Facing tough economic times and changing customer behaviors, businesses are forced to do better or fail. There are two keys to success – hiring great people and providing a simply exceptional experience.

Finding friendly, engaging, and intuitive people who will leave customers with favorable impressions is challenging at best. You cannot teach friendliness and intuition. And intuition (defined as the ability to make sound decisions with incomplete information) is a gift some people possess and others simply do not. So its imperative that businesses hone their ability to spot this “soft skill” during the interview process.

Delivering a superior experience, or the ability to consistently provide exceptional service, is a key competitive advantage and effective differentiator. Time magazine recently reported, “The No. 1 marketing strategy for businesses and organizations now and in the future will be directly related to the quality of that organization’s customer service.” 68 % of customers leave because of an attitude of indifference displayed toward the customer, according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey.

Service is a critical success factor. It establishes and helps to build relationships and referrals. When customers and prospects are deciding weather to patronize your business they are judging you by three things:

1. Are you trustworthy?
2. Do you care about me?
3. Are you committed to my satisfaction?

And you have a really simple and surefire way of knowing the truth of this claim: just ask yourself if these are the things you care about when you’re buying.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a growing practice with many new technologies that enable businesses to effectively implement strategic relationship development programs. What gets lost are basic underlying values that ensure substantive connections and successful relationship building. Below are some guidelines to successful customer relationship building:

1. You do not sell to consumers. You sell to people. Develop and maintain a view of your customers as individual people with individual needs and wants.
2. Setup your service interactions to ensure you treat every customer the way you would want to be treated.
3. Develop ways to identify and address the unique and specific wants of your customers.
4. Listen to your customers. Invite them to tell you what they think. Make it easy for them to do so. And pay attention to what they say.

Ultimately people do business with people they like. The quality of every personal interaction and the tone, character, and content of other non-human communications are all part of your customer service system. They should all work together to create an exceptional experience. Price is never a sole decision-making factor. When your customers feel respected, cared for, and have a favorable experience they will buy from you for qualitative rather than quantitative reasons.

Remember this about the importance of service to the success of a business – when a customer has a good experience they tell someone; when they have a bad experience they tell everyone they can.

Here are a few tips for delivering superior service:

• Before you sell or tell, ask.
• Listen carefully before talking.
• After listening, relate.
• Respond to what is said. Answer a question or offer a solution. Demonstrate you care.

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