As mentioned last week, I have a lot of thoughts about what an economic recession or downturn may mean for Internet marketers. A lot of others do as well, and I’ll be occasionally sharing - and commenting on - their thoughts as we start to see the fall-out from the global financial crisis.

One of my ‘hit predictions’ is that customer service will become much more important. Depending on your niche, you may not be able to rely on as many new customers buying from you every day, every week, every month, etc. If so, you’d probably be wise to focus less on generating and converting new customers… and more on satisfying your existing customers and getting them to buy more, and more often, from you.

What’s the best way to do this? It’s with top quality products and services, and great customer service, right? I talked about ‘good’ customer service yesterday, but ‘great’ customer service is what brings the kind of customer loyalty and repeat business on which great companies are built. Customers expect good customer service, but great customer service goes beyond their expectations, and ideally turns them into loyal, raving fans.

Ironically, few Internet marketing speakers seem to talk about customer service. They’re full of ideas about generating traffic, building a list, developing products, putting up blogs, converting traffic into customers, selling affiliate products, finding joint venture partners, and so on… but seem to have very little, or nothing, to say about how to deliver exceptional customer service. It makes me wonder whether some of these people are actually running real businesses for the long term.

But maybe when times are good, and there is a continual stream of buyers entering the market, many businesses don’t need to take so much care of their customers. Not if they know there’s plenty more ‘fish in the sea’. But if the economic recession truly causes people to spend less, across all markets, that may mean you and I have fewer potential customers too. And that means we need to take better care of the ones we have, if we’re to survive and thrive.

Many Internet marketing ‘gurus’ and would-be gurus advocate automating as much of your business as possible. The idea - with which I agree - is to reduce the time it takes to accomplish various tasks whilst freeing you up to spend your time on activities where you can deliver the most value.

You can, however, automate some things too much, and customer service is one of those things. Actually, I would argue that good customer service is NOT, by definition, automated.

You tell me - if someone has a problem and they’re required to visit a specific website, register at a support center, log a support ticket, and then wait a day or longer for a response… is that really ‘good’ customer service?

It may be efficient. It may be effective. It may be the only manageable type of customer service you can deliver based on your current time constraints and limited resources. It may also be acceptable to your customers. But let’s not deceive ourselves into thinking it’s ‘good’.

Contrary to much of what I see advocated in Internet marketing circles, good customer service:

• is NOT entirely automated
• does NOT make it difficult for customers to contact your business
• does NOT make customers wait for over 24 hours to get a response
• is NOT the same thing as upselling
• IS about them, not you
• IS proactive
• IS responsive
• DOES take the burden off the customer’s shoulders
• DOES give the customers the answers they seek
• DOES deliver powerful insights and feedback
• DOES turn customers into evangelists

So while a support ticket system may well be appropriate for your business right now, consider raising your standards for when your business grows. At the very least, aim to offer ‘good’ customer service by having someone dedicated to speaking with, or emailing, customers when they call or email you with a problem.

Then again, you may wish to upgrade your customer service for another good reason. I’ll explain why tomorrow…

It amazes me that some companies treat their customers so poorly. You know, the people who keep these companies in business?

You would think that the benefits of treating customers well were obvious. Like keeping them as customers… encouraging them to buy more and more often… inspiring them to recommend their friends and colleagues to the company, and so on. Not to mention avoiding the “penalties” of poor customer service: losing them as customers and having them recommend that their friends and colleagues NOT buy from the company. And apparently more people are inclined to warn people against a company they don’t like, than recommend a company they do like!

So why is good customer so hard for some companies? My guess is that there is not enough commitment to, and discipline around, good customer service. Serving the customer is simply not as valued as getting them in the first place. I also suspect that when a customer complains, a couple of natural human tendencies kick in that can lead to poor service. I’m thinking here of the tendencies to:

• Be defensive when someone suggests that your company, and by association YOU, have done something wrong; and
• Be lazy. It’s so much easier to do nothing, rather than address the customer’s complaint!

And yet, it takes only a little more effort to NOT get defensive and to HELP the customer. Often problems can be resolved fairly quickly by:

1. Making an effort to not get defensive;
2. Listening - really listening - to what the customer has to say;
3. Thinking about how to solve the customer’s problem in the most appropriate way. Or, if you can’t solve the problem, escalating it to someone who can. And if no-one can solve this particular problem, being honest and upfront about it with the customer, and making other suggestions that may placate them (even if it’s just a refund).

As I often say, in an environment where poor customer service abounds, providing excellent customer service is surely a competitive advantage. So why not invest more effort in making it not just satisfactory, but second to none?