The A to Z of growing your sales and profits
by Doug FleenerCustomer service can determine success or failure for any business - good relationships with your customers will cause them to return again and again and recommend your company to others. Bad customer interactions can be a death knell, even if you have an excellent product or service to offer. We've asked our retailing and customer service expert, Doug Fleener, to provide our readers with 26 tips for practices and attitudes that can help to improve your customer service, and, in turn, increase your profits.
Advocates – Creating customer advocates is your most effective marketing strategy.
Busy – Never be too busy to spend time on what matters most to your business: your customers and your businesses.
Communicate – Reach out to your customers on a regular basis with electronic newsletters, direct mail, phone calls, and thank you and birthday wishes.
Database – Create, update and use your customer database as often as you use your point-of-sale or accounting software. Incent your customers, especially non-buyers, to share their information. Incent your employees to obtain it.
Exceeding – Going beyond every customer’s expectations is not difficult if you make it your company’s goals.
First – That’s customer FIRST. Friendly and engaging welcome. Identify needs and opportunities. Recommend products and services. Suggest enhancement products. Thank and invite back.
Gift cards – When asked to donate an item for local fundraising events, consider a gift card rather than a product.
Hourly wage – Compensating your staff with only an hourly wage is costing your store sales. Add incentives, monthly or weekly bonuses, prizes and contests.
Involve – Others, that is. Involving them in the development of your store or business can include parties, surveys with incentives, and in some cases informal focus groups. And don’t forget to involve your employees: Ask them how you’re really doing.
Job interviews – These are one of the more important things you do that determine your store’s success. Don’t hire anyone who doesn’t excite you. Quit settling on pool of applicants; rather, hire for what you want. What you can’t teach an applicant to do is smile.
Keep – Keep showing the customer products until they tell you they are done.
Lifetime value – Know the Lifetime Value of a Customer, or LVC: 1) Average purchases of a customer (example, $200). 2) Number of times that customer buys from you during the year (example, three times); 3) Multiply to get customer’s average annual value ($600); 4) Number of years a typical customer stays with you (example, 10); 5) Multiply this yearly average by your annual customer value and you get the LVC of $6,000.
Memorable moments – Create memorable moments for your customers – both planned and spontaneous. It could be giving a customer’s child a balloon, or cleaning snow off cars of overnight guests at a hotel.
No (lookers) – There’s NO such thing as lookers – only buyers and potential buyers. Assume every customer is at your store/business to make a purchase.
Optimism – It’s the key that unlocks the doorway to daily success. If anyone asks, “How’s business?” the answer is “Great.”
Practice – It leads to perfection. Role-playing is a smart investment of time. It takes only a couple of minutes a day.
Quickly – Resolve your customer’s problems quickly or it is unlikely they will remain your customer. Empower your employees with that in mind to avoid unnecessary delays for the customer.
Reinvest – Move through your “dog” products and reinvest the cash. Mark it down all day until you sell it. Turn it into cash rather than keeping it on the shelf for years.
Sell – Sell up by selling down. Always show the customer the best products first that meet their needs. Teach staff to show the best product that meets a customer’s need. Consider the butcher’s rule: They will feature filet mignon before hotdogs.
Top – This refers to your top customers. Know, love and communicate often with your top 25 to 100 customers. Run reports on quarterly basis to identify them; learn why some may fall out of your top list.
Underperforming – Improve or remove underperforming employees. You are only as good as your worst employee. Most of the time, an underperforming employee doesn’t know he or she is under-performing until you deal with it.
Visual – Your visual communications should match your brand and market position. You are what you say you are. What does your signage say?
Walk – Walking around from behind the counter to hand the customer their bag is classier than reaching across and handing it to them, or even worse, leaving the bag on the counter for them to pick up. Congratulate your customer for making a purchase.
XXX – XXX talk has no place in the store. That also means never talking badly about a customer to your staff.
You – You are … your brand. You are… the reason people want to do business with your store or company. You are … the difference between you and your competitors. Leverage YOU.
Zealous – You’ll be successful if you are zealous about your customers, about finding great employees, about making sales. Don’t worry about Wal-Mart. Rather, make sure that every customer that walks out of your business feels good. Focus not on what you sell, but to whom you sell.
Doug Fleener is a veteran retailer with more than 25 years of hands-on experience with world-class retailers including Bose Corporation and The Sharper Image. He is president and managing partner of Dynamic Experiences Group, a Lexington retail consulting firm. He can be reached at doug@dynamicexperiencesgroup.com.
Published in Cape Business Sept/Oct 2007
Doug Fleener Doug Fleener is a veteran retailer with more than 25 years of hands-on experience with world-class retailers including Bose Corporation and The Sharper Image. Doug is now president and managing partner of Dynamic Experiences Group, a Lexington retail consulting firm. 
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