Customers Need Love Too
Did you have a good Valentine’s Day? I certainly hope so. It feels good to be loved and appreciated it, doesn’t it? Your customers think so too. So do your employees. After all, employees are customers too.
Did you do something special for them?
Unlike family who know you care about them every day – even when some days are more trying than others, customers are less forgiving and more demanding.
They have options. They can go elsewhere.
They remember how you made them feel that day when you didn’t really listen to what they were saying and brushed them off. They didn’t know, nor did they care, that you were having a bad day. What they remembered was that you gave them one.
Employees remember when they needed help and you told them you were too busy. It was the truth, but they still felt you were blowing them off, even though rationally, they understood. If you told them when you could meet, it would have made it better, for you as well as them.
Customers and employees can seem selfish sometimes. You are too when you’re in their shoes. As customers, we all want to know what’s in it for us. We want to feel that we’re special.
In that regard, Valentine’s Day should be every day for customers. I’m serious. They give us their money, their time, their labor. They want more than a product or a paycheck in return. They want more than typical lip service too. They want to feel special. They want to feel good about themselves when they’re with us. They want to feel their loyalty is justified. Give it to them. They deserve it.
Without them, we’d be out of business.
So whenever you get fried and frazzled, take a deep breath and try to remember at least a few of these bits of advice from the best in the business.
Just like the old song, for your customers, ‘each day is Valentine’s Day.’
- “Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” – Walt Disney
- “We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.” – Jeff Bezos
- “There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” – Sam Walton
- “The customer’s perception is your reality.” – Kate Zabriskie
- “It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.” – Henry Ford
- “Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong.” – Donald Porter
- “There is a spiritual aspect to our lives – when we give we receive – when a business does something good for somebody, that somebody feels good about them!” – Ben Cohen
- “Customer satisfaction is worthless. Customer loyalty is priceless.” – Jeffrey Gitomer
- “Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.” – Peter Drucker
- “One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others.” – Lewis Carroll
- “Being on par in terms of price and quality only gets you into the game. Service wins the game.” – Tony Allesandra
- “You’ll never have a product or price advantage again. They can be easily duplicated, but a strong customer service culture can’t be copied.” – Jerry Fritz
- “Rule 1: The customer is always right. Rule 2: If the customer is ever wrong, re-read Rule 1.” – Stew Leonard
- “Customer service is not a department, it’s everyone’s job.” – Anonymous
- “If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the customer first, success will be yours.” – Ray Krock
- “For us, our most important stakeholder is not our stockholders, it is our customers. We’re in business to serve the needs and desires of our core customer base. – John Mackey
- “Every company’s greatest assets are its customers, because without customers there is no company.” – Michael LeBoeuf
- “Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change.” – Tom Peters
- “Friendly makes sales – and friendly generates repeat business.” – Jeffrey Gitomer
- “Service, in short, is not what you do, but who you are. It is a way of living that you need to bring to everything you do, if you are to bring it to your customer interactions.” – Betsy Sanders
- “Every contact we have with a customer influences whether or not they’ll come back. We have to be great every time or we’ll lose them.” – Kevin Stirtz
- “Here is a simple but powerful rule: always give people more than what they expect to get.” – Nelson Boswell
- “Right or wrong, the customer is always right.” – Marshall Field
- “Under promise and over deliver.” – Toby Bloomberg
- “Your customer doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – Damon Richards