Bad customer service is rampant today, especially with bigger companies who know they have more than enough customers already. But that's actually great news for small business owners. Customer service is one place where small businesses have advantages big businesses don't have. We can look great by comparison if we want to, and we don't need lots of resources, time, or money to show our customers that we care about them and their experience with us.
Here are just a few easy, open opportunities for any small businesses–from a counselor to a caterer to a cardiologist–to make people happy.
1. You can do what you say you're going to do.
If you promise that you'll have the proposal to them by 2 p.m. tomorrow, get it there by that time even if you have to pull an all-nighter. Finish the job by the deadline you quoted even if you have to work overtime. Small businesses don't have layers of people and policies to stop us. We can do whatever it takes to just do what we said we were going to do.
2. You can actually appreciate their business.
Nobody feels warm and fuzzy when an automatically generated email tells them "We appreciate your business!" Small business owners can look a customer in the eye and say, "I'm so glad we're going to get to work together."
3. You won't try to get away with, "We apologize…"
Apologizing on behalf of your organization just shows that no one person is willing to take responsibility for the problem. When a small business owner says, "I'm so sorry–I feel terrible," that's a lot more sincere than "We regret any inconvenience this may have caused."
4. You can ask them about their experience.
You don't feel like a company cares about your experience just because they send you an online survey with "Your feedback is important to us!" in the subject line. But if you went to a restaurant for the first time and the owner called you the next night just to see if you enjoyed your dinner, that would make an impression. It's easier for a small business to do that than it is for a big, bloated company.
5. You can actually care what they think.
When I call and tell the nameless person at the cable company that the technician never showed up today, am I ruining his day? Is he going to lie awake at night and feel bad that they let me down? Probably not. He's got too many calls and too many complaints to take them personally. But not the small business owner. She'll lie awake, worry, and work like crazy to make things right. And her customer will thank her for it.
Best of all, small business owners don't need a company retreat to talk about doing these things. We don't need meetings and memos and middle managers signing off on big customer service initiatives. We can just decide it's important and start paying more attention to it.
Not all big businesses are bad. And small businesses aren't immune to bad customer service. I get that. But customer service can be a huge advantage for small businesses if we do it right.
Thomas Hill says
Whew! That title confused me a little bit, ha ha. How about this: “Why good customer service makes small businesses seem better than the big ones”? LOL! I think the advantage of the small players here is that they can interact with people more directly. There’s no air that separates the business from its customers.