Capital Remodeling, Inc.

To whom it may concern:

            Per my agreement with Capital Remodeling, Inc. to provide a letter of satisfaction after installation of windows in my home, I send the following comments.

            I received two reminders of the scheduled work from Capital Remodeling, Inc. employees via voice mail far enough in advance for any needed adjustments of the appointment (there were non).  During my initial phone contact with Capital Remodeling Inc., the staff member who spoke with me did a through job of responding to my concerns and questions.  The Capital Remodeling Inc. sales representative was very thorough in his presentation, was very patient with my myriad questions and comments, and was quite knowledgeable of the company’s products.

            The work crew that Capital Remodeling, Inc. sent out on January 29, 2004, arrived within the confirmed time slot of 8:00 – 10:00 a.m…  The Capital Remodeling Inc. workers were very polite: took the time to spread drop cloths on all the areas of carpeting on which they walked and worked; focused on the work project that they were hired to do, and completed the job within 45 minutes to an hour.  The Capital Remodeling Inc. crew chief made sure that I received the warranty and documentation for the windows, provided and a reminder that the caulking would not be dry for at least 24 hours.

            I am quite satisfied with the quality of the work and the windows themselves that we received from Capital Remodeling, Inc.  After, as far as I can tell, the quality of construction of Capital Remodeling, Inc. products exceeds that of several other companies that I contacted who offered similar windows.

            I will be keeping your company in mind if I ever had a need for additional windows.

Sincerely,

Karen

Berwyn Heights, MD

Better Customer Service

Author: GregRoworth

Better Customer Serviceis Not Optional

Providing better customer service is an obvious competitive strategy that creates the platform to achieve success in your market. For that reason, is is almost unbelievable that customer service is so poor from so many businesses. Most business owners I talk to want to provide better customer service. However, their attempts to develop customer service policies and behaviours throughout their business are often frustrated. In this article, we highlight why providing better customer service is not optional if you want to achieve business success and some ways to achieve better customer service, by approaching the topic somewhat differently than you might anticipate.

Provide Better Customer Service by Identifying Unmet Needs

One reason many businesses fail at providing better customer service is that they try to compete head-to-head with their competitors. They take them on at their own game. This strategy is difficult to make work, because of competitor reactions. Both you and your competitor either get stronger at customer service, or someone tries to take a shortcut and ends up undermining the reputation of everyone in the industry. A better approach is to try to identify unmet needs within your market that no competitor is paying attention to. This is a strategy that can propel your success to market domination like no other.

One company that used this strategy and grew from a neighborhood outlet to a world-wide phenomenon was Domino’s Pizza. In a commodity market such as pizza restaurants, where they were getting killed, Tom Monaghan identified a need that no one was paying much attention to - home delivery. At the time, home deliveries were seen as a way to top up the down times when the eat-in restaurant was a bit quiet. As a result, home deliveries were given low priority and often the customer received their pizza order after a long wait, by which time it arrived cold and unappetising.

Guarantee Better Customer Service to Achieve Market Domination

Monaghan saw a way he could provide better customer service by targeting this unmet need. He came up with a strategy to deliver to this market “fresh, hot pizza in 30 minutes, or it was free.” He saw a need and used a powerful guarantee of better customer service to gain a foothold in this market. His strategy was so successful, that the market for pizza grew phenomenally, as he created a whole new market of pizza lovers who preferred home delivery who would not eat at a pizza restaurant. He not only changed his business’s fate from a struggling also ran to a hugely successful multi-national operation, all on the strength of a uniquely audacious guarantee that no one else had the courage to copy.

Achieve Better Customer Service by Selling Them More

One of the disappointing aspects of customer service in many businesses, particularly obvious in retail stores, emanates from the lack of sales skill of most retail sales people. Many business owners and sales people seem to think that selling is the antipathy of providing service. People don’t want high pressure, you say. Absolutely correct. But neither do they want insipid sales people who cannot offer quality service because they can’t think proactively about what customers may need and are too weak to offer additional opportunities to buy when they have a willing customer giving them their attention. This poor service comes at a high cost to both the customer and the business owner, as well as the salesperson if they earn any type of remuneration based on performance.

Better customer service can be achieved by being aware of what else your customer might need if they buy a particular item, and ensuring that your sales people ask if they would like it. McDonald’s made this an art form with the question, “Would you like fries with that?” You need to think about what products or services, or combinations of products and services, go naturally together. Offering these extra items is not high pressure sales tactics. It is better customer service to help someone who needs your product to identify what they want and how they can get them. If you don’t offer these things to your customer you are negligent and uncaring. As long as you offer them without pressure and allow your customer to decide, you are providing better customer service.

Provide Better Customer Service by Building Intimate Relationships

Intimacy is about knowing more about another person than the norm. When you build intimate relationships with your customers, you are get to know them in a way that you can anticipate their needs and provide better customer service. When you are aware of what your customers want and find a way for them to get it, you are not being pushy, as long as you relate to your customer in a way that honors and respects them. These days there are many tools you can use to increase your ability to communicate with customers and get to know their needs and wants. You don’t enhance your ability to provide better customer service by being back-footed and waiting for customers to ask first. Your service levels increase greatly when you let your valued customers know how they can get their special favorites first, or how they can jump the queue to get the newest item that may take their fancy, before it is made known widely to the general public.

Be creative and find ways to develop intimacy with your customers.

Providing better customer service is not difficult if you use your imagination and creativity. Don’t go head-to-head with your competitors and try to out do them where can compete directly against you. Come up with innovative ways to provide better customer service by looking for unmet needs, or selling your customers more, or by getting to know them better. It’s not that hard and the results can be phenomenal.

Create Culture For Customer’s Special Needs by Capital Remodeling, Inc.

By Larry Galler

Some businesses have created a customer service culture; it seems that others really don’t care. Those who work at creating a customer service culture have less difficulty attracting and retaining their customers. It seems obvious that those who design products and services should keep the needs of their prospects at the forefront.

Some go to great lengths to make their products more customer-friendly. As an example auto makers Nissan and Ford have their designers mimic physically challenged drivers by having them wear “weight belts” that add inches to waistlines so they can incorporate the needs of heavy people in their cars. Designers also wear “aging suits” that inhibit physical mobility to make those designers more sensitive to the difficulties older people have when entering and exiting cars. They use that experience when designing doors, seats, and controls. They even wear “foggy” eyeglasses to better enable people with sight problems to drive with a greater degree of safety.

Has your business created a customer service culture? Does it design products and services to meet the needs of people who, for one reason or another, find it difficult to go into the marketplace? It would be worth the time to audit all aspects of your business to insure it is meeting the needs of all your customers and prospects.

A customer service culture means that you inspect your public areas to see if they can be negotiated by a mom pushing a stroller or a person in a wheelchair. Read your forms and signage to see whether the “fine print” is too fine for someone with poor eyesight. If your advertising is aimed to special groups (teens, seniors, ethnic populations, people whose native language isn’t English) make sure word usage, syntax, and abbreviations are relevant and appropriate. My mother is 94 years old and under five feet tall. She has difficulty reaching products in stores and shops at a grocery store where the staff is on the alert to be sensitive to their customers and can help them make purchases easily.

Emphasize the design aspects of customer service and you will really serve your customers.

Posted by Capital Remodeling, Inc.

How to Prevent a Style Conflict Between Customer Service and Sales

By Hans Bool

A (sales) manager once told me that every complaint should be treated as an opportunity. Treat the complaint with care and you will win a loyal customer.

The difference between sales and customer service is that for the first client contact dominates and administrative tasks occupy only a second priority.

Style in this sense, is the way your company addresses clients. Let’s take two main approaches: the formal way and the more personal approach.

I have seen websites that have a virtual receptionist with the image of a real person. “Rose,” I found on one of those sites and they have selected this name and her look to represent a real person. Other sites with a virtual receptionist often choose to a cartoon or digital character. Less personal.

To prevent a style mismatch you have to treat your clients in the same way whether they are being serviced by salesmen or by the customer service department.

If the approach is like the above, with the personal touch — this site in question shows even real employees with their face and real name on the home page with an invitation to discuss a idea, product, service, etc — than make sure you offer this approach during the whole contact-cycle.

If you use the personal touch in sales, and all of a sudden a customer issues a complaint and you send a letter in response without any name, nor function of the one who has written it, but only the name of the company, you are breaking the style of the approach; Personal in sales, impersonal at customer services.

Clients do not only understand this, they also assume that the impersonal approach is the real one, thinking - “so this is your real face.” It shows that the organization is not responsible; when there is a problem they hide behind the brand of the company. This damages the image of the organization as well as the brand, because it sends a marketing message to clients who may chain it to others.

The best thing to do is to consequently choose one style and use it all the way.

To prevent such a mismatch, first look at the business. A complaint may turn out to be a claim but it can also turn into a loyal customer. When designing the organization you have to choose what business process you want to stress most; claims you will always have, but if you are preparing for them in a defensive way you will increase their number too. So design the personal approach with a focus on loyal customers and not on preventing claims.

This requires education and training. sales is much more pro-active, customer service is used to a more reactive approach and that invites a defensive attitude; “there is another customer, what will it be this time.” Changing that into: “I bet five dollar if I can change his mood.” is not an easy task.

Both departments also differ in focus in the way that sales is return-driven, customers service is more often cost (saving) driven.

Alignment of the approach throughout the organization however (both in sales and customer service) is the (only) option: in either department you propose a friendly and personal approach. That includes accepting mistakes… if you have to … with a smile. When sending an apology do it in a responsible way, signed with the name of the executive.

Approachable Service - 18 Ways to Skyrocket Customer Loyalty

By Scott Ginsberg

1. Answer in advance. Make a list of the 101 most frequently asked questions your customers. Write a short answer for each one (no more than one paragraph). Then give away that book FOR FREE to every single person who walks in your door. (You could also make this into a CD, audiocassette or podcast.)

2. Use magic. Write letters, thank you notes and proposals to your clients on paper that changes color when you touch it. Everyone in the entire office will see it and talk about it.

3. Send it back. Take a prospect’s business card, scan it, blow it up, make it into a small pack of postcards, luggage tags or notepads, and then send it to him. This appeals to someone’s ego AND helps him build HIS business as well.

4. Gift Certificates. Mock up gift cards, gift certificates or “Dave Dollars,” for example, that you could us as giveaways to get new customers into your funnel. Offer 15-minute consultations, a free oil change, a free appetizer, etc. Then, when they come in once, WOW them. They’ll come back forever.

5. Added value. What if you included a little 10 tips laminated card with every purchase? For example, dry cleaners could include ideas for fall fashion and emergency stain removal. Just staple it to the receipt. Or better yet, MAKE IT the receipt!

6. Encourage repeat business. What other days of the year will customers probably need your product or service? What if, every time someone bought something from you, you included a calendar with your logo on all of the potential dates on which they would need you? Father’s Day? Valentines Day? Secretary’s Day?

7. “Celebritize” your customers. Have a featured “customer of the week” on your website. Interview him, plug HIS business and show a picture of him USING your product or service. He’ll take ownership and tell everybody he knows.

8. Banners. If you only see a few clients a day, what if you hung up a new banner, welcome sign or dry erase board for each person? Talk about a first impression! Or, what if all your employees wore nametags reading, “Welcome, Dave!”

9. Customer Advisory Board. What if, once a quarter, you invited an elite group of your biggest customers out to lunch? Form an official Customer Advisory Board. Get feedback on trends in their industries, along with tips on how to serve them better.

10. Tours. Airplane pilots often invite children into the cockpit for a tour. Then they give them official wings to pin onto their shirt. What if you held a tour of your warehouse or control room? And what if, after each tour, you had a little pin or sticker to give to each customer? Crown Candy, the greatest restaurant in St. Louis, has been doing this for decades. Except instead of plastic wings, you get licorice. Sweet.

11. As long as I’m here. What else could you do as a free add-on to your service? For example, if you provided on-site tech support, maybe you could also clean people’s computer screens or towers! No extra charge = mo’ extra value.

12. Now that you’re here. When your customers walk IN the door, what welcome gift could you offer that’s consistent with your brand? I once stayed at a hotel in Hawaii. When I approached the desk, a stunning woman wearing a native Hawaiian dress and a flower in her hair offered me free glass of freshly squeezed pineapple juice. Aloha, indeed!

13. Wait, before you go! When your customers walk OUT the door, what “until next time” gift could you offer that’s consistent with your brand? A few years ago I ate lunch at a grill in Chicago. By the door they had a tub of cold bottles of ice water (with their logo on the labels) along with a homemade oatmeal cookie for my walk back across town. Unbelievable!

14. Signing bonuses. Once the contract is signed, what congratulatory gift could you offer that compliments your service? My realtor gave me a $100 gift certificate to Pottery Barn after I closed on my condo. I told EVERYBODY about it! OTHER EXAMPLES: car salesmen could offer car wash coupons, clothing stores could offer free lint brushes, kennels could offer free milk bones or shoe salesmen could offer free lotion. The possibilities are endless!

15. Solve problems you didn’t create. What problems do your customers have (before they see you) that you didn’t cause? For example, if you work at a hotel, you probably encounter many guests who lose their luggage. What if the front desk had a book of gift certificates to a nearby clothing store that they could give to desperate guests? You could say, “Just tell the guys at Men’s Warehouse that Gary from the Fairmount sent ya. They’ll fix you right up!” Imagine the impression! Imagine the loyalty! And the increase in return visits will massively outweigh the cost of the gift certificates. Not to mention, it builds a mutually valuable relationship between you and the other company.

16. Make personalization easy. What can you include in your service to make the customer feel more at home? A hotel I once stayed at had iPod alarm clocks in every room so guests could wake up to their favorite songs. Rock on!

17. Donate en masse. At what gathering, event or conference could you donate your services to get in front of hundreds of buyers at once? At a recent book expo, I noticed three massage chairs positioned by the escalators for attendees with aching feet and backs. Think they “booked” any future business?

18. Remember your non-customers. What types of people do your customers drag around that don’t want to be there? Kids? Men? Women? What could you make available to keep them busy while the other person shops? Once while my girlfriend was shopping at EXPRESS, I noticed a stack of MAXIM magazines by the dressing room next The Boyfriend Chair. Reading them sure made the time go by between the 15 times I had to say, “No, sweetie. That dress doesn’t make you look fat.”

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