To well serve or not the customer can and will make the difference between success or unsuccess of your work and keep you in the market or don’t as it will also make you a competent or incompetent professional.
Every day, improvement actions need to be adopted to achieve and exceed expectations. Quality of Service generates loyal customers. One happy customer is your best advertising, the most genuine and the one which will bring you more professional and lasting relations.
As for any kind of relation, both parties must have concessions to make it work. the final solution must be wise, efficient and the right solution for the problem. Often deep analysis and explanation to the customer is required, despite most of the times they are well informed people, the most efficient solution for the base problem may not be clear to them, or even, the customer may not know all the possible solutions for it. It’s crucial to show other points of view and possible solutions and negotiation is the key.
You should know well your customer, what they do, what they are looking for, the much information you can gather, the best, more easy will become the negotiation process.
Knowing to listen is a virtue, not only as a professional, but also as an human being. Analyse solutions from both points of view is important. Empathy is fundamental to well understand the problem from the customer end.
To create a long and efficient relation with your customer you’ll need to Keep:
- Be patient;
- Know how to listen and empathy;
- Stay calm and focused while showing one possible solution from your point of view;
- Remain loyal to your principles;
- Find a solution that keep both parties happy;
- Open Minded;
- Understand the root for dissatisfaction to be able to negotiate.
And when nothing of this works?
An unprofitable customer, someone who doesn’t respect your work will make you waste your time and other potential customers. Besides apart that hesitating people are usually difficult to satisfy by nature and nothing that you make will be good enough. This kind of customer will drain your energy out.
Did I ever in my career refused work? Yes, I did!
This doesn’t mean that the customer wasn’t right or I, it’s just that sometimes, ponderation about if “Is this going to work” is required, will it be possible to work with this person, and some time the answer is no! If ain’t going to work, it won’t be good for you nor your career and sure won’t be any good for the customer that won’t get any satisfaction.
Someone once told me “Don’t ever do something that go against your principles…”
It’s crucial to know yourself and having your principles always present so that you know how far are you willing to go to keep the customer satisfied.
Often, to win a battle you must fallback, you lose one customer today but you won’t get any unsatisfied customer.
Every human relations either personal or professional are complex by nature, are they easy?
No… but like everything, there’s nothing that with some will and effort personal or professional, understanding, good sense and ponderation you can’t overcome with success.
Don’t lose will if several months are spent and things don’t go as planned, don’t worry as it’s part of the path, re-evaluate the situation, identify what’s wrong (Remember the PDCA Mantra) and try again.
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