Our economy could be on the verge of several months (or years) of economic trouble. Is your business ready? Most people realize that in any recession there are many businesses that fail along with resulting job losses. Did you also know that during those same periods (and even during the great depression) smart businesses thrive, even flourish and strengthen their customer base?

What makes the difference? Marketing – not advertising, but marketing – the ability to understand what our customers are looking for or need and to provide that product or service in a unique way that makes our competitors non-relevant and to maintain and nurture those customer relationships.

What does that mean in real life? Everything that you and I do as employees or owners is ‘marketing’. We either add positive points to our customer’s (or potential customer’s) opinion of us or we add a negative point to that perception of us. Even things we normally wouldn’t consider.

Negative things like:

  • Following someone too close and then zipping into the company parking lot because we’re running a few minutes late for work.
  • Leaving someone on hold for a little longer because we’re finishing up another project or don’t really feel like taking a difficult call right now.
  • Talking negatively about your work environment or worse yet, about a client when we’re out in the evening with friends or family. Not only do your friends and family start to formulate negative impressions about our company but possibly anyone else that happens to hear the conversation.
  • Not returning a difficult phone call and diffusing a situation before the client has time to allow the anger and or misconception to spread.

Or positive things like:

  • Staying later or coming early to meet a client at their convenience.
  • Returning a smile and politeness when a client is rude and inconsiderate – they may have just finished up with the divorce lawyer before they came here and are taking their frustration out on you. Don’t take it personally.
  • Using language that diffuses bad news. Instead of using You and Your directly, e.g. “YOU don’t qualify for our preferred rate” which in a sense attacks them personally we find a way to remove the personal attack, “Unfortunately, your claims history doesn’t allow us to provide the preferred rate”. It’s the same message, it just doesn’t hurt quite as badly.

Do things like this really make a difference? I think they do. Studies show that 68% of customers leave a company because of a perceived attitude of indifference. The company or it’s employees may not have been trying to be indifferent but was perceived to be indifferent. Not to mention that they tell all of their friends what a terrible experience they had. It’s never OK to lose a customer, but when the economy is good and business is easy we may be able to get away with it and still survive. In a bad economy it can be the difference between whether or not we put food on our tables tomorrow.

On the other hand, a WOW experience – finding ways to provide our clients with service beyond their wildest expectations so that they are just blown away by dealing with us will make them customers for life. WOW experiences are so much different than people are used to it will cause them to tell their friends, bringing referrals that can be converted to more customers for life.

I’m in an industry that has already suffered a couple years of downturn only to now be faced with the possibility of more difficulty. WOW experiences for our customers can mean the difference between not surviving or downsizing during difficult times vs. not only surviving but thriving and gaining market share during the next months or years.

What are ways you can increase the WOW experiences for your clients?

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