SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.
Last week, we asked: How well does your organization treat clients or customers?
- Extremely well — we take great care of them: 35.17%
- Very well — we treat them better than most other companies: 34.88%
- Well — we do a decent job but could improve a bit: 25%
- Not well — we could treat them much better: 3.49%
- Poorly — I’m surprised we even still have customers: 1.45%
Treat them well or someone else will. It doesn’t take much to lose a customer and we all know how hard it is to acquire them. If your organization isn’t in the top two categories in this poll, you’re creating a large risk to your business. As leaders, we’re responsible for identifying where we’re coming up short in our treatment of customers and quickly fixing those issues. Client service can be very simple to understand but difficult to execute. It all boils down to defining client service principles you should never violate. Make sure you do both as you set the tone for your team to care for one of your most valuable assets.
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of the upcoming book “Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results” and “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”