When was the last time you tried to contact a business and thought:
Why are they making this so difficult?!
You’ve filled in the form.
You’ve waited for the email.
You’ve tried calling.
You’ve pressed 1, then 3, then 2, then possibly lost the will to live.
And eventually you’ve thought, Do you know what? I’ll go somewhere else.
We’ve all done it.
And the slightly uncomfortable question is…
Could your customers ever feel the same way about your business?
When you work inside a business every day, everything makes sense.
You know which email address to use.
You know who deals with what.
You know that Dave doesn’t work Wednesdays and Sarah is the only person who can change that particular appointment.
Your customer knows none of this.
They just want to get something sorted.
And ideally, they want it to be easy.
Good customer service isn’t always about grand gestures.
Quite often, it’s much more ordinary than that.
Someone answers the phone.
An email gets a reply.
A message actually reaches the right person.
An appointment is booked without seventeen emails going backwards and forwards.
The customer knows what’s happening next.
Simple.
But when you’re the customer, those things make an enormous difference.
We naturally put a lot of effort into looking after our existing clients.
But what about the person who hasn’t become a client yet?
They might be calling you for the very first time.
Perhaps they’ve found three businesses offering roughly the same thing and they’re deciding which one to use.
One answers the phone, has a friendly conversation with them and explains what happens next.
One sends them through an automated maze.
And one doesn’t answer at all.
Who would you choose?
Sometimes winning new business isn’t about having the cleverest marketing campaign.
Sometimes you were simply the easiest person to buy from.
Every now and then, I think it’s worth pretending you know absolutely nothing about your own company.
Go onto your website as a potential customer.
Try to find your telephone number.
Send yourself an enquiry.
Look at your booking process.
Call your own business.
How many steps does it take before you actually get what you need?
You might be pleasantly surprised.
You might also discover a few “Why on earth do we do it like that?” moments.
And that’s OK.
Businesses evolve. Processes get added. Systems get changed. What made perfect sense three years ago might be completely unnecessary now.
Technology is brilliant.
We use it every day and couldn’t operate without it.
But there’s a difference between using technology to make things easier and using technology to put barriers between you and your customers.
Not everybody wants to use a chatbot.
Not everybody wants to download an app.
And sometimes people don’t want to choose from six options.
They just want to speak to somebody.
There’s still huge value in a real person saying:
“Of course. Let me help you with that.”
Being easy to deal with doesn’t mean saying yes to everything.
Good businesses need boundaries.
You can have clear opening hours, defined processes and sensible expectations while still making the experience straightforward for your customers.
In fact, clear boundaries often make things easier because everybody knows where they stand.
The aim isn’t to be permanently available.
It’s to make sure that when customers do interact with your business, the experience works.
Think about the companies you recommend to other people.
Yes, they’re probably good at what they do.
But I bet they’re also nice to deal with.
They answer.
They communicate.
They sort things out.
You don’t have to chase them.
There’s something incredibly reassuring about a business that simply does what it says it’s going to do.
And in a world where we’re all increasingly being asked to click, download, verify, select and wait…
perhaps being wonderfully easy to deal with is becoming a competitive advantage in itself.
You can have the best product, the most beautiful website and an enormous marketing budget.
But if people struggle to actually communicate with you, you’re making business harder than it needs to be.
So perhaps this week, ask yourself one simple question:
How easy are we to do business with?
And then experience your business as though you were the customer.
You never know what you might discover.
At LiveLink Resource, a huge part of what we do is make sure there’s a friendly, capable human being at the other end when your customers need you.
Whether that’s answering your calls, managing appointments, handling enquiries or supporting the day-to-day communication around your business, we become an extension of your team.
Not to make things complicated.
Quite the opposite.
To make doing business with you feel easy.
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