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Q: Who are your customers?

A: Everyone who comes in contact with your business, via telephone, Internet, fax, or in person.  Everyone.

Notice that this answer mentioned nothing about spending money with your company.  Money doth not a customer make.  Granted, some customers are better than others, and we will discuss the hierarchy of customers in a moment.  But first, let this idea settle in: Everyone who comes in contact with your business is your customer, and is entitled to, and deserving of, the best service that you can provide.

Jan Carlzon, in his excellent book Moments of Truth, calls every interaction between a customer and a business a moment of truth.  Every interaction, every touchpoint, is an opportunity for a business to shine, and to gain a loyal, lifelong customer.  Even the slightest interaction can have meaningful impact if delivered with the right feeling at the right time.  Smart businesses know this, and prepare their employees – all of their employees, not just ones designated as Customer Service – to handle every business-related interaction with care, dignity, and courtesy.  One of the toughest hurdles for any business is to gain meaningful interaction with a prospect.  So if someone contacts your business, regardless of how or why, you have been given a golden opportunity to gain a customer.

 Not everyone gets this.  Some otherwise very intelligent people don’t get it.   I had the Chief Technology Officer of a prominent Internet search engine and provider of premium content tell me, in no uncertain terms, that my customer support team should not be  “wasting time” by responding to people who were complaining about the length of time it took to get their web sites listed on the company’s search engine.   “Those people are not our customers!” he emphatically told me in a weekly management meeting.  I disagreed, asking him how valuable is a search engine without the sites listed in it?  He countered that the search engine is not what made the company money; it was the premium, pay-per-view content, and those were the customers that we should be concerning ourselves with.  I acknowledged that the content subscribers should, and do, get excellent care, but that it was not an either/or situation.  The people wishing to list their sites on our search engine all have friends, family, and colleagues.  Heck, they have web sites that potentially reach thousands of people.  It does not make any business sense to risk angering this group of people, by ignoring them or giving them second-class service.  But this technology wizard, a senior vice president of the company, would not concede this point.  “They do not give us revenue, therefore they are not our customers.  End of story.”  The saddest part of this story is that while this occurred in management meeting, there was no one else who chose to speak up on the side of the customers.  Not the Director of Marketing, not the Director of Sales, none of the Marketing managers, not even the CEO himself.   

 I will acknowledge that all customers are not created equally, and that those who spend the most money with your business are deserving of the best service and the top priority that you can deliver.  Other customers, over the course of time, show themselves to be malcontents for whom you can never do enough.  The operative phrase here is “over the course of time.” Some of your biggest complainers turn out to be your best customers, by forcing you to raise the bar on your service.  As painful as it may seem, these customers should be sincerely thanked.  Other customers simply become a major pain in the butt.  Most intelligent business people can figure out the difference, and when necessary, they can “fire” the customer who is more trouble than he is worth.  But nonetheless, there has to be a baseline of service that is provided to every person at every moment of truth.

 I did some customer service consulting with an online entrepreneur, whose customer service and support was mostly via email.  While his business was a start-up, and operating on a shoestring budget, I advised him that every contact to his business was deserving of a courteous response.  He disagreed, and mandated that his customer service reps only respond to those customers who had spent money with his business, or looked like they were about to.   Due to the vagueness of his web site, there was a fair amount of misunderstanding in some people’s minds as to the nature of his business.  Some of these people wrote some nasty, ill-informed emails.  My feeling was that some of these people could be turned around by first allowing them to vent, and then by informing them of the true nature of the site without making them feel stupid.  The entrepreneur disagreed, saying that time spent responding to, and answering charges made by ignorant people was time that could, and should, be better spent handling questions and requests by paying customers.  He said he couldn’t afford to pay people to enlighten the ignorant.  My belief is that he can’t afford not to.

 The mysterious thing about business is that we never know where our next big customer is coming from.  We market and sell to those whom we think have the greatest need for our products or services.  But in all honesty, how often are any of us really swayed by sales pitches or marketing pieces?  The fact is, most of us would sooner be swayed by the story of a friend or colleague who had a positive experience with your business.  This applies to the single consumer as much as the captains of industry.

 So the next time you receive a scathing business email from someone without all the facts, take the time to patiently and politely respond, acknowledging their anger, but providing them with the facts that they need to make an educated decision about your product or service.  The next time a harried mother comes into your store with a squirmy toddler, asking if she can use the employee-only restroom, cut her some slack and let her take care of her kid.  These people may or may not become paying customers, but at the very least, you’ve treated them with courtesy, and that’s a reputation that can only enhance your business in the long run. 

By Charles E. Dennis

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