Interacting With Your Customers

Henry Ford, one of the world’s largest business owners said once that “It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.” As a business owner, how often do we really think about the need for positive customer interaction?

 I’m sure that when your business first began, customers were everything. That’s because you needed them to survive. And now, as a company profits more and more and as it grows larger each day, many business owners tend to forget about the importance of our customers and how much we really need them.

According to Mr. Ford, the customer pays the bills. They control the profits and expenses, they market for you by word of mouth, and they decide whether your business will succeed or fail.

Because of this massive yet sometimes forgotten control that customers have on businesses, it’s important to understand how to properly interact with them. If you want your business to succeed, then you must give them what they want – not what you think they want or what you want for them.

Having an unhappy customer is kind of like being a hostage at a bank robbery. Business owners must be calm, collected, and give the customer what he or she wants. Here are some tips for getting out of the situation unscathed.  

1.      

Find out why they are not happy. Read their body language to tell what mood they are in and how upset they really are. Ask them open-ended questions to get them to explain what is bothering them.

2.      Listen to everything they have to say. When the robber is talking about why he is robbing the bank and what his demands are you do not interrupt him, you simply listen until he feels like he has been heard completely.

3.      When you know what he wants, build rapport with him. Relate to your customers and become a friend that they can trust. Talk to them, listen to them, and ask them what they think would be fair to make it right with them. Sometimes they don’t even want to be reimbursed. Sometimes they just want someone to listen to them.

4.      Try to make accommodations that will satisfy your customers. Often times the customers themselves don’t even know what they want, they only know that they are upset. So reason with them, comfort them, and give them more than what they ask for.

Customer interaction is the foundation upon a successful business. As we learn to interact positively with our customers and make them happy, we will watch our companies make more money, and have more customers to create a growing business. Remember that the customer pays your wages, so make them satisfied.