Don’t be stupid!

A recent report by the National Consumer Council (NCC) makes interesting reading. Entitled ‘The stupid company: how British businesses throw money away by alienating customers’, the report mainly focuses on larger businesses and how they all too often offer poor customer service. Something, according to the report, that results in ‘damaged profits’ and which can in some cases lead to their demise.

The good news is that as well as highlighting how businesses all too often get it wrong, the report also includes a consumer checklist for business success. The checklist includes some straightforward advice to help ensure you keep your customers happy.

A checklist for success!

• Provide continuity and ownership
  Have good systems in place so that the same member of staff deals with an individual customer from start to finish and a culture in which people take pride in sorting things out for customers.
• Show respect and honesty
  Be straight about costs, times and targets and explain complex things simply.
• Give the personal touch
  Encourage staff to treat customers like individuals and to show initiative.
• Reward existing customers
  Acknowledge repeat business and provide incentives for loyal customers.
• Provide aftercare
  Do not forget your customers after they’ve bought something; instead check that they are still happy.

Five ways businesses get it wrong

• Incompetent and ineffectual
  A ‘stupid business’ is slow moving, patronising and apparently incapable of getting the easy things right.
• Inflated expectations and broken promises
  A ‘stupid business’ over-promises and under-delivers.
• Sell, sell, sell
  A ‘stupid business’ is obsessive about making a sale.
• Impersonal and robotic
  A ‘stupid business’ appears distant from consumers and deals with them in a clinical and sometimes uncaring manner.
• Sneaky and dishonest
  A ‘stupid business’ believes it can succeed by misleading customers and then being underhand and evasive.

The full report is available from the National Consumer Council, www.ncc.org.uk/publications/stupid_company.pdf