Retaining your existing employees while attracting new employees continues to challenge companies.

Leaders are especially concerned about how changes in personnel can affect customer relationships.

Solid relationships with your customers can turn fragile when any of these occurs:

• You hire the wrong type of person to serve your customers.
• Your sales or support team size is too small to be effective.
• Your sales or support team provides wrong answers to questions.
• Your sales or support team is not engaged in the customer experience.
• You don’t effectively train your sales or support team on the importance of the customer experience.

Leadership Tip
Take a detailed measure of how well your organization is performing in the support of your customers.

What other areas might negatively affect your company’s long-term relationships with customers? Consider these:

• A poorly designed product or service – It may seem nice, but it has to solve a problem.
• Product availability – Customers want your product within a reasonable timeframe.
• Sloppy service – Long waiting periods, no returned calls, poor shipping service, etc.
• Inaccurate market research – Do you know why your company is doing what it’s doing ?
• Low product quality – If you don’t want a product due to poor quality, why would your customers want it?

To authentically build and maintain strong customer relationships, you cannot rely on your charm and an occasional cup of coffee. As a leader, you have to measure how well you’re doing in all aspects of the customer experience, then improve in the areas needed.

If you’re thinking, “Randy, I don’t have time to do this analysis,” I say to you, “If you don’t have time to measure customer satisfaction now, you could have plenty of time later when all your customers have disappeared.”

To form solid, long-lasting customer relationships, ensure your organization has no weak links. Measure customer satisfaction now and respond with solutions accordingly. Let me know if you need a little help.