How To Turn Clients Into Raving Fans
Hey, how's it going?
Oh, is this going to be the low light level version. I was debating on whether or not to use one of my themes and I thought, “You know what? I'm just going to go ahead with this. It's late at night, and I’m shooting this video after I just got home, and I got 30 minutes to get it done before midnight. So I get my daily video done. I'm glad I remembered.
So what I'm thinking about now is customer service, because in my other thing that I do (when I'm driving), I interact with shippers and receivers all the time, and there are a bunch of people involved.
There's the brokers, and for one particular load there was another company, and then there's our company, and the shippers, and the receivers.
They only see me a lot of times. They'll talk to people on the phone and everything, but I'm the guy that goes there. And on my last load, every time I went somewhere something happened.
I went to go pick it up and I didn't have the correct number. And I had to get that. And once we got that figured out, I was on my way.
And then I had to call the broker because the broker wanted to dispatch me in their system for the load. So I did that.
When I got back here I was delivering to this huge Walmart distribution center. And when I get there, they're telling me when I drop the trailer to pick up an empty over here.
And I'm thinking, “Well, am I supposed to pick up an empty?”
I thought I was done, and they said I probably wouldn't have to.
Well, I went to the receiving department and they said, “Yeah, you bring one in, you got to take one out.”
That's the agreement that they have, and here's where I have to just do what I got to do. What I think is nothing.
And I just told her, “That's fine. Just tell me whatever trailer you've got you want me to take." And she did the paperwork on it and gave me the number, and I picked it up.
And then instead of going back to my yard, I went to the other company's yard.
I took their trailer back and then I dropped it, and headed back to the shop.
So in this instance, it's so common for drivers to get upset and say, "It's not my trailer," and this and that, and in the end it doesn't really matter.
What matters is, here's the agreement that they have, and this is what normally happens. And you're the only one there, and you've got to handle it because there's no one else. You could ask someone, but it's late at night and getting in touch with someone might be hard.
And in this case, I know what to do. I care, first of all, about the Walmart Distribution Center. They've got this policy with this other company. I can't go and say, "I'm not going to do this”, or raise a bunch of problems because if I do, it can get that company in trouble with Walmart.
Which is really no good for us because we're not going to have a very good relationship with them if that happened.
And you know, my name's on the truck so it could cause problems for our company too.
So there's no problem and no hard feelings. No sense in getting into it with the people there that are just doing their job.
So when you're in business, it's very simple. They used to just say, “Oh, it's easy to beat other companies with customer service. All you have to do is go above and beyond."
No, you really don't.
In Your Business, if you want to be a star of customer service for your customers and clients (you know, the people that pay your bills), that give you money. All you gotta do is be civil and treat people as if as you would like to be treated.
When you have a challenge with somebody or a company... and it's not hard to do… it's so easy to make huge points with your people that they love your stuff and they want to buy from you.
All you have to do is treat them well.
If something goes wrong, bite the bullet, take it.
Who cares? So you lose a few bucks. It's much better to give up a few dollars than to lose a client.
And not only that, in the long run, you'll find that most of the time, even if it cost you a couple of dollars on a given situation, that same person will be much more likely to do business with you and tell other people how great you are.
Which is the best kind of advertising you can get.
So that's what I got for today. Go above and beyond.
Treat your clients the way you would like to be treated and you will make much more money, and you'll go very far.
That's all I got for now, and I'll see you tomorrow. Which actually happens in about 20 minutes.
All right, that's it. I'm out.
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