by Amanda Daniels-Allen | Oct 11, 2013 | Customer Journey, Experience and Service, Guest Blogs |
I was quite surprised when Amanda asked me to write an article about said Customer Service, surely she meant chocolate tempering or truffle rolling. But when I stopped and thought about it, this was a subject that I knew a lot about. Both Toby and I have worked in the Hospitality Industry from a young age and of course running your own business depends a lot on how you treat your customers.
In one of the companies we both worked for we were told to “choose your mood”.
This was already something I practiced but it soon became my mantra. I would shout it at all the glum faced staff that turned up to worked on my shifts. Why not come into work and have a great time, it made the time go quicker and really improved customer service. I soon had a following of regular customers who would come in just to be served by me and it was easy to up sell them extra goods and increase the average spend.
People will go where they feel valued and welcomed and will choose great service over great food.
A personal example of this is our recent trip to Las Vegas for our wedding anniversary. Now the Americans really know how to do customer service as that is how they make most of their wages. They have a basic wage and then they make up the extra with their tips.
Our big anniversary meal was booked in at the 3 Michelin Star Joel Robuchon Restaurant in the MGM Grand. We had booked it before we flew and were super excited about the 16 course tasting menu priced at $435 dollars (it was a special occasion).
Well the night before we stumbled across the Gordon Ramsey Steak Restaurant and went for dinner. Now let me just say we went with no expectations, we knew Ramsey could cook, but we thought that this was another one of these celebrity restaurants that just carries the chef’s name, with him only visiting twice a year. Well we couldn’t be more wrong we were blown away.
The food was fantastic and the service was some of the best I have ever experienced anywhere. The waiter who served made a real connection with us without being intrusive. He noticed that we were struggling to choose from the wine list that was given to us on an iPad and came to help us without any prompting. He brought out the raw cuts of meat on a trolley and talked us through each one. He then choose a bottle of wine to match the food we had ordered showing he had a great knowledge of the wine and the food. When I got up to use the ladies he scooped up my napkin that had fallen to floor and refolded it. He kept both our wine and water glasses topped up. Now this was not a stuffy restaurant it was packed in there and with the open kitchen and all the people it was a buzzing atmosphere. Our waiter made our evening and even though he had other tables he never looked rushed and took plenty of time to talk to us. Of course we left him a generous tip and spent the walk back to the hotel raving about it.
The following night we went to the Joel Robuchon Restaurant. We had booked this months earlier and were super excited. The restaurant was super formal and the food and service was impeccable, but there was no “chat”. The staff were almost scared to engage in conversation. Toby and I are both very chatty and will attempt to engage everyone we meet in conversation. These waiters were unbreakable, we asked questions and commented on things, but they were straight faced and sombre.
Surely to key to good service is to match the personality of the person you are serving.
I appreciate that some people wish to be left alone and that is fine but when customers are chatty, you need to chatty back.
The food was some of the best I have ever had. The trolley that was presented with coffee had 50 different chocolates and petit fours on it, and was amazing. But because of the service we received, the meal that will stick in my mind will be the one at the Gordon Ramsey restaurant and it will be there that I rush back to when I return.
If you deliver fantastic customer service then your customers will return to you. Many people buy my chocolate just because they have met me and we had a great conversation about something random.
The saying is very true, People buy People.
by Amanda Daniels-Allen | Oct 2, 2013 | Audience + Avatar, Customer Journey, Experience and Service, Social Media |
Engagement is the buzz word around Social Media and should in all honesty be around all of your marketing. You want to make people feel and think about you, your company, product or service and to do that you need to engage the audience. You have to start a conversation that relates to them that will also spur them into action!
What action do you say? Well it’s whatever action you would like them to take. For example; When someone arrives on your website and finds what they were looking for, what is the next action they should take? Or when you meet a new contact at a network meeting or in a conference, what do you say to them that makes them want to ask you the next question?
Meaning of engagement; involve somebody. Become involved.
So how do you engage your audience with your business giving them an authentic experience of your brand, company personality and product or service?
#1: The quickest and easiest way to do this is to get to know them better!
What do they like and what don’t they like.
How do they see your product/ service?
Have you asked them if you can improve what you do in some way?
Engagement is about becoming involved with the people you want to buy your product or service. So how can you involve yourself or your brand with them. I’d like to hear about how you have engaged your audience.
#2: When you understand more about your target audience you then need to create the product or service that they want.
Now I can appreciate not everyone wants the same thing and at this point you can tailor the end result to their requirements, but before you do that you need to give them what they want.
#3: Develop a feedback and follow up strategy where you can get comments on how you are doing as a business.
How is the product/ service performing?
Without feedback you could keep doing things that they don’t want which in turn could lead them to someone or something that can.
#4: Act upon the feedback and show them that you are listening and taking note of what they are saying.
For example; Kodak made one change to a product by adding a mic jack to one of their HD Pocket Video Cameras (zi6) after they received feedback from Twitter. Kodak worked out the cost and how quickly they could do it, then did it! That product out-sold their competition by 10-1 from one tweet!
Take a look at these 4 suggestions and have a go. Let me know how you get on with them to see how much more engagement you get.
Number 3 can be done in many ways, get creative with it!
Remember; it’s not what you know, or who you know, it’s how well you know them.
by Amanda Daniels-Allen | Apr 26, 2013 | Customer Journey, Experience and Service, Guest Blogs, Marketing Strategy |
Marketing is about keeping ourselves in the customer’s mind’s eye, making sure that they know we are the people to come to when they have a problem that we can potentially fix.
Digital marketing as a whole has helped move the small businesses to the same level as large organisations by allowing us to target more people on a smaller budget. Social media isn’t the key to marketing, it is just one aspect. You need a good mix of different marketing components that will help trigger responses. The result is getting people to take action.
I’d like to give you 4 elements to think about when creating, designing or implementing online and offline marketing. Here is the third element:
#3: Treat them like they are VIPs (Alfie – everyone who gets in his car is treated like royalty)
Visit BizMums to read the rest of this article
by Amanda Daniels-Allen | Dec 16, 2009 | Customer Journey, Experience and Service, Integrated Marketing |
Do you understand your client?
Had a fantastic 1-2-1 with a new member of BNI and also had a great conversation it was about knowing your clients and making sure you cater for all of them as they are all different.
Karen from Adaptive Comms split clients up into 4 categories:
- Peacocks
- Bulls
- Sheep
- Owls
Which one do you think you are? and before we carry on yea all of us have some amount of sheep within us! Its true!
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