Register Now!
Sign up below to receive our newsletter
along with other special offers & discounts!

Reward and recognition are the best ways to reinforce the importance of providing excellent customer service and a great way to get your employees attention. If you are wanting them to work towards the standards that you have set, set the goals and put an incentive program in place now. Don’t wait for the annual employee review to either recognize or reprimand employees how your employees serve your customers -generally that may be too late.

Delivering little rewards more often is a far better method and works very well for reinforcing desired behavior. Provide verbal recognition frequently. Tell your employees what they are doing the right when you see them providing good service. It’s much more motivational. And do it in front of the other employees so they get the idea too.

Pass out little rewards on the spot for small efforts and bigger rewards for efforts that are above and beyond your expectations. Your customers like to feel appreciated, and so do employees. You must reinforce the importance of good customer service by acknowledging and rewarding your employees effort to meet your standards. When your employees understand and offer the level of customer service that both you and your customers expect, and then are rewarded for it, everyone wins. Your employees get in the habit of and strive to offer great customer service. Your customers are happier because they are treated well. And both benefit you and your company.
.

About The Author:

Sally Liddicoat is a Wife, Mother, Speaker and the Founder & CEO of AttaBoy! Solutions. Her goal is to help businesses increase sales, generate ongoing referrals, strengthen relationships and create loyal customers and employees through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.

Contact Sally

One of the biggest mistakes a company can make when dealing with their customers is to only look at the immediate effects of a decision and not take the long term effects into consideration. We all know that it can be very costly to earn the business of a single new customer. Once we have them, we need to keep them -almost at any cost.

Here’s what happened to my husband… About two years ago he purchased a hand sprayer for the yard. When he went to use it the other day, it was cracked and no longer working properly. He was about to throw it out when he noticed on the label “Lifetime Guarantee”. So… he called the company and the young lady on the phone told him that their return policy had changed and he needed his receipt. As you can imagine, he didn’t have it. After all it had been two years and it had only cost about $4 or $5 anyway. When he told her that he didn’t have the receipt she advised him to return the item to them and they would check it out -if it fit the criteria, they would send him out a new one.

Well, he needed a sprayer now -not a month or more from now. After the call he was a little frustrated and sent an email to the company explaining the situation. He also let them know that he was just going to go purchase another one, however it probably would not be their brand.

My husband, who is quite the handyman, is also pretty frugal so he tried to repair the broken sprayer and he was able to fix it. After about 4 days went by, he received an email from the company asking him to describe the damage to the sprayer. He sent a reply to their email with the information. About 2 days later he was notified that a new sprayer was being sent out.

Now that’s customer service! He has only ever bought one thing from this company and that was 2 years ago. But this company knows the value of a customer. It is far less expensive to send a new sprayer than to stick to their return policy. Why? Because now when my husband needs yard equipment, he will look for that brand. He has already told several people what the company has done for him and will continue to tell even more. The company also knows that for every person he tells his story to, he would have told twice as many had they enforced their policy and not satisfied their customer.

As difficult as it is to get new customers, it’s twice as hard to undo bad press. If people are going to talk about your company you want them telling good stories rather than bad. Your customers are what keeps you in business. Do what you need to do to keep them happy. Bend the rules sometimes, they are really more like guidelines anyway. By doing so, you will earn a customer for life.
.

About The Author:

Sally Liddicoat is a Wife, Mother, Speaker and the Founder & CEO of AttaBoy! Solutions. Her goal is to help businesses increase sales, generate ongoing referrals, strengthen relationships and create loyal customers and employees through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.

Contact Sally

After waiting almost a week, today was my first day with my new administrative assistant. Although I thought I was doing most of the teaching and training, it didn’t take long for me to learn a lesson for myself. It reminded me of a conversation I recently had while working with a new client. They were wanting to send thank you gifts to their clients. My usual line of questions begins with asking what kinds of things they have done in the past. I often get the same types of answers. Sometimes we do this, sometimes we do that, and sometime we are just so busy it never gets done. Oh how I know that feeling!

Obviously it was just what a gift concierge company likes to hear… My lesson came when I realized I made the same types of comments, only not about giving gifts. I said it about other aspects of my business – mainly the administrative things. I, much like every other business owner, find myself with only so much time available and far too many tasks that need my attention. Or at least someones attention.

Just as my recommendation to my client was to let us handle every aspect possible to help them thank their clients, I discovered that I needed to do the same thing in my business and have someone else handle the things that didn’t need to be directly handled by me. You’ve probably heard the buzz phrase “Work on your business, not in it”. I had heard it too. However, hearing it and doing something to fix it are two completely different things.

My clients turned over their gift giving responsibilities to us, which make sense. It’s our ‘job’, it’s what we do. I am now in the process of turning over my administrative tasks to an assistant. It’s her ‘job’, it’s what she does.

What is it that you need to let go of? What tasks could be better handled by someone else. When you delegate the tasks not requiring your specific attention, you free yourself to work on your business instead of in it. You give yourself back time -time to do the things you want to do, time to do the things your in business to do, time to do the things that serve your clients. And better yet, you give your clients the a something they will truly appreciate -you, your time and attention!
.

About The Author:

Sally Liddicoat is a Wife, Mother, Speaker and the Founder & CEO of AttaBoy! Solutions. Her goal is to help businesses increase sales, generate ongoing referrals, strengthen relationships and create loyal customers and employees through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.

Contact Sally

…that is the question.  Or is it?

Incentives have been used by businesses for years to motivate their employees to produce more – more products, more sales, or even to offer better customer service. They are also used to build business relationships, honor and encourage loyalty, thank buyers for large and/or frequent purchases, and to welcome new prospects. By implementing programs that focus on motivation by reward on both sides of the coin, the benefits are real:

• Productive, engaged employees who work harder, produce more, and stay with the company.

• Satisfied, loyal customers who buy more and tell others about the company.

Motivated employees are productive. Sales programs and internal competition for a prize considered to be highly valuable are very effective. Salespeople especially have clearly defined goals with measurable results, making incentives a major strategy. When an employee is singled out for doing a good job, they feel good about it. When they receive a gift to mark their achievement, they feel even better. As a result, they will display more loyalty and be more conscientious on the job.

Appreciated clients are loyal. When a new customer gets a smile and a handshake, it builds their relationship with the individual and the company. When they receive a welcome or thank-you gift to mark the occasion, they feel even better about it. Once again, human nature takes it back to basics: People like to feel valuable, important, and appreciated. When a company not only delivers their products and/or services to a client, but goes beyond to give them a tangible sign of how much their business means to the company, good things happen for everyone. New accounts are open, customers become loyal and stay, customers buy more, and the company sets itself apart from the competition.

Incentives are the classic dangling “carrot”. It’s human nature – we’ll work harder if there’s a reward that we find worthwhile at the end of our efforts. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink… however, if you salt the hay he will be thirsty when he gets there. Salt that hay, dangle that carrot – incent and get results!
.

About The Author:

Sally Liddicoat is a Wife, Mother, Speaker and the Founder & CEO of AttaBoy! Solutions. Her goal is to help businesses increase sales, generate ongoing referrals, strengthen relationships and create loyal customers and employees through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.

Contact Sally

People are creatures of habit -they really do like to go back to the same place whenever possible. There is a certain comfort in the familiar. So why would your customer want to leave you and buy from someone else?

Here are 4 possible reasons:

• They are unhappy with the way that they are treated
• They are unhappy with the price
• They are unhappy with the product/service or
• They die, and are no longer buying anywhere

A poor manager or small thinking owner focuses on the second reason and believes that if we just cut our price below our competitor our customers will never leave. However, the main reason for most businesses is that the customers are unhappy with the way they are treated.  How can that be you say? Think about your own buying experience. You don’t shop at the cheapest place. You don’t just look for bargains. You look for a company that treats you fairly, appreciates you, offers great customer service, has helpful and friendly employees and lets you know that you are important to them, even if you spend more than at the store across the street.

So what can you do to create a relationship with your customers so that they want to come back to you?

First, communicate with them. Find out who they are, what they expect from your business. Keep a database of information and gather as much information as possible. Email is one of the best ways to not only stay in touch but to gather other valuable information.

Next, don’t be worried about price. Earn their respect. Treat them as if your business depends on them (which it does). Keep your prices fair and your customers will stay even if you aren’t the cheapest guy in town. Be sure all your customer service people are trained on how to PROPERLY deal with customers and that they have the authority to make decisions pertaining to customer issues.

Build equity in your customer service and don’t stress price. If your friend helps you carry heavy furniture upstairs in your house, you would never think of offering him money. You will offer him a beer, a soda or some other food or drink and have a friendly conversation. This is what your customers want too. They want to be treated like a good neighbor – a good friend. Provide rewards for large purchases and for being a loyal customer. Send thank you notes, give business gifts, offer special discount to them. In short, make it expensive for them to leave you.

Just like you, your customers want to feel like they are important.  Be sure that your staff always makes them feel good about their visit, either in person or on-line.  If you take your customers for granted you will soon see them buying from your competitor because he has learned to treat them like friends and he shows them that he values their business. Your customers stop buying from you when you stop showing them you care and stop treating them like they want and expect to be treated. Make your customers feel good about doing business with you and they will always come back.

About The Author:

	Mike Liddicoat is a Husband, Father, Speaker and the Sales & Marketing Director of AttaBoy! Solutions. His goal is to help businesses maintain relationships, ensure future business and acquire new referrals through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.
Contact Mike

The biggest and best asset your company can have is it’s customers. We all know that the cost to bring in new customers is much higher than to keep a current one happy and coming back. So why is it that most business owners and managers put so much attention and expense into getting new customers instead of focusing on their existing customer base?  If you treat your current customers like they are important to you they will be your best source of advertising to bring new customers in, new customers that already have a good opinion of you from their friends.

Here is a fact – You can’t avoid losing some customers! But, you can cut down your losses. According to studies here are the reasons why your customers leave you:

1% die. If you can find a way of stopping this, please let the rest of us know -otherwise there is nothing you can do to stop these customers from leaving.

3% move.  If your store is on-line it’s because they have found a company that they are happier with, if you have a brick and mortar location they just left the neighborhood. However, if you treat your customers correctly and show them that they are appreciated they will go out of their way to shop your business. Treat them right and you will minimize your losses.

5% will go someplace else on the recommendation of family or friends. We all know word-of-mouth is powerful, however, I’ll say it again, if you treat your customers properly and make them happy with your products and services, the chances of them leaving you lessen, and as we said at the start of this, they will bring their friends to you.

9% will switch to a better product or service. How do you compete with this one? You had better make sure that what you offer in products and services is the best that can be found. Don’t be cheap or skimp when it comes to product quality or the level of customer service that you provide.

14% will leave due to being dissatisfied with your company, product or service or all three. Again, you can’t stop everyone from leaving but you want to be sure that when they do leave, you did all you could have to keep them.

Okay, so if your good at math you see that this is only 32% of your customers, what about the rest? A whopping 68% of your customers will be lost due to indifference. There was just nothing special about your companies products, services or staff that made them stay with you.  In short, you didn’t WOW them.

So what do you do?

You need to show appreciation, sincere appreciation for your customers. You must give them value at every turn. One thing you can do is be sure that your customers are greeted at the door.  Go into a QT convenience store (if you have them) and the clerks will always greet you as you come in.  Thank your customers for doing business with you, a simple word of thanks, a card, a gift or a special something that lets them know that you know they have choices and you appreciate them choosing you.

Doing these things, over time, will nurture and grow a relationship that will stand the test of time.
.

About The Author:

	Mike Liddicoat is a Husband, Father, Speaker and the Sales & Marketing Director of AttaBoy! Solutions. His goal is to help businesses maintain relationships, ensure future business and acquire new referrals through appreciation marketing. Throughout this blog you can sign up for updates, news, special offers, discounts and more. So take a look around, leave a comment or two and enjoy.
Contact Mike