Delight your customers and keep 'em coming!

Delight your customers and keep 'em coming!
by Cathy Godwin, Ph.D

Customer service is the unglamorous but surprisingly fun side of 
marketing. Promotion gets you customers. Service lets you keep their 
loyalty and their money. 

These tips come from my ebook, Delight Your Customers and the Money 
Will Follow.

1. No one can be on time 100%. When you're late, offer compensatory 
time.

We can't get more basic than this one

2. Review your client's files before each appointment.

This one really happened to a colleague who called a coach (details 
disguised to protect the guilty):

"You're the one who needs a marketing plan... Oops! I thought you 
were the resume client. What's this stuff about Mountains of Joy -- 
oh, your slogan! Maybe I can help you write a new one. You say I 
wrote that slogan? Uh, please don't hang up. Please! I can explain!"

3. Manage expectations.

Your client's sales are down. You say, "You've got a me-too product 
in a saturated market." Or you say, "Your negative thoughts are 
driving away customers."

Both statements may be accurate. But which one does your client 
expect to hear from you?

4. Clarify your fee structure.

Does "monthly retainer" mean you'll extra emails and telephone calls 
between sessions? Will you read the resume ahead of time or charge 
extra for reading "materials?"

5. No surprises on the bill, please!

True story:

Jennifier hired a "book coach," who agreed to review all her 
materials. At the beginning of Call #2, the coach said, "I just 
revised your sales letter. That'll be another forty dollars." "I 
didn't ask you to revise my sales letter!" Jennifer sputtered. "I 
just wanted to know if I was on the right track!"

There was no Call #3.

6. Delight your clients with gifts, surprises, and extras.

Once I hired a marketing consultant who charged by the hour -- 
carefully emphasizing that she charged extra for any activity beyond 
the call. But in her follow-up email, she wrote, "I didn't have time 
to get to one of your questions -- here's a brief answer."

What a nice surprise! An extra gift -- and I knew she was busy.

7. Client conversion is not about finding a new church.

You may respect your client's choice to worship at the deli on Sunday 
mornings, but what if your client is devoutly skeptical about the Law 
of Attraction?

8. If Tony Soprano becomes your client, don't be surprised if he 
borrows your car.

You probably won't meet Tony, but your clients may move too fast or 
too slowly, or demand too much or too little.

9. Metaphors can send your client into outer space.

You promise to help your client "take her business to the next 
level." Will you get her there with a marketing plan, a set of 
confidence-building exercises, a recommendation for clutter-clearing 
or a non-stop cheering section of one? Promise you'll "run alongside 
while she's learning to ride a bike" and she'll wish she'd taken a 
taxi.

10. When you make a mistake, offer compensation.

Once I charged a client for a service I used to offer free. He saw 
one of my old pages and said, "So...how about it?" I sent him a 
couple of ebooks and offered the free service. And he wrote me a 
glowing testimonial.