Customer Service Should Happen Before ?The Sale? | Dan Sfera

In my day to day activities as an entrepreneur I have noticed and continue to take mental notes of my customer service techniques and skills. In the hustle and bustle of regular business activity, it is very easy to lose focus of what I believe is one of the most critical determinants of a business? success: customer service. I am not talking about the typical ?customer is always right? bullshit because I do not necessarily believe in that, what I am talking about is something much simpler than that: acknowledging that your customer is above all else, first and foremost a human being. This applies to business to business sales by the way as well, so for those of you in that area of entrepreneurship, there is no excuse for ignoring this sacred concept either.

Businesses have become so accustomed to going for the ?close? that everything else, including basic human decency and manners go out the window, and I believe that these next few decades will be dominated by those who truly embrace the customer service model that I am about to discuss.

Thanks to social media, blogging, and your customers? ability to effortlessly communicate not only with you but with other businesses and fellow customers as well, many sales opportunities will be lost to individuals and organizations that understand that customer service does not begin after a sales transaction has occurred, but rather that it actually can begin at any time, before your customer is actually your customer. At this stage of the sales cycle, many refer to these potential customers as prospects, and that is fine, but I truly believe that the business or entrepreneur that will eventually have this customer as an actual customer, should be providing real value to these people way before a sale is ever even considered by this prospect.

The sales and marketing industry has gotten way too noisy, and consumers have a very large amount of options to consider when they want to actually purchase something. So how does a business improve it?s chances of landing these customers? Is it by constantly bombarding their brand into their potential customer?s minds? That is one very expensive strategy, and even if one can afford that, we still end up competing with distractions such as mobile phones, tablets, dvr?s, etc. I believe the strategy to use is to out-hustle your competition by providing something valuable for your sales prospects before they ever buy anything from you. This value may come from information that your competitors may deem ?trade secrets?, or something as simple as a having a blog where your customers can interact with you and have some sort of context with your brand. I understand that many businesses won?t have time to invest in this type of customer service. Some don?t even invest in their customer service for interactions that occur after the sale. Case in point, being placed on hold for 20 minutes when calling your service provider for issues. In either case, the businesses that understand this concept and execute on it will win, and the others will lose out on tons of opportunities. What do you think?

Source: http://dansfera.com/2013/04/customer-service-should-happen-before-the-sale/

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