Meeting the needs of your customers
17th June 2010
Jeff Allen, Managing Director, Castle Sound & Vision
Philip Trease, Director, Weavers of Nottingham Wine Merchants
Key Points
- Manage expectations – tell customers clearly the what, when and the precise nature of what you are providing. Have a pre-determined agreement so that they are aware of what you will and won’t do for them. If you get it wrong customers can cost you a great deal of money; "Expensive customers are the ones you remember."
- Retail is about relationships. Don’t hide behind web sites and call centres – speak to your customers.
- There are three elements to a business’s offer quality, service and price. Most businesses can only compete on two out of these three and they need to decide which two these are and focus on them.
- Specialist retailers can provide a “retail experience” and ongoing relationship with customers that the multiples can’t.
- People will pay a premium price for service knowledge, expertise and a fun experience. However, this demands strong people skills and an investment in staff training to ensure that staff are knowledgeable. Train staff through example – you have to lead from the front and set the standards to which you expect your staff to follow.
- People with huge net wealth can be incredibly unreasonable - however they can break a business through litigation. You need contracts in place to specify what services you will and will not provide.
- Add value to a customer’s experience by providing them with additional information and services – Weavers have 2500 products and 4,500 wine related articles on its web site, including tasting notes.
- Does twitter add value? You need to be conscious of all the time that goes into maintaining web sites, twitter, facebook, telephone sales and email.
- Maintenance contracts generate bigger margins than product sales.
- “All my customers have my mobile phone number and will ring me at any time if they have a problem with their system. The problem does not become an issue for them if they get an immediate response and reassurance that the matter will be taken care of tomorrow.”