Home Business Foundation – Customer Service

Posted by Steven Wagenheim on September 09, 2010 in General

In our last installment of our series on home business foundation, we went over your product or service. In this installment, I want to discuss something that a lot of people neglect. It may very well be the most important part OF your business. Without it, it doesn’t matter how good your product is. I’m talking about customer service.

There are quite a few variables involved in customer service. One of them, and a severely neglected one, is the method by which the service itself is delivered.

Today, we have quite a few ways for customers to get a hold of us, outside of traditional telephone. There’s email, help desk, Skype, instant messenger services and even things like Facebook, where a lot of people seem to spend their time these days. The question is, how do YOU want to make yourself available?

Well, I can tell you from experience that the LAST thing you want to do is use methods where you are NOT in control of the process and where the process is not reliable. Believe it or not, that doesn’t leave us with a lot of options unless you’re going to use more than one method, having a backup for your main method especially if that main method is less than optimal.

For example, a lot of people like to use traditional email. The problem with email is that because of the problem with spam filters (required because of the spam problem) email delivery is NOT 100% reliable. Personally, I’ve even seen PayPal emails for sales NOT get to me. How do I know? Because my DLGuard will email me the subscribe email for the sale which SHOULD be followed by PayPal’s email. Sometimes I don’t get their email until the next day or not at all.

So, if you’re going to use traditional email, it’s probably a good idea to have a backup method like a help desk or even Skype or a phone number. Yeah, I know…getting calls on the phone all hours is not your first choice. You have to decide how important having near perfect customer service is to you.

After determining the method of customer service the next step is to determine the level of customer service.

For example, let’s say you sell software. Is your level of service also going to include installing the software if the customer has problems or is it going to end at just answering their questions? If you agree to do installs, you need to look at your ability to do that and still keep your business running. By offering a hands on operation, you risk either neglecting your business or having to hire people to handle the installations for you. If you choose the latter, can you afford it?

One thing you have to do, no matter how hard it is, is stick to your guns with whatever you decide. Once you lower the fences, it’s very hard to raise them back up again. So if your standing policy is NO installations and you suddenly decide to include them in your service, there is no turning back.

See, a lot of people will be fine with something NEVER being available. What they have a problem with is when they have something and then it is taken away from them. This is true in any part of life.

It’s what most labor union fights are over…benefits that management wants to take away from the workers and not so much benefits they never had.

Bottom line…and this is the most important thing for you to get from this article…you MUST support your product. You may think that it’s such a simple product to use that nobody will need support with it, but you’d be wrong. There is always going to be somebody who is going to need YOUR help.

Businesses that have the best customer service are the ones that last the longest.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Looking for a solid 4 step plan to building your own business…FREE? Pick up my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/4steps.html and get started TODAY!