The Service Effect

Practical Sales Training™  > How To Keep Your Clients Happy > The Service Effect

 

 

What is it?

Most businesses fail to understand the importance of customer service and looking after people – but it can be crucial to obtaining and keeping clients.

 

Why does it work?

Let’s face it, most customer service isn’t great. If we get a response at all it’s nice, if it’s quick even better and if it’s an actual named contact who then follows up to ensure all is OK then it’s mind-blowing. When a business takes the time to ensure their customers are cared for, it can make a huge difference and spark great things like customer feedback and referrals.

 

How can you use it?

To utilise customer service in your own business, there are three simple things you need to do:

Step 1 – Focus on customer experience. How could you eliminate issues, speed up resolution and provide your clients with every resource they need to find  answers to their problems as quickly as possible. You could even have an agreed SLA for how long it takes to respond to queries. Make yourself as easy to deal with as possible and standardise answers to as many questions as possible for your buyers both before and after purchase.

Step 2 –  Ask clients for feedback, testimonials, case studies – anything that provides and independent perspective on how great your service is in a real world application.

Step 3 – Collate the feedback and communicate it. Visualise the results in the most meaningful and boldest way possible.

 

Example: 

A boutique financial planning firm noticed that many clients hesitated to commit after the first consultation. Rather than pushing harder in the sales call, they focused on exceptional follow-up service.

Here’s what they did:

  1. Immediate Acknowledgement
    After every consultation, clients received a personalised email from a named advisor within 30 minutes, summarising the conversation and thanking them for their time.

  2. Proactive Follow-Up
    Three days later, the same advisor called each client (no automated emails) just to ask:

    “Was there anything you’ve thought of since we last spoke that I can help clarify?”

  3. No-Sell Check-In
    One week later, they sent a short video update with answers to the 3 most common questions they’d received from other clients at the same stage – offering value with zero sales pressure.

 

See also