Is it easy to do business with you?

Unless you have an incredibly niche specific service, there is a very good chance that if your customers aren’t happy with you they can easily go somewhere else.

In an effort to prevent them from defecting, you need to ensure that doing business with you is simple, cost effective and trouble free. Here are a few tips.

Listen

Regardless of how good you think are your services, your procedures or your product, take the time to ask your customers what they think. Better yet, ask them if there is any way you can improve them. This is the easiest way to ensure that doing business with you is easy.

Stay up to date

I sourced a new supplier recently. Everything was great; products, service, quality. The only problem was, they insisted every order be sent via fax machine. I asked if they could make an exception as I don’t use a fax machine, but they insisted. Needless to say, I took my business somewhere else. It’s funny as all this was being discussed via email, so they obviously have access to that form of communication , but for whatever reason , don’t want to embrace it.

Learn

Keep abreast of the latest happenings in your industry. If there is a new technology, procedure or product, you need to make sure that you are on top of it. Learn to see if it can be easily incorporated into your systems and if it’s viable, then do so right away.

Be easy to contact

Have your phone number, email address and other contact details clearly displayed on business cards, email footers and websites. If a customer has to struggle to contact you, or wait on hold for extended periods, you are already building animosity with them.

Don’t leave customers on hold

Phone hold time is different to normal time – 60 seconds in phone time is an eternity. If you need to keep someone on hold for extended periods, check back every 30 seconds to update them or perhaps offer to call them back when the issue is resolved. Never ask them to call you back.

Ditch the autoresponders

Nothing screams “I’m too busy for you” more than an autoresponder, not to mention, they become incredibly frustrating when you send regular emails back and forth. Unless your inbox is receiving over 1,000 emails per day, an auto responder is not for you.

Making life easy for your clients is what they come to you for in the first place! If they could do themselves what you do, they wouldn’t be asking for your product or service. Once they have taken that step to contact you, don’t turn them off and lose them!