MARKETING MATTERS: TIPS AND TRICKS FOR BUSINESS SUCCESS AND GROWTH

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Internal Customers’ Interaction with External Customers: The Ultimate Marketing Tool By Rama Beerfas June 1, 2009 (San Diego’s East County) --In our previous installment, we looked at how important your internal customers (employees) are to the success of your business. (If you missed it, check it out at http://eastcountymagazine.org/?q=node/986). Of course, no matter how good your relationship is with your internal customers, if they cannot translate your message and ideology into similarly good relationships with your external customers (the people paying for your goods and/or services), then every penny, effort and minute you spend on any other marketing efforts is wasted.

Consider your favorite place to dine out. If you go there often enough, at least some of the staff recognizes you. Maybe they know your “usual” meal or drink. Perhaps someone there even greets you by name! Do you choose to go to this particular restaurant because of its marketing? (If it is a privately owned restaurant, they may not even have any external marketing, other than the sign on their building.) Is the type of food there not available anywhere else in town? Is the quality of the food so far above anyone else’s that you couldn’t trust your palate to any other establishment? Probably not. What keeps you coming back is customer service – the feeling that you are a valued guest. The quality and quantity of customer service we expect to receive are dictated to a great extent by several factors: reputation, price, location, marketing promises, and more. For example, we certainly don’t expect the same level of service at Wal*Mart as we do from Nordstrom, even though they are both department stores. If an employee at Wal*Mart were to go the extra distance and walk you to the correct aisle for the product you are looking for, rather than just give you the aisle number and point, wouldn’t that make you think you’d just received great customer service? If the same thing happened at Nordstrom, would you be more likely to believe that you had just received average customer service? Would you feel disappointed, or even disgruntled if that Nordstrom employee had simply told you which department to go to with a wave of the hand in the general direction? The corporate message at Wal*Mart is all about price; at Nordstrom it’s all about customer service. To give you the same “wow” factor that a Wal*Mart gave you in the example above, the Nordstrom employee would probably have to walk you to the correct department, then introduce you by name to the salesperson in that department with a mention of what you are looking to find. Anyone who knows me personally knows that I am a huge Disney fan. When we celebrate a birthday at the Disneyland Resort, I know that a birthday button, obtained at Guest Services and affixed to the celebrant’s shirt, will elicit a personalized “Happy Birthday” greeting from cast members (from ride operators to characters to janitorial staff) who see that button; and they are trained to look for it! One year, our six-year old wanted to celebrate her birthday at a San Diego amusement park instead of Disneyland. I found out that they also have birthday buttons, so I promptly got her one to wear. We spent the entire day at the park, where exactly one employee wished her a “Happy Birthday.” She had a great time, but we all felt let down that she wasn’t made to feel as special as her sister was on her birthday nine months before at Disneyland. As a family, we decided that this park was fun, but birthdays are better at Disney! The customer service your employees deliver can make or break any perception that your marketing department puts out. Ultimately, it is the client that determines what an acceptable level of customer service is for your particular business. If you cannot maintain even a semblance of the customer service levels that your customers expect, then spend your money on training, not marketing, because you will spend your money replacing customers rather than growing your customer base. If your customer service delivery can go just one step above what is expected, and maintain that level, you will be rewarded with referrals, good reviews, repeat business and a growing bottom line! Good, or great, customer service is the cornerstone of your marketing efforts . In the following months, we’ll be looking at other marketing concepts and strategies to grow your business. Rama Beerfas is the Chief Solutions Specialist of San Diego-based Lev Promotions, offering marketing consulting and promotional product programs. Rama also offers seminars and training in topics related to marketing and customer service. She can be reached at (619) 697-2045 or at rama@levpromotions.com. Please submit requests for column topics to the above e-mail address


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