Your aim in giving your customers exceptional service is to make them say “wow!”
You can do that if you make the following seven tips part of your normal pattern of service.
1. Be polite, friendly and attentive to your customers. Greet them when they enter your business, use their names, and niceties such as ‘have a good day’ always help contribute to an overall good impression. Most of all, give them your undivided attention.
2. Surprise them with the unexpected. British Airways discovered that passenger goodwill increases when staff do unexpected extras such as spontaneous conversations or invitations to visit the flight deck. These have to remain extras and not the norm if they are to retain their surprise value.
3. Attend to the little things. Paying attention to the little things which don't significantly affect the main service is a way of saying: "If we look after the little things, just think what we'll do with the big ones." Such detail includes maintaining sparkling washrooms whose floors you could eat your meals off and customer notices that don't patronise people.
4. Anticipate customers’ needs. In a survey of airport check-in staff, customers rated the best staff as those who anticipated their needs. These were staff who would routinely glance down the queue and anticipate the different needs customers had, from the grandmother needing help with her luggage to the business executive wanting a quick service.
5. Always say “yes”. Great customer carers never turn down a request for help. Even if they can't do it themselves, they'll know someone who can and put you onto them. They always use positive language. Even if the answer is "no, we're closed", it's expressed as "yes, we can do that first thing tomorrow for you”.
6. Treat them the same by treating them differently. We hate to see others get better customer service than we do, for example in a restaurant. It makes us feel second-class and devalued. Equally, we don't want to be treated the same as everyone else if that means a standard, soulless response, as you sometimes get in a fast-food restaurant. The secret is to treat everyone the same by treating them differently.
7. Use tact with tact. Tact means using adroitness in handling other people's feelings. In awkward or embarrassing moments, tact saves everyone's blushes. It's something your customers will notice.
Adhere to these seven principles until they are as familiar to you as breathing and you’re guaranteed to have customers queuing up.
