by Joel LaRusic - Author ‘Start & Run a Landscape Business’

Making your customers feel important is the single most important thing you can do to keep them as your customers for the long term. On the flip-side, reportedly 7 out of 10 customers will site indifference as the reason they switched to your competitor. They simply didn’t feel important.

The worst part of this statistic is that customers will rarely tell you verbally that they don’t think you care about them. You won’t know until the day your monthly cheque comes in the mail with a polite but explicit letter saying “so long”. Yes, indifference is the silent killer of customers.

Never let your customers come to that dreadful conclusion – that you don’t care. Of course you care! I know that. You know that. However, it’s not enough just to care, you have to tell your customers you care.

Every decision you make – really every single thing you do in your business – should be with the customer in mind. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day running of the company, especially as we are always looking for new ways to streamline our operations, and we completely forget about how our actions will impact the customer. It is equally easy for your customers to defect, realizing that they can find the same value service but with a little bit extra to make them feel good – to make them feel important. Don’t let that happen to you. Think ‘customer’ every minute of every working day.

The following list of 20 questions will help you to think about how you treat your customers. Think of it as a Customer Service Check-up to see if you have fallen victim to – indifference, the silent killer. If you answer no to any of these questions, this is something you could perhaps think about in the future to improve you customer service and make sure your customers know you really do care.

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