Fostering Good Customer Relations on the Front Line
Customer loyalty is built on customer relations. The front desk clerk, the counter clerk or even the security guards can make or break your business based on the impression they leave with customers. Whether you are in a service-oriented business, manufacturing, education or health care field, your goal is to make that first impression lasting and gain loyalty from customers.
No matter what type of business you are in, the following are standard guidelines in handling customer relations.
1. Make the customer feel like royalty when attending to them. Pamper your customers. You must have well-oriented and well-trained customer relations personnel to assist them. Everyone in the selling area or in the place where customers are expected to move around must know their job. Keep your customer relations personnel updated on how to handle customers. This is proven to be an effective way of keeping customers and getting them to return. Make customers feel like they are part of the company, or a member of your corporate family. Value them.
2. Handle complaints properly. Each one of us have been customers of various establishments. We know that a customer is always right - as companies we should stand by that principle. The basic steps in handling customer complains are: to listen, then validate the complaint and act on it promptly. The key to handling customer complaint is to act quickly. It is said that one dissatisfied customer is equivalent to hundreds of thousands of lost sales, word of mouth travels. Protect the company from losing more because of one complaint.
The performance of the customer relations department plays an integral part in helping the company sell whatever product or service they are offering. Needless to say, customer relations should be a paramount concern, especially for your front line workers..
