Business of Trucking:  Closing the deal
Tim Brady, tbrady@writeuptheroad.com

Now is the time to secure ¿customers for the long haul

The dog days of summer are officially here, but we’re not going to let sleeping dogs lie as we focus on ways to find and keep quality customers. Let’s be sure we’re barking up the right tree, though. Customer service is your best means to beating your competition. Customer service must be dynamic. In other words, no matter how superbly your business provides service to its customers, it can be improved. Combined with the information from the articles in the previous two months, this becomes the unwavering means of ensuring stability in your business.

The No. 1 way to improve customer service is through education. Make sure that everyone in your company, including your contractors, is educated in the services you provide. This will make your company all the more valuable to customers. Concentrate on providing the knowledge and information necessary to find the answers to any questions or concerns customers might have.

This education comes in many forms. There’s the school of hard knocks, where we learn from our mistakes. Remember, the difference between a mistake and a failure is whether we learned how to prevent it from happening again. There’s the formal approach of training through classes and seminars to learn the nuances of customer service and how to apply this knowledge on a day-to-day basis. Remember, all the training and workshops in the world have no value unless the information gained is applied to your daily operations. Finally, mentoring can be a great teaching tool.

Used correctly, it can benefit the student, the mentor and the company. It is a two-way street. The mentor instructs, the student learns, and new insights are gained from the questions asked.

The second step is to know your customer’s wants and needs. In the July issue, we discussed how to obtain this information. Now take advantage of this knowledge by sharing it with your employees and contractors. Arm your employees with all of the information they need to provide the best service they can. The more information your employees have, the better service they can provide. You can’t provide what you don’t know; this is true with all your employees and contractors.

A major complaint of those dealing with a customer service representative is that most are not given the power to make a decision. They have no authority beyond the script they are given. (Think about the last time you called your phone or cable TV provider.) As part of the third step, try empowering your employees and contractors to make tough decisions on the fly, especially when you are not around. And never second-guess their decisions. Provide defined guidelines through a comprehensive customer service and communications training program that allows the latitude to adjust to the individual customer’s situation; not a script, but a baseline from which to make those situation-specific decisions.

Don’t be afraid to congratulate each employee or contractor on a job well done every time one of them makes a good customer service decision. They won’t always make the same decision you might have made, but when they’re provided with the right information and guidelines, it will likely be a correct decision.

The fourth step is actually the first thing you need to do, but you have to understand the previous three in order to know what your company requires. When hiring employees and contractors, make sure you bring people aboard who have the drive to provide top-of-the-line customer service. Your representatives must be enthusiastic, friendly, outgoing and willing to go the distance for customers, even in the most difficult of situations. It’s also important that they be intelligent, empathetic and possess problem-solving skills. If they have those characteristics, they should have no problem understanding a situation and making the right decisions in order to keep customers satisfied.

The fifth step is the one that will separate you from the pack, the one that will have you outrunning the big dogs. I call it going beyond ‘satisfied’ to ‘raving fan’ status with your customers. A satisfied customer will tell you he’s happy with your service; a raving fan will tell the whole world.
So how do you achieve this celebrity status? Do something extraordinary. Every so often, going out of your way and doing the unexpected will produce the ‘wow’ response from your customers.

Finally, go beyond the ‘every-so-often’ and invent an approach that can be performed on each job, load or service that sets you apart from your competition. The net result will be a raving customer that your competitors will not be able to pry away, no matter what they try to do. This creates value for your company—a value you can literally take to the bank.

Join Tim Brady in the Trucking ¿Business Community ¿at www.truckersu.com