Customer satisfaction is everyone’s job; it has to be on the minds of each employee every time they interact with a customer. Hudson Valley businesses must remember that the easiest customer to sell is the one you’ve already satisfied.

Satisfying customers is not a distraction from selling products or services, it is how you sell more. Fix problems, satisfy customers, and they will buy from you again and again.

Once someone feels they’ve been cheated, you’ll never get a chance to earn that person’s business again…that’s far more costly than any one-time profit you can make. Never gouge a customer by making them pay more than a fair price for a product or service.

Pay people on volume and customer satisfaction, not on a percentage of gross profit. When people are not rewarded for gouging, but have incentives for customer satisfaction, when a customer has a problem, it’s a problem. Fix it, replace it, or refund the customers money.

Under promise and over-perform. Always treat your customer as king. Place their need for happiness ahead of your need for front-end profit. Ask what do they really need… not how much can I sell them?

Hudson Valley companies must not try to make up for their own business problems by passing along higher costs to the customer. When the product or service flops in the marketplace, offering special deals admits it wasn’t worth the original price. It’s smarter to price the product or service to suit the market, and then sell a lot of it.

Always give everyone the same fair deal. If you sell the same product to 100 people this month, make sure they all pay the same price. Otherwise, you’ll overcharge some of your customers to make up for the profits lost on others.

Take care of your customer at the lowest level of management. No one should have to appeal to a manager if a pair of shoes doesn’t fit, or if a meal isn’t cooked properly. Everyone should be authorized to satisfy the customer and to fix it right the first time.

Accept getting beaten sometimes. A small percentage of people will take advantage of your commitment to a customer satisfaction. To treat the rest of your customers fairly, you must take that risk.

Whenever you have a choice between losing a customer and losing a profit, lose the profit. The customer will come back to you again and again, which means that the profits will return as well.

Never cut your prices to boost your sales. Instead, increase your content. A college student started a small business by “souping” up stripped-down IBM computers with simple plug-in components. Merely by customizing a common product, he tapped a broad market of eager computer buyers. Michael Dell founded a remarkably successful company, Dell Computer.

Because customer satisfaction involves a cost…usually about five percent of your gross sales…if you make up that cost through efficiency, it will cost you nothing to have “raving fans.” Hudson Valley companies shouldn’t think about the cost of pleasing a customer: just do it. The rest of the time, by managing all of your costs very closely you can afford giving “outrageous service” to satisfy people.

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