So you have started a new business. By far the simplest process was setting up the company formations. You have a cool company name, nice looking website - a great brand. Well done, you have done the easy part of UK company formations. Now let us move onto the harder parts of running a company. The biggest part, is finding lots of customers. After you have sourced the customers, an even harder task faces you. Now you need to work out how to keep hold of them. Successful businesses have a high customer retention rate. The last thing you want is to lose your client base to your competitors because your product or service isn't up to scratch. So how do you avoid losing customers in this way? Luckily while there might be a hundred and one ways of doing so, there are only really a few main reasons companies lose their customers. Here's how!
My worse pet hate is companies that say they are going to do something, and then don't deliver. To illustrate how not to treat a customer, I am going to give you a simple example, which I've experienced as I am writing. Don't get me wrong this company haven't done much wrong. Fortunately when I don't have an Internet connection, I see it as an opportunity to get out in the real world! However some customers aren't so cool, and will go up like a bottle of pop with the slightest provocation.
A lack of Internet connection is why I am writing right now. It's my fault because I lost my login information, not my provider's. I contacted the company yesterday to get the details confirmed. They informed me the portal from which they would get the details was down and would be back within an hour. In fact it is still down this morning, but besides the point I was impressed that they said they'd call technical support for me to manually extract the login. Better than that, they called me back within ten minutes and exceeded my expectations. Unfortunately I wrote the details down on a piece of paper which a family member decided to bin, so I had to call back again right now. I called back once more and was told to wait fifteen minutes for a ring back. After an hour, I chased them only to be given the same line. What irritated me is I was clearly told fifteen minutes, and they didn't live up to that expectation. What is the lesson to be had here? If you tell your customer you are going to do something, do it. If the situation changes, inform them. If the company had rung me back as promised after fifteen minutes to inform me there was still a problem, but I would get an update in 4 hours, I'd have gone off and written some more about customer service. I actually ended up getting very irritated with them as they repeated the excuse a further two times.
This shows the importance of managing expectations. I wouldn't have had a problem if the company had contacted me and told me I would need to wait a day. If they had then fixed the problem quicker than that, I'd have been happy. This is why the McDonalds brand is so successful. You know what to expect every time you eat a Big Mac. Everything is covered in the McDonalds handbook, from how to cook the burger to how much lettuce to add. This way there's no room for error. Nothing like visiting a restaurant one Friday and the food being fantastic, only to be disappointed the next weekend because the chef was different. Make sure you set expectations at a reasonable level, and try and beat them. Never go beyond the expectations you have set.
A final word of warning- you will never please everyone. There are some customers that literally get off on causing bother and feeling important. These kind of people normally had something bad happen to them at one point like they were without their Internet connection for a day. I can say from my experience of dealing with bad and fantastic customer service, that you cannot please everyone. You will find customers that break everything and then blame you. Ignore the problem customer and focus on the customers that count by following the advice above.
My worse pet hate is companies that say they are going to do something, and then don't deliver. To illustrate how not to treat a customer, I am going to give you a simple example, which I've experienced as I am writing. Don't get me wrong this company haven't done much wrong. Fortunately when I don't have an Internet connection, I see it as an opportunity to get out in the real world! However some customers aren't so cool, and will go up like a bottle of pop with the slightest provocation.
A lack of Internet connection is why I am writing right now. It's my fault because I lost my login information, not my provider's. I contacted the company yesterday to get the details confirmed. They informed me the portal from which they would get the details was down and would be back within an hour. In fact it is still down this morning, but besides the point I was impressed that they said they'd call technical support for me to manually extract the login. Better than that, they called me back within ten minutes and exceeded my expectations. Unfortunately I wrote the details down on a piece of paper which a family member decided to bin, so I had to call back again right now. I called back once more and was told to wait fifteen minutes for a ring back. After an hour, I chased them only to be given the same line. What irritated me is I was clearly told fifteen minutes, and they didn't live up to that expectation. What is the lesson to be had here? If you tell your customer you are going to do something, do it. If the situation changes, inform them. If the company had rung me back as promised after fifteen minutes to inform me there was still a problem, but I would get an update in 4 hours, I'd have gone off and written some more about customer service. I actually ended up getting very irritated with them as they repeated the excuse a further two times.
This shows the importance of managing expectations. I wouldn't have had a problem if the company had contacted me and told me I would need to wait a day. If they had then fixed the problem quicker than that, I'd have been happy. This is why the McDonalds brand is so successful. You know what to expect every time you eat a Big Mac. Everything is covered in the McDonalds handbook, from how to cook the burger to how much lettuce to add. This way there's no room for error. Nothing like visiting a restaurant one Friday and the food being fantastic, only to be disappointed the next weekend because the chef was different. Make sure you set expectations at a reasonable level, and try and beat them. Never go beyond the expectations you have set.
A final word of warning- you will never please everyone. There are some customers that literally get off on causing bother and feeling important. These kind of people normally had something bad happen to them at one point like they were without their Internet connection for a day. I can say from my experience of dealing with bad and fantastic customer service, that you cannot please everyone. You will find customers that break everything and then blame you. Ignore the problem customer and focus on the customers that count by following the advice above.
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If you require advice with company formations talk to Optimum Formations. Optimum Formations can assist UK company formations.
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