Masks, safety signs, and hand sanitizers won’t keep your customers

Masks, door signs, floor decals, partitions, and hand sanitizers won’t hold your customers back. Such security protocols are expected from your customers in response to the pandemic. While not implementing them will cost you customers, maintaining those standards will not guarantee that you meet them. Your competitors are doing the exact same thing, which means what you’re doing is average, elevated like everyone else, but still. And … wait for it … nobody gets excited about the average. Customers are not enthusiastic about a business that simply meets their expectations. Nor are they loyally linked to them. With these safeguards, you have simply traded a negative experience for one that is neutral. But what are you doing to move the experience from neutral to memorably positive?

TAKE CARE of your Associates first. Hearing about hospitalizations, the struggling economy, and mass layoffs every day, your associates are still anxious and worried about their jobs. Assure them with your actions that your leadership team cares. Communicate. To thank. To recognize. Authorize. Attend.

Serve your associates by asking at the end of each interaction, “What can I do for you?” And follow their suggestions to make your associates as happy working with you as you want your customers to be doing business with you.

Reorient your Associates toward delivering the customer experience in what is now the “not-so-new normal.” In the first weeks of the pandemic, he focused on introducing all the new protocols. For the past few months, his associates constantly follow security guidelines, from temporary checks to face masks. Take the time now to remind them of the principles of providing exceptional customer service. Emphasize that since your clients cannot see your smiles, they need to use other body language except handshakes and hugs, your words, and your tone of voice to convey a warm welcome. Remind them to practice active listening and respond with empathy. Remember the forbidden phrases that are distracting in conversations with customers? Make sure they know the difference between taking care of the customer, which is a transaction, and actually taking care of the customer, an interaction that builds relationships.

Seek feedback and then act. You may know 10-20% of your customer complaints through your customer surveys. Your customers know 100% of what they dislike and your associates know, as your customers tell them every day. Ask your team directly: “What are you listening to?” Then act on their feedback to eliminate those pain points. Be sure to involve your partners in defining solutions to eliminate these discontent. Without your involvement, your commitment to caring for your customers will not be earned.

Become a storyteller. Three things can happen after customers do business with you. They can’t say anything because you didn’t give them anything to talk about. They may rant about you to others because they received such poor service that they want to make sure no one else makes the same mistake. Or they can talk about you. And if you want your customers to tell stories about you, you must give them a story to tell. Engage your associates in defining key points in the customer experience where they are empowered to create memorable little “wows” so the story can end “And they lived happily ever after.”

Remember that no one cares how good you were before this pandemic. They only care how good you are right now. And now it changes every day. You need to do the same.