10 Tips to Make ’Em Love You in the New Year

How can you make your customers love you? First you have to respect them. Jeanne Bliss, managing partner of Customer Bliss, offers up some tips to get started. They’re far from easy, she says, but they’re absolutely necessary. Be persistent to keep customers happily enamored ... er ... shopping with you.

1. Eliminate the customer obstacle course. If you asked customers, they’d say that the obstacle course for figuring out who to talk to and how and when to get service is over-complicated, conflicting and just plain out of whack. Simplify the roadmap for customers. Make it clear how they can do business with you — in a way that’s actually beneficial to them.­

2. Stop customer hot potato. He who speaks to the customer first should “own” the customer. There’s nothing that sends a signal of disrespect faster than an impatient person on the other end of the line trying to pass a customer off to “someone who can better help you with your problem.” Yeah, right.

3. Give customers a choice. Don’t bind customers into the fake choice of “opting out” of something. Let them know up front that they can decide to get e-mails, offers, etc. from you. Give them the choice.

4. De-silo your Web site. Web sites often are the cobbled together parts created separately by each company division. Collectively figure out what the message is, what the vitals are that you need from customers, and how you will serve them via your site. Then work to deliver an on-purpose brand experience.

5. Consolidate phone numbers. Even in this advanced age of telephony, companies still have a labyrinth of numbers customers need to navigate to talk to someone. All of these grew out of the separate operations deciding on their own that they needed a number to “serve” their customers. Get people together to skinny-down this list, then let customers know about it.