Why customer care is important.
Great customer care helps to drive up sales, increase trust, secure repeat customers, gain referrals, and improve your business reputation. If your team is only thinking about sales, service, and support, you're missing a key ingredient to success: customer care.
What is customer care? Sometimes business owners assume customer care is simply good customer service and support, but actually it's a different animal. Service and support, as important as they are, tend to be transactional. Customer care is relational. It encompasses the customer’s entire experience through their purchasing journey, including their emotions. How did the customer feel during their journey? Did they sense that your team was excited to help them on their boating journey, not just their buying journey? Did they feel valued, heard, understood? Will they tell their friends that it was a pleasure to do business with you? These questions focus on customer care. Five keys to top-notch customer care.
When: Customer care happens year-round, but in the marine industry the late fall and winter are good times to focus on it and to train your team on its importance.
How: Like it or not, your team’s concern for people (or lack thereof) will be evident in every customer interaction, be it face-to-face, by email or phone, or through social media and your website.
Where: Boat shows are great places to practice good customer care, so are demo events, open houses, your showroom or office, and digital communications.
Who: All customer-facing members on your team. Ideally, these team members have high emotional intelligence and exude the core values of your company. Such team members become critical if unexpected problems arise.
What: It’s pretty simple, but it gets lost in our incredibly hectic society: treat people the way you’d want to be treated. What will it take for a customer to feel that your team genuinely cares? Take that extra step or two and the customer will be satisfied both logically and emotionally. That’s top-notch customer care, and it pays.
Want to learn more about customer care? Here two articles we like: What is Customer Care? Definition, Importance, and Best Practices What Is Customer Care? (With Examples)
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