A WHAT-NOT-TO-DO GUIDE
1 ) TAKE THEM FOR GRANTED
Your customers are coming to you and giving you their business. It is important to treat them as individuals, value them, and show your genuine appreciation. This can be as simple as including everyone involved in your e-mails, or sending them a thank you note.
2 ) DON’T COMMUNICATE
It can be easy to get caught up in what you are doing and let communication fall to the back burner, but if you think about how you would want to be treated, good communication becomes very important. This means many things:
- Give updates on the status of the work you are doing, whether it is a milestone or you run into an issue.
- If your customer prefers e-mail and you prefer the phone. Do your best to accommodate them. Little things like that are perfectly reasonable, try to be flexible.
- Don’t make assumptions about what your customer is thinking (you know what they say about assumptions). Ask for feedback!
- Your customers are individuals, not numbers, get to know them. If you are working with more than one person, include all of them as appropriate in your communications, and don’t belittle someone just because that aren’t your “key” contact.
3 ) DON’T FOLLOW BILLING ETIQUETTE
Be clear about costs up front and stay aware of the budget as you work.
Bill on time. Not unexpectedly or later than planned, your customers have a cash flow, and that must be respected. In the case of some agencies, if you miss the timeline for a bill, their hands are tied and they can’t pay you!
4 ) TALK BIGGER THAN YOU WALK
Never make promises you can’t keep. People have little patience for this and having a reputation for over-promising and under-delivering will follow you. Word of mouth is extremely powerful and unfortunately, the fastest way to get it is to do a bad job!
5 ) FORGET INITIATIVE
Never make your customers prod you to do your job! This means keeping your own schedule in check, and goes back to #2, keep your customer informed of your progress and any issues that may arise.
6 ) BE FLAKEY
If you schedule a meeting or service time, keep to that scheduled time! Don’t be late or unexpectedly early and don’t make a habit of canceling. This will quickly color a customer’s opinion of you and damage their faith in your competency.
7 ) JUST SAY “NO”
If your customers are making reasonable requests, do whatever you can to say yes every time.
Move the deadline up 2 days because the customer had something come up? You padded your timeline from the beginning and this fits your schedule, “Yes.”
8 ) NEVER SAY YOU’RE SORRY
Always own up to mistakes. Be humble and do what you can to make things right.
Earlier we said that word of mouth is powerful. This is your opportunity to take a potentially bad situation and turn it into something good. People appreciate it when you do the right thing, and even if they are a bit unhappy about what happened, they will feel like they can trust you. Trust is invaluable.
9 ) ALWAYS BE THE BOSS
Yes, be the boss and be accountable and ensure quality from your staff, but remember the customer. When your customers foot the bill, treat them with the respect and authority they warrant; you answer to them.
10 ) SHOW YOUR EMPLOYEES YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT THEM
It’s simple, when you treat your employees well, they will pass it on to your customers. Be sure to lead by example and offer training/guidance for your standards of customer service.
