We all know that customer care is important to the success of a business. But what does good customer care look like? And how can we make changes to a business to bring about better customer care?

Here are some ideas:

1. Appeal to the needs of the prospects you are seeking to attract:

• Now we all feel that we are doing this but - think of your own business - have your needs changed at all in the last 12 months? The chances are that they have in one or two significant ways, and similarly, so have those of your customers. Have you been out and asked them in the last year? If you havent you are probably out of touch with their needs. Market research is often considered to be the domain of large companies but there is nothing to stop you asking some key questions of a few customers to find out what their priorities are now. Market research is a key way of keeping up with your customer base, but you should top this up on a daily basis with the questions asked in a sales meeting. Make sure that you ask searching questions of your customers (and listen to the answers!). Then feed this information back into the marketing plan.

2. Make your marketing and sales activities reflect your USP (unique selling point):

• What is it that makes people want to buy from you? You may well offer the same or very similar product as other people, so you need to work out why they buy from you. It may be the superiority of your product, but it is equally likely to be something else. Price is the one which many companies focus on, but it isnt always the main reason for choosing a supplier. There are also factors like good customer service, an understanding salesman (i.e. business-like and not too pushy), location, ease of communication and many more. Work out what your USP is; it may be different on different occasions, and then market and sell your product with that in mind. If your USP is something other than price then you will be able to make better profits. But be realistic, you may have to go in at a good price to gain the first piece of business from a customer. You then have the chance to improve your relationship with them and move their desires away from price towards good service.

3. Operate your business in line with your customers expectations:

• Reinforce with employees the role that they can play in creating a good customer experience. Most of a customers experience of a company involves what happens when they have contact with an employee of that company. It is important to make sure that as many as possible of these 'touch points' are good for the customer. This involves the employees attitude, their knowledge of the product and what is possible to do with it, the level of their empowerment to make decisions, and how to escalate problems when they occur. Having established what you consider to be good practice in attracting and retaining long term customers reward your employees performance when they do it well.

4. Market your product in a way that your prospects would like to receive that information:

• Nowadays there are many ways for customers to receive information: by letter, email, fax, face-to-face, on a web site etc, and it is possible to deliver information to customers in a variety of ways with very little effort. So it makes sense to ask customers how they would like to receive the information and then market to them in that way. We all know that it is necessary to keep up to date in a fast changing world so marketing information can become a welcome source of information rather than 'junk mail' or 'spam' if it is informative and delivered in the way that a customer wants to receive it.

5. Be ready to change as the needs of your customers change

• Business is fast moving these days and it is important not to get set in your ways. All the decisions made now about how to market your products should be revisited regularly to keep up with the market needs of the future.

6. A greater focus on customers and a culture of continuous improvement in customer service is going to stand any business in good stead. It will help to:

• Improve profit margins by taking the emphasis off low prices


• Improve targeting of new prospects by better focused marketing effort


• Increase efficiency by reducing time spent on complaints handling


• Decrease costs by gaining more new business from existing customers

This has to be worth it