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Are You Keeping Barriers Between Your Customers and Great Service?

Like a great many businesses, I have a toll-free number for the convenience of my clients. What I have come to know about toll-free numbers is that there are not enough of them. This can lead to more wrong numbers or missed dials.

As an example, while running a courier company a few years ago in California, we would field 5-10 calls per month for a yacht charter company in Maine. I am still unsure why: wrong number, old number, or a number that was the same but had regional restrictions.

Now, I get between 12-18 wrong numbers a month from people who are trying to register their newly purchased headphones for a lifetime warranty. If you look at just about any telephone keypad you will notice the letters associated with the numbers. Some companies use these letters to spell out words related to their business. You may have a similar practice.

The source of confusion for these headphone customers rests with the last four digits of my number: 5077. These customers are reading a word for the last four digits and mistakenly pressing zero (0) rather than six (6) for the second letter “O”. If you feel like it, you can figure out the identity of the headphone company

What do wrong numbers have to do with client retention?

Barriers to Service for Clients

How many barriers do your clients have to get through to get good service? How do you know?

The headphone company offers a lifetime warranty to reduce the risk of buying their headphones. This is good service. However, for a few dozen customers a month, they have erected a barrier to this good service, perhaps unintentionally.

I prefer to believe that given the knowledge of their customer’s experience, the headphone company would print their phone number in big bold numbers. Then they could spell out their name for mnemonic convenience.

Creating barriers to qualify clients can be a good practice. But once they become clients, you never want to keep barriers between them and great service.

How do you drive a clear path for your clients to enjoy great service? I’ll share two options. Both can be effective, but the second can have considerably greater payoff.

1. Walk in Their Shoes

Put yourself in your client’s experience. Determine their needs and tendencies. Obtain feedback as often as possible about every point of your client’s contact with your business. When you have this information, you can project yourself into their experience to determine what will work.

2. Watch them Walk in Their Own Shoes

This is called usability testing. Usability testing requires you to observe how your clients interact with your product or service. Nothing will provide you with richer information about how your client experiences your offerings.

Utility of Usability Testing

The quality of information from usability testing can be exceptionally useful. No pun intended. As an example, take our misdialing headphone customers. If I were to spell out my number in easy to remember terms, chances are you would not make the mistake of misdialing. But this is really an assumption, isn’t it?

There are all sorts of possible reasons why spelling out my number would confuse you. If I were to watch you dial, what might I see? You might not have letters on your phone. The letters may be too small to read. You may choose not to be aware of them.

Looking over your shoulder would provide me with information you might not share.

It is likely that none of your clients are having difficulty calling you on the phone. But, what problems might be easier to see from their perspective rather than yours? Watching your clients use your offerings could provide information you would not have had the chance to see.

To watch your clients interact with your product requires substantial commitment and investment. Such an investment will pay a return many times over in your client’s experience of your company, and in your client’s satisfaction with your offering.

Happy Client Retaining,

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© 2004-2007 Jeff Simon Consulting. All Rights Reserved. Wouldn't you love to peer into your client's head and know what they are thinking and feeling? Could you have better success at keeping and choosing your best clients if you could decode their behavior? Check out the Happy Clients Newsletter at: www.happyclientsnewsletter.com.

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