Customer Service or not?

One of my pet hates has always been the lack of Customer Service in the independent sector as well as the Nationals.
Poor customer service can break your business and in the current economic climate we don't need something as basic as good customer service to slip.
I believe customer service if demonstrated and trained from the top should come as automatically as opening up in a morning.
Politeness costs nothing and serving in the service/hospitality industry is part of the job role.
My mantra has always been 'Treat others as you wish to be treated yourself' so it justs makes me wonder how complacent we are becoming.
Customer feedback is not something to be feared but something to work with. It defines the areas of your business that need looking at to improve the experience of your clientele.
Perhaps you just need to stress the importance of customer service when you induct new staff, perhaps existing staff need a refresher on dealing with the customer.
Rewarding staff is a good way to generate excellence; its amazing the difference it can make by just presenting a Certificate to the Employee of the Month can make. Other staff members are automatically going to step up to the mark. Maybe the Employee of the Month could provide hints and tips for the Company Newsletter?
Your staff members are your reputation, their level of service can affect the balance in your till in the future, perhaps this could be the difference between staying in business or not.
What do you think?

Why do you Network?

The dynamics of Networking is changing. The businesses that used to Nework to find new business are looking for more than this.
Nowadays, I am finding that they want to learn something specific to help their business grow. It might be tax related, or advice on marketing or a plethora of other things that as a group leader we have to source the information and pre-empt the thought process, continually striving to keep ahead.
For me this is where providing added value to the Membership comes in and is something that is continually worked on.

As a networker, what do you want to get out of a meeting for your money? What drives you to attend meetings? What makes a meeting complete for you?

Customer Service

Yesterday I was pleased and surprised that a local chain of grocery stores contacted me and told me that one of their staff had been disciplined after I had complained on Twitter about her rudeness.
I had passed a comment; they got in touch, took details of my complaint and promised to get back to me. When they did it was telling me they had dealt with it and also will be looking at their staff training in that particular branch.
The most pleasing part of this being that they are on the look out for mentions of their business and are not frightened of making contact and addressing issues.

Are you as open to this form of customer service? Do you need to be more alert as to what your customers are saying about you? Are their steps you can take quickly and easily to be as on the ball as they are?

If it helps to keep customers happy and talking about you in a positive light perhaps its worth taking a couple of minutes to review your systems?