Customer Service = Customer Retention
By Adam Ramshaw (Director)
For reprint permission please email
info@genroe.com.au
We all hear about the bad customer service experiences that our
friends have had but for once I wanted to relate a good story and
give credit where it is due. Customer service is such an important
and misunderstood part of customer retention that I tend to go
looking for examples of both excellent and reprehensible service.
Last month I found an example of the excellent type and I think it
provides some valuable lessons for us all.
One of my close family members is having a wedding overseas and,
of course, lots of us are arranging to attend. It was in this
context that my Uncle recommended a particular company and travel
agent in my area: Liz Turner at one of the local New South Wales
Flight Centres.
Liz not only looked into my enquiry efficiently but also collated
a holiday package that suited my requirements perfectly. By all
accounts excellent customer service, a credit to herself and her
employer.
Always interested in learning from a successful person I started
to ask her a few questions about her approach and success.
Interesting Fact #1:
Good customer service drives good business.
I discovered that Liz was not only one of the top performing travel
agents for Flight Centre in Australia but also in the top five in the
world. Her excellent customer service doesn’t just make her
customers feel better, it makes them spend more and return regularly.
Her background includes working for many years in a bank, studying
and practising accounting, being an international tour guide and
developing tours based on a travel idea. What’s more she
believes that her diverse working life has resulted in her
accumulating a broad range of skills to be a great travel agent.
Interesting Fact # 2:
The thing that struck me so powerfully is
that Liz practices all the elements of good customer retention
processes and does it almost unconsciously in everything that she
does.
Let me show you a few examples, starting when a potential customer
first walks into the store. Firstly, Liz tries to qualify the
customer’s travel idea. In other words she identifies the
customer’s need.
Then she relates a personal experience to the customer’s
place of interest to get the customer excited about wanting to travel
eg. “In New York my favourite place to visit is ……”.
It is highly likely that in her extensive travels she has already
visited the place.
The next aspect of her approach is to ask questions that develop a
personal rapport with the customer, but also help her to identify if
there is anything else the customer might need. For example, “are
you visiting family?” If the customer says no then there is
high potential that the customer will need hotel accommodation, car
hire or tour bus packages. In marketing speak we’d say Liz was
investigating cross sell and upsell opportunities to increase the
size of the total sale. You could also term this Product Bundling –
something that many companies struggle with but which can
substantially increase sales.
Another of her methods is to use the optimum communication channel
based on both the customer’s expressed desire and value.
Meaning that customers who have a history of purchases are invited to
sit in the office with her to make their bookings. Customer’s
who want to make smaller and less complex arrangement are encouraged
to use the phone or email.
She also optimises delivery to the customer’s need by
providing a range of travel options with competitive price
alternatives appropriate for the customer such as suggesting a global
fare as this could be cheaper to get to the same destinations.
If the customer wants to shop around with her competitors, she
encourages the customer to commit with a deposit and explains that
they can transfer their deposit to any other trip within twelve
months. Mentally this provides the customer with a money back
guarantee but at the same time they have made a commitment to the
work that Liz has done.
Interesting Fact #3:
Even though Liz is notionally in Customer
Service she recognises and is proud of the fact that she sells. This
comes across in her business philosophy, as she says “I want to
sell how I like to be sold to and have fun while I am doing it”.
And so adapts the way she communicates with each of her customers.
She says that another critical element to servicing customers well
is providing responsive timely after sales support such as answering
messages promptly and keeping customer informed with quotes.
Liz consistently exceeds her customer’s expectations with
the result that customers just keep coming back for more. It’s
a pleasure to meet someone with direct customer contact who
understands how to deliver real value to both their employer and
customer.
The author holds no interests in Flight Centre shares – but
he is very interested in excellent service, wherever he finds it.
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