Back To The Basics - Customer Care Fundamentals

"This is a football", exclaimed Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach. At the beginning of each season, Vince Lombardi would assemble his team and remind them of the fundamentals of the game. He believed that only after his team had mastered the basic fundamentals were they equipped to be victorious.

The mastery of the fundamentals is equally important in business. How the fundamentals of customer care are taught, practiced, executed and incorporated into a business's culture will determine it's future success or failure.

Here are some basic customer care fundamentals.

 You need customers much more than they need you. - Every business exists to serve their customers. Without customers, there would be no business. As Mahatma Gandhi said, "A customer is the most important visitor on our premises; he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so."

Customer service is not about you or your company, it is about the customer. - It is about the customer's wants, needs, and expectations. Are your procedures, policies, and programs designed for your customer's benefit or for your company's benefit? "The question is, then, do we try to make things easy on ourselves or do we try to make things easy on our customers, whoever they may be?" - Erwin Fran

Customer service and satisfaction is everyone's responsibility.- It has to be a team effort. Everyone plays a vital role in creating an exceptional customer service experience. Service excellence is only achieved by teamwork and everyone personally excepting responsibility for each customer's satisfaction. "Coming together is a beginning, Keeping together is progress, Working together is success."- Henry Ford

Customer service is a journey not a destination. - Serve the customer with excellence, they will become a satisfied customer. That satisfied customer will turn into a repeat customer. As the repeat customer continues to experience excellent service, they will be transformed into a loyal customer. Loyal customers are the backbone of any successful company. Customer service is a continuous cycle, a never ending journey, a day-to-day quest for service excellence.

Customer service is all about communication. - To understand your customers you must ask them what they want, how satisfied they are with your service, and how you can provide better service to them? It is imperative to listen and apply the feed back gained from your customers. Customer service is a constantly evolving, ever changing process which is directed by the customer's wants and needs. Ross Perot said, "Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face. You'd be amazed how many companies don't listen to their customers."

As a championship football team must master the fundamentals of their game to be victorious, so must a business master these customer care fundamentals to be successful.

Coach Vince Lombardi once stated, "Some people try to find things in this game that don't exist but football is only two things-blocking and tackling."

Business is only about one thing - Serving the Customer