NEWS

August 2008 - Recognition

Isn’t it nice when someone sends you something or greets you using your name? Of course it is, because it shows they have made an attempt to get to know who you are, and by doing so have showed interest in you as a person and not as another number on a database.

The topic I have been most interested in over the past few weeks is ‘recognition’. And by this I mean all knowledge about your customer that concerns the way your company treats them.

How well do you know your customers? When was the last time they came to your shop? What is the last thing they bought from you? When is their birthday?

These are all very simple things you can record and use to your advantage in the interest of customer retention.

Call centers, sales personnel, and everyone else in business have been trained for years that it's important to use your customer's name. Its part of personalizing service and using the customer's name puts the relationship in your service delivery.

A couple of general rules for name use:

Use the name conversationally. Hearing your name repeated over and over and over again in a call sounds silly and will tend to aggravate the caller.
Use the name as soon as the customer introduces himself/herself. It not only establishes a personal service relationship, but it helps you remember it. People who don't use the name right away tend to forget it and have to scramble to try and remember later in the call.
Listen to the way the customer introduces himself/herself. If the customer says, "This is Mrs. Francis Bacon" you should respond with "Yes, Mrs. Bacon." If the customer uses a title such as Doctor or Reverend, you should use the title when addressing him/her.
Using a more formal address will generally not be insulting and is a good rule to follow. If you call the customer "Mr. Smith" and he isn't as formal, he'll typically won't be offended, but will tell you, "Call me John." If you start with the informal by addressing the customer as "John" you run the risk of him snapping back with "that's MISTER Smith!"
If the customer's name is difficult to pronounce or you didn't catch it, it's perfectly acceptable to apologize and ask him/her to repeat it. This tells the customer that their name is important to you and you want to get it right. Many customers who have difficult to pronounce names will give you a less difficult option - "Oh, just call me J.R."

So, how well are you going to know your customers in a week, after reading this?

Remember, customer service is about the next time, every time.

July News 2008 - Did anybody see where the first half of 2008 went?

I cannot believe how fast this year is going by. But seriously now, don’t you hear this all the time… Every week I hear at least 3 people say ‘That week just flew past’. It’s time rather, to start thinking ahead, to how much time is left in the week. The glass, after all, should be half full.

The reality is that in South Africa today, it is pretty easy to get down and out about what’s happening around us. Interest rates are hurting our pockets, constraints on home loans are restricting the growth of our property portfolios, and petrol prices are making the purchase of a scooter pretty appealing.

With customers’ lives being made harder each month, should you as a business not be thinking of ways to make it a little easier?

How does your business treat its customers?

Are you doing your best to make it easier for them to spend their money with you? Customer Service is the cheapest thing to implement and has the greatest effect on bottom line if implemented correctly. Why then are service levels in South Africa dropping?

In my opinion, the thing that needs to change is the mindset of businesses in South Africa. Customers pay your bills, they are the people you spend a huge portion of you money on to try and get through your doors. Why then, does your staff treat them like an inconvenience? They have chosen your business, make it easy for them to stay, DO NOT do your competitor a favor and treat them badly.

Her are 3 things you need to know in order for your customer service to be improving all the time:

What do you want to provide your customers with?
What do your customers want to be provided with?
What are they being provided with currently?

If you do not know the answer to these 3 things, please give us a call, because that’s exactly what we are here to find out for you.

If you think you know the answer to these questions, then we wish you good luck. Please contact us when you have lost enough customers and your bottom line has suffered enough, we will be here waiting.

Take this away with you – Best Now, Better Later. The choice is yours.

June News - Service Levels

When was the last time you were upset by the service somewhere? I am almost certain it was not more than a week ago. On the other hand though, I bet you could name at least 5 places you would recommend based on the excellent way you were treated as a customer. You see, there is a rumor going around that South Africans do not complain when they receive less than adequate service, and that we often make up reasons why the service was not up to scratch. The reality is that we all complain, all the time, it’s just very rarely to the business concerned.

Research done on this area of concern shows that a pleased customer will tell between 2 and 4 people, as a positive referral, but on the other hand, a customer who is not treated well enough will tell more between 10 and 12 people. I see no need to do the math for you here, as it is quite obvious that 1 bad experience can ruin a great reputation and a lot of other people’s good work. Add to this that fact that these bad experiences are wasting marketing budget, detracting from your brand attitude and losing you money.

Can you really afford to let this happen?

It is important to realize that we are being tested all the time, by every customer who enters your doors. They have sifted through a couple of million media messages and have decided to choose you - all you need to do is keep them happy.

Business = providing something that meets the needs of a consumer base. It’s that simple.

In sales training people learn to ask 10 times as many questions as they are answering, so as to understand what exactly it is the customer wants. If you do not know what your customers needs are, how can you expect to meet them?

The definition of insanity is not doing something repeatedly; it’s doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

It’s difficult to find out what every customer wants and then trying to suit the needs of all of them, but it’s easy to find out what they are experiencing when they deal with your business… because that’s exactly what we do.

Take this away with you – ‘To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.’

May News 2008 - Welcome to the all-new Phantom Planet!

“Brrrrrrrr”…. Coke had it right! It’s getting colder and colder up here in Jo’burg and all I can think about is how cold it’s going to be when winter really hits us. With all the power cuts and the new ‘Power struggle’ going on throughout South Africa, things are certainly going to be interesting in the next few months…

This newsletter is a new beginning for Phantom Group, as we have just moved our website to a new ISP. Following the need to became greater and greater and to upgrade our website and make it more interactive, we decided to make the change in March this year. And so, with much planning and apprehension, the new site went live on the 11^th of April 2008. It’s still the same old machine at face value, as planned; it just has all the bells and whistles now. Without further ado, welcome! We look forward to new relationships and improving customer service across the board for many years to come.

Yours in service,

Mike Hewan

January News 2008

Happy New Year from all of us at Phantom Group, we hope 2008 will be a year for great improvement and success. More important than looking forward during this time is looking back over the year that has just past, and learning from it. Look at the mistakes and failures and make a conscious effort to make sure they do not happen again. Marvel over the successes but also use those strengths to breed more of it this coming year.

We have been around for a little over 2 years now, and in this time have been able to help a variety of clients in so many different industries. Being able to use the strengths of one industry and implement it into another has allowed us to give our clients an advantage over their competitors and create success out of any problematic area of their business. Think for a minute… when was the last time you got a call from someone to say “thanks for shopping with us. How is everything going with your new TV?” or even just a letter to say ‘Welcome to our family, here are some numbers you can use to contact us in case of a problem’. If you have never done something like this for a new/existing client, then shame, the increased retention and income would have been nice hey?

I bought a car from a certain German car company in June last year, and apart from the excellent service when I chose and picked it up, that was it… and now I get the privilege of using their less than acceptable service department. I can get R3000 free shopping vouchers or a DVD player when a get a new cell phone contract, but what do you get if you spend over R200 000 on a car? Surely something is wrong here…? What I did get though, was a letter and a CD from the marketing manager of the company congratulating me on my purchase. Problem was it cam in November, nearly 5 months later. I made a point of replying, and it was simply headed “Better never than late”.

There are some many areas a customer can come into contact with your brand or company, and so often it is the unplanned contact points that let you down. Why? What a complete waste of money…

With so much experience and a passion for customer service like no other company, why not get in touch with us and let’s see how we can help you? There are so many things we are now able to do for our clients, namely:

Know exactly what your customers are experiencing.
Gain valuable information about what they would like to experience.
Be able to track your service levels like you do your finances.
Experience customer service training and lectures like no other.
Know how your competitors treat their customers and use it to your advantage.
Implement long-term and on-the-spot incentive programs for your staff.
Basically… improve the way your company deals with the people who keep you in business, you customers.

You may wonder who our target market is, who we can help. Well it’s this simple; if you deal with customers then we can help you.

I look forward to speaking to you in person about how Phantom Group can and will help you in the near future.

You should already be thinking of some way you can improve your business right now. Go out and make it happen.

Yours in service,

Mike Hewan