Small Business Owners – How to Go Above and Beyond in Customer Service

As small business owners we all know that customer satisfaction is the goldmine of repeat business that will all need to strive for.  If you are in business to sell one widget to one person at a time, and then go out and look for another new customer, you are in for the long hard road to slow growth.  When you gain a customer, you want to look at that customer as a lifetime value number, not just a single sale.  Think of how much a customer is worth over the typical lifetime of a relationship.  Say that you are cleaning carpet and that each of your customers stays with you for an average of 4 years, getting their carpets cleaned on average of 4 times per year for $ 200 each.  That customer is not worth $ 200 to you.  They are worth $ 3200.  In this situation would it be worth it to clean their house for free once per year for every qualified person they refer to you?  You bet it is!

The whole idea here is that you must “over-promise and over-deliver.”  You will create a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for your business that offers the best promise that you can make to your customers, a promise that is unlike any promise that your competition can make.  Make sure that you can go a little bit beyond that promise so that you can really wow your customer.  You will always have customers that you will never be able to please.  Dump them quickly and keep nurturing your good customers.

Create an A-list of customers that are amazing.  Offer that list the best deals, where you may lose a little money, because you know that this certain group of people will bring you hoards of new customers, many times worth the small amount of money that it cost you to thank the customers that mean the most.

Again, to reiterate, you do not have to treat every customer equally.  This is capitalism, not a charity.  You are in business to make money, right? Obviously do not break any laws, but there is no law that says everyone has to get the same coupons in the mail, or the same marketing piece.  You know who your best customers are.  Treat them like your left arm, treat them better than anyone that walks through your door, and they will reward you in spades.  If you had a customer that needed you to open you store after-hours for an emergency, do you think that person would ever forget that act of kindness?  Maybe it interrupted your dinner, so what?  If you own a hardware store, you may have just gained a customer for the next 20 years, maybe even multiple generations of customers.

The last quick thing I want to mention is loyalty.  Loyalty is very rare any more.  You have to constantly remind your customers that you are there, with your marketing material.  Even your best customers will forget about you if your marketing does not jump up and down and say “look at me, don’t forget about me!”  Never slow down on your marketing, especially to your good customers.

How do you as a small business survive in a world of giant competitors?  We know that the number of small businesses is increasing almost daily, but we also hear that the giants in every industry do all that they can to squeeze the small guy out of existence. The large corporations are able to get better pricing from their suppliers through huge bulk orders. They are then able to pass on these discounts onto their customers and thereby undercut any of their competition. The large corporations are also able to get really good terms from their suppliers because of the size of their orders. So how can a small business thrive in the face of such seemingly powerful competition?
 
The answer is really not that difficult. Find or create a niche. A niche is defined as a distinct segment of the market. A niche is filled with customers already ready and willing to buy. The big advantage that a small business has over a lumbering giant of a corporation is speed, flexibility and being that much more nimble and adaptable.
 
The niche that you may be looking for may be an existing one, but one that is not serviced very well by the big guys. Perhaps it is too much trouble for the giants to spend that much effort in chasing that niche. Here is an opportunity to get into a niche that the bigger corporations do not want to enter. Perhaps they are not geared up to service such a niche. For example – Home Depot, the large DIY and hardware store chain sells lawn mowers and spares for lawn mowers, but does not repair and service lawn mowers. Lawn Mower servicing is not their primary business. Making the initial sale is their business, but repair work on mowers may be too small a niche for them to tackle. So this is a niche that is known, but not serviced by them.
 
Another opportunity is where the niche exists but is serviced really badly by the large corporations. Their focus is too broad to do a great job and so the door is open to someone who can become known as an expert and specialist in that area. The larger corporations who serve so many niches at the same time cannot afford to be anything but generalists. The specialist can easily compete on delivering better service even if the price is slightly higher. Also larger corporations are perceived as being very impersonal and unfriendly. This also plays into the hands of the specialist who the customer can interact with face to face. Computer services and consulting is a good example of this.
 
The third type of niche is one that does not exist at all, one that the large corporations have no knowledge of and one that you create yourself. Naturally the competition in this niche does not exist, so you have nothing to fear from the giants there. You may have to be concerned if the large corporations see your small business start to really take off when they realize that they had overlooked that niche and decide to get into it. However the chances are that they would not be very good at it once they get into this new niche!
 
The small business owner already spends time always on the lookout for new business opportunities. Locating or creating niches is a great way of finding new opportunities.