Have Things Changed Since the Last Time Your Customer Had A Close Encounter with YOUR business?
Today I visited a city that I used to be very familiar with. It has been a number of years since I have visited this city and the streets that I used to navigate with ease were now unfamiliar. I had to relearn my way around.
Perhaps your company has made some changes that make your customers physical or virtual navigation a bit different. What are you doing to help your customers navigate this new road? With short attention spans a customer may move on if you don’t make them feel comfortable once again in the “newness”. That “newness” could be a new website, a new product, a new location, new management or countless other changes.
It is a natural human tendency to resist change. As partners with our customers we must make the road an easy one to travel or they may decide to do business with another vendor who has not changed. Change is progress, but only if we plan not just for our side of the counter, but also for the customer’s.
Traveled any new roads lately? Here’s hoping all your roads of change are paved with preparation for success!
December 4th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
We just had a change at our company and the employees were the last to know about it. As a result, we were poorly prepared to handle inquiries from customers. Management needs to consult with front-line staff for input on anticipated customer reaction. This would have helped in our situation.
February 1st, 2008 at 3:52 pm
April 2007 the president of our company unexpectedly passed away. One month later, his wife decided to sell the building that the business was located in. In June we started making our plan to send all consultants home to work out of their home offices since they do travel most of the time anyway. To this day, most of our clients do not know that we moved. Our clients are very important to us and we value their business. There was only one day that was a little hairy and that was when we were switching the company phones from the old office to my home but no one noticed when that was done. We were always open with our team as things progressed and we felt it was very important to keep them in the loop or you risk loosing valuable employees and could cost the company more money in the long run.