create for them. If they don’t know about it or appreciate, it isn’t value.
4) Hold quarterly sessions with your team to brainstorm how to add value to the customer’s experience.
5) Evaluate the entire customer experience. Look for failure points and irritations that can be eliminated and improvements that can be made.
6) Pay more attention to your customers than your competition. Know what your competitor is doing, but put your customer at the center of your focus.
7) Pleasantly surprise customers whenever you can. Work with your team to brainstorm ideas on how to do that.
8) Treat better customers better. Treat all customers well, but those who spend more should get preferential treatment.
Business goes to the bold and innovative. Creativity and imagination are the best tools for continually rethinking your value proposition. Good execution delivers and makes customers glad they keep coming back to you for more.
Mark Sanborn, CSP, CPAE is president of Sanborn & Associates, Inc., an idea studio for leadership development. He is an award-winning speaker and the author of the bestselling books, The Fred Factor: How Passion In Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary Into the Extraordinary, You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader: How Anyone Anywhere Can Make a Positive Difference and The Encore Effect: How to Achieve Remarkable Performance in Anything You Do. His book Up, Down or Sideways: How to Succeed When Times are Good, Bad or In Between was released October 2011. To obtain additional information for growing yourself, your people and your business (including free articles), visit www.marksanborn.com.
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