Harvey Goldglantz
Industry consultant Harvey Goldglantz, president of Pest Control Marketing Co. and a PMP Hall of Famer (Class of 2018), shares some pointers for retaining customers:
⦁ Do the math. Making loyalists out of just 5 percent more customers leads to an increase in profit per customer of between 25 percent and 100 percent. Meanwhile, the cost of acquiring new customers is five times the cost of servicing established ones.
⦁ Educate employees on how to interact and communicate with customers. Experts agree that about two-thirds of all service cancellations occur due to indifference. Don’t overpromise, do overdeliver, and you’ll be better positioned to make your customers care about their relationships with your company.
⦁ Create — or if you have one in place, revisit — a formal cancellation control strategy. When a customer calls to cancel, immediately direct the call to a designated person who has the authority to either resolve the issue or forward it to someone who can. Include in your cancellation control strategy parameters of what worked well in the past, so your team member knows what should and should not be promised.
⦁ Increase staff training, both technical and communication, to ensure fewer mistakes are made.
⦁ Increase your quality assurance efforts by insisting on supervisory ridealongs, listening in on or reviewing previously recorded calls, and regularly conducting quality assurance surveys.
⦁ When looking for new employees who will have customer contact, focus on their communication skills. Consider administering a personality survey before hiring employees whose job it is to work with customers.
⦁ View each cancellation as a chance to right a perceived wrong. As demonstrated with the math above, it literally pays to resolve a customer complaint as soon as possible, even if it costs your company in the short term. And if the cancellation occurs despite your best efforts, look for the lesson so you can keep it from happening again.
Make the most out of that extra mile
(Editor’s Note: The following is based on an excerpt from Harvey Goldglantz’s book, Marketing Matters: The Ultimate Reference Guide to Making the Most of Your Marketing Money. It is available for purchase at MyPMP.net/shop.)
Bringing trash and recycle cans from the curb to the house after a service call is an easy way to exceed a customer’s expectations. But what if the customer is not home when you visit? Have you exceeded his or her expectations then? Actually, no. Unless your customer is aware that you have done the good deed, your efforts will go unrecognized. And delivering an unrecognized desired service does nothing to engender customer loyalty, because the customer never knew what you did.
In that case, it is acceptable to inform the customer of the complimentary task you performed by leaving a note (preferably on company-branded stationery): “I’m sorry you were not home today when I performed your exterior service. I took the liberty of bringing your trash cans from the curb and placed them next to your house.”
To encourage consistency in this extraordinary service delivery program, document these acts of kindness by your employees — and put a reward system in place that recognizes outstanding service.
For example, run a monthly contest that recognizes the employee with the greatest number of documented desired services with a gift card or cash bonus.
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