As a business owner, there’s little point in working on attracting more customers unless you have your business house in order. If you’re not currently providing a seamless customer experience, you’ll simply be inviting more people to have an average or worse experience.
Sometimes it’s difficult to spot the faults in your own business – it’s your baby after all. So it can be useful to take a step back and take an honest and objective look through the eyes of your customer. Just to check that things work as they should. And there are seven key areas to assess:
- Initial contact – how easy is it for customers to get hold of someone when they make an initial enquiry – whether by phone, email or (increasingly) social media? Customers will often approach several firms so being the easiest to contact can make all the difference.
- First port of call -does the person who answers the phone sound calm, focused on the caller and professional? Is it you driving along in the van with intermittent signal? How friendly is the tone on email when responding to a customer making an enquiry? And are emails and messages well written?
- Speed – how quickly do you get out to see the customer on average? Once again – if several firms are quoting then it could stand you in good stead to be the first to quote/visit.
- Quotes – how professional and comprehensive are your quotes and how quickly do they reach the customer following your visit?
- Follow up – do you check in with customers to make sure they’ve received your quote? People are busy and sometimes a polite prompt is all that’s needed. Or perhaps they have a simple objection that you can easily overcome.
- Staff professionalism – what’s your honest assessment of your staff in terms of timekeeping, appearance, communication with the customer and overall professionalism?
- Delivery – how would customers rate you on the overall delivery of the job? Don’t guess, ask them! Do you follow up after the job is complete to offer after care if there are any issues?
So, in summary, break your customer journey down into enquiry/quote, delivery of job and follow up. And conduct an honest review of how you’re doing. Then plug any gaps in the process to make sure it’s as easy as possible for customers to choose you.
If this information strikes a chord with you then there are lots more top tips and practical advice in my book ‘Build and Grow – How to go from Tradesperson to Managing Director in the Construction and Trade Industries’ And you can buy it from Amazon via this link http://amzn.to/2CBok2L.