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The latest report from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (Michigan School of Business) reports the following: Your Number One Asset Customers put you in business, keep you in business, and they can put you out of business. Therefore, your overriding feelings at all times should be: customer love, customer satisfaction, and customer convenience. Customer Service Has Moved Toward Customer Care As I waited for an answer to my VCR inquiry from a stereo company, the recording stated a "customer care" representative would be available shortly. At that moment, I realized it's finally catching on everywhere. With aging baby boomers, world events and additional pressures in today's society; it is "customer care" that has evolved in our economy. We have moved from a manufacturing economy to a service economy and are currently leaning towards a "servicecare" economy. As we live in a high tech-high button touch environment, many personal contacts have been decreased making each customer interaction more important than ever to corporate imagery. For example, if you call for computer tech support, the representative often makes it a point to address you by first name. If it's the bank credit card company, they may ask "How are you doing today?" This makes the customer feel less like a number and more like a human being. Keeping Clients Happy Keeps them Coming Back Whether you are a seasoned small business professional, or you have just opened your doors to new clients, your marketing strategy should not only involve bringing in new business, it should also include keeping your current clients, your most important asset, happy and coming back for more or referring your services. Dont Work with Jerks: How to Recognize a Difficult Client Early Five minutes into the call I knew this client was going to make my life miserable. The problem was, I already said "Yes." Service Equals Performance Equals Service Service can be described as a "performance" of some kind involving two parties whereby one party is the benefactor and the other party is the performing party receiving some type of monetary payment. The value of the Service depends on the personal experience of the benefactor. When I looked it up in Webster's, there it was #11 out of 31 definitions. The payment part was not included, but the key word mentioned was "performance." |
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