The Key to Growing Revenue May Be Right Under Your Nose. Here’s What Too Many Entrepreneurs Miss.

Think of the last memorable customer service experience you had. Does it stand out for being exceptional or terrible? I’m willing to bet the latter, not because most of us are experiencing bad customer service but because researchers have long believed that we’re wired to remember the negative more than the positive.

It’s called “negative bias,” and while it might be a useful survival mechanism, steering us away from potentially dangerous situations, it can also mean that the non-life-threatening negative situations we encounter routinely may stick with us longer than the positive ones do. Why should negative bias matter to business owners? Simply put, if your customers are humans, you could be losing business if your front-line team isn’t making the best impression.

Your first impression isn’t their first impression

I’ve written about this extensively: Building customer trust must begin with the first interaction, whether that’s online, face-to-face or over the phone. If you’re waiting until the customer is in your store, at your desk or in your chair to roll out the red carpet, you’re already late to the game. That customer decided your business was worth a chance before you ever met them. Customers have a wealth of information available to them, including online reviews, and now that AI is on every phone, tablet and computer, it’s easier than ever to gather information and compare options. 

What customers want

It used to be that price and convenience carried a lot of the weight in customers’ decisions, but researchers are finding that this is no longer the case. In fact, with the ability to purchase so many goods and services online, the differentiating factors are linked to experience:

• Responsiveness: Did the business acknowledge me and respond promptly when I made contact?
• Communication quality: Did the business hear my question or concern and provide helpful information?  
• Customer service: Did the business make me feel welcome, did I get what I came for in a reasonable amount of time, and was my patronage appreciated?

Of course, there are circumstances in which meeting all the customer’s needs is not feasible. In those situations, good customer service is crucial to prevent a negative experience from demolishing that hard-earned trust. 

The real mistakes businesses make

Let’s consider a hypothetical example based on my experience running a marketing agency for dental practices. A client comes to me complaining that they’re not seeing the ROI they expected. The culprit is rarely our marketing effort but their own team. I discover this when I listen to their recorded calls and hear staff members miss opportunity after opportunity. 

Who’s to blame?

In their defense, the team members answering the phone aren’t mean to patients or willfully ignoring appointment requests. More often, they haven’t been properly trained, and, almost always, they’re too busy to return every phone call and respond to every inquiry coming in through the practice’s digital channels. 

There are two problems here:

1. Frontline staff is ineffective due to a lack of sales training.
2. Potential patients are moving on because no one is contacting them.

Because the breakdown is internal, no amount of new leads can move the needle. Revenue will only improve if the practice changes its approach, trains all team members who interact with patients and reinforces that training with practice. The sales process isn’t “set it and forget it.” Old habits will creep back in without regular check-ins, refresher training sessions, monitoring and quality control.

Paydirt

The goal for dental practices is to convert more incoming calls and inquiries into booked appointments. For another business, it may be to make more sales or increase the average ticket. In any case, the key is to improve the patient or customer experience by meeting their need for responsiveness, communication and service. 

An entrepreneur can’t afford to ignore their customer-facing staff, regardless of their business model. Unless you’re lucky enough to be the only game around or enjoy worldwide brand recognition, you must pay attention to the quality of customer interactions. A single negative experience can be enough for a once-loyal patron to take their business elsewhere and never return. On the bright side, even a minor increase in customer retention can lead to big rewards. People who find it easy to do business with you are far more likely to become regular customers and make referrals. 

Think of the last memorable customer service experience you had. Does it stand out for being exceptional or terrible? I’m willing to bet the latter, not because most of us are experiencing bad customer service but because researchers have long believed that we’re wired to remember the negative more than the positive.

It’s called “negative bias,” and while it might be a useful survival mechanism, steering us away from potentially dangerous situations, it can also mean that the non-life-threatening negative situations we encounter routinely may stick with us longer than the positive ones do. Why should negative bias matter to business owners? Simply put, if your customers are humans, you could be losing business if your front-line team isn’t making the best impression.

Your first impression isn’t their first impression

I’ve written about this extensively: Building customer trust must begin with the first interaction, whether that’s online, face-to-face or over the phone. If you’re waiting until the customer is in your store, at your desk or in your chair to roll out the red carpet, you’re already late to the game. That customer decided your business was worth a chance before you ever met them. Customers have a wealth of information available to them, including online reviews, and now that AI is on every phone, tablet and computer, it’s easier than ever to gather information and compare options.