How Serving Your Customers Better Can Grow Your Business
Have you ever had such a bad service experience somewhere it became laughable? You just couldn’t believe that everything that could have went wrong, did go wrong?
Maybe you were at a restaurant and the server didn’t come to your table for 5-10 minutes, the food was late, then the food was cold, then the waiter didn’t bring the check for 10 minutes after you already asked for it, and to top it off, they charged you for something you didn’t order.
Hopefully this has never happened with your business!
I recently had this happen with a car shop-everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. Multiple times. It made me think about what the shop could have done differently to avoid something like this from ever happening again.
What were some of the “red flags” observed?
- A manager telling the customer they were incorrect.
- A manager not passing along information to team members to have something sent to the customer.
- A manager not providing coaching to his staff and putting quality control measures in place.
- No follow up with the customer making sure everything was taken care of after multiple issues were reported.
- Car parts that were “fixed” breaking yet again.
You see-all of this could have been avoided if they had put one simple measure in place called a Value Chain Analysis.
A Value Chain Analysis (VCA) looks at the customer journey and strategically plans it out ahead of time. The Customer Journey does this too, but the Value Chain Analysis takes this one step further…it makes sure every interaction is VALUABLE and serves a purpose. Nobody likes unnecessary time wasted when paying for a service. You’re paying for a service to be done properly and quickly!
Have you ever mapped out the steps your customer takes when first hearing about you? Or how about your returning customers? There should be unique paths set up for each of them. This also allows you to make sure you’re providing a different type of value to different types of customers, which is required to both grow your business with new customers and nurture your existing relationships with current customers.
For example, a standard customer journey at a typical restaurant may be:
- See advertisement for food-realize a craving/hunger
- Drive to restaurant & park
- Walk inside
- Review menu
- Order food
- Eat
- Pay
- Leave
This is all pretty factual, but gives us a good roadmap of what to look at to really make it an experience, instead of a transaction (which will be the downfall of your company if you don’t provide experiences!).
If we take this standard customer journey and turn it into a VCA, it would look something like this:
- See advertisement for food (appeal to customers needs by ensuring top quality photo/video and potentially give them a compelling offer to visit immediately-perhaps a coupon that expires soon)
- Drive to restaurant and observe clean parking lot and landscaping
- Walk inside and see clean countertops and windows
- Warmly greeted by staff
- Review menu (and provide a handheld option they can look at closely so they don’t have to strain their eyes) and have staff member explain what’s good/new/favorite
- Order food and be told about how long it’ll be before it’s ready
- Eat meal and be checked in with to see how everything is going and if anything else is needed to make it a better experience
- Pay and receive change (great opportunity to be sold on loyalty program right here – “while you wait, do you want free food in the future? Our loyalty program only takes about a minute or two to enroll in while you wait for your food”)
- Leave the restaurant and pick up a mint and toothpick on the way out
- Email follow up after the visit to see how things went (assuming customer signed up for the loyalty program)
Which experience would you pay more for and remember fondly?
Probably the second one because the business CARED enough to think about your experience ahead of time and planned for it.
You do this for guests coming in from out of town, but what about your own customers who pay your bills?