The Best Advice So Far: Focus On Customers by:Janice Jenkins

In recent years, businesses have spent huge sums of money to explore ways to retain customers

. The success and strategy ultimately depends on expanding the breadth and depth of customer relationships and into translating this loyalty into higher sales of goods and services.

A lot of companies invest so much in developing customer loyalty or rewards programs but in the end, these strategies fail. Because looking deeper into these programs, what is missing is in fact the most essential ingredient in any customer-client relationship: the spark between the customer and your frontline staff members. From the moment your frontline staff member hands the customer his or her business card printing until your customer drives away from your company's parking area, everything is being assessed and evaluated in terms of how they, as customers, were treated by your company. The way your frontline staff members handled these wary and dubious customers can transform them into strong and committed brand followers.

A delayed flight; a customer returning a damaged merchandise; long queues at a service counter; badly printed business cards - these are "moments of truth". These are situations that can make or break your business. This is when the exceptional handling skills of your frontline staff members become crucial. Superb handling of these moments requires an instinctive frontline response that puts the customer's emotional needs ahead of the company's and the employee's agenda.

There are practical ways to handle these "moments of truth". In any industry that provides services or sells a product with an embedded service element, there are moments when the long term relationship between a business and its customers can change significantly - for better or for worse. Here are some steps to ensure that your frontline staff members can deliver in these "moments of truth":

Empower your Staff

A strong sense of commitment emanates from an empowered workforce. Empowered employees can make decisions on the spot when necessary.

Create a positive atmosphere

A positive outlook and promoting constructive feedback mechanisms will ensure that staff members are not risk averse. Traditional companies however, would dwell on the negative and are just on the lookout for mistakes, often exacting sanctions for those who do not toe the line.

Emphatic Relationship

Your frontline staff members must deal with every client or customer on an individual level. They must have the skill to identify other people's feelings, creating empathy and facilitating better conversations with customers.

When you can improve on the quality of frontline employees you have, you will see more prospects turning into loyal customers which can then help you stay in business for a very long time.

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About the author

Janice Jenkins is a writer for a marketing company in Chicago, IL. Mostly into marketing research, Janice started writing articles early 2007 to impart her knowledge to individuals new to the marketing industry.

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