"Say "Hello" to Your Inner Customer"
It's a terrible thing when a company treats a customer poorly and when it is informed of the problem repeats the mistake. I have seen this time and again. Many times it is because the company gets so excited about 'what' it is doing that it forgets 'who' it is doing it for. The company falls in love with itself, its marketing or its technology and it drives the company to act just like a person who is in love with themselves. In other words selfish, arrogant, pushy and inconsiderate. How do you stop this from happening in your company? You need to be ever vigilant of the way your employees interact with customers. You need to respond in a positive, considerate and helpful manner to all customer inquires. Most of all you need to imagine yourself in the customers shoes. You need to be the customer and when you are the customer you will know the right thing to do. Sometimes it will be tough and it may bruise your ego in the short run but doing right by your customer will pay off handsomely for you and your business. You see it so often these days. Big companies throwing their weight around like they are all that is out there. While this may be true today for some, tomorrow it won't be and poorly treated customers will actually pull your company down when it is at its weakest by jumping to the competition. I have done this myself with my home telephone. Verizon treated me so poorly over the years that when Vonage came along offering a better product for less money I was more then happy to leave. In fact I can distinctly remember how happy I was when I physically cut the cables connecting me to Verizon. I will never go back to them as a customer all because of the indifference with which they treated me and my problems. For a small business you had better learn the lesson quickly or you will be out of business. - Doug Kersten "Say "Hello" to Your Inner Customer" "Say "Hello" to Your Inner Customer (If No One Answers, You're in Deep Trouble)" By Dick Lee, High-Yield Methods "This is the fourth of several articles focusing on findings in Customers Say What Companies Don't Want To Hear, a study by Dick Lee and David J. Mangen, Ph.D. Imagine you're a female senior executive in a large corporation, working in a high-rise building. One day, you return to your office and find an unmarked coffee cup full of carefully arranged flowers on your desk—accompanied by an unsigned card with no sender identification, saying: [Your name], It's been awhile. Missing you. I've changed ... for the better. Done a lot of growing lately. Hope to see you soon. How would you feel, standing in this woman's pumps? Well, the executive who shared her experience with me thought she was either being stalked or sexually harassed. Either thought was equally menacing."
