>I love this idea, this concept, this rule! If you want to turn your prospects into customers than you must be easy to do business with. Have you ever asked yourself if you are easy to do business with? Whether you have or you haven’t, the truth is you don’t know until you ask your customers.
We work in our businesses day in and day out, we understand how the process works, what our acronyms stand for, and which department handles which service. The question is do your customers? You can invest in the best marketing, have the best trained sales force, but if you do not make it easy and enjoyable to do business with you, than you will consistently struggle to turn your prospects into customers.
Ever have this experience? You buy a new computer. You search online, visit the local computer stores, ask your computer tech and you finally make a purchase. This is the computer every sales person told you was easy to use and easy to set up. You are ready to get started and boom you hit a snag. You call the company, and while I am not sure I need to tell the rest of the story, for arguments sake I will. First you get put on hold, then you get cut off, then you get passed from department to department, and then finally when you are connected to someone who can help you, they either talk over your head, are condescending or do not speak your language. You get off the phone, you are frustrated, made and vow never to do business with this company again. You end up calling your local computer tech and paying some outrageous service fee to fix something you were promised could be handled through free support.
Now, in defense of the company, I do not believe this is the outcome they want. Especially in this day and age, who wants their customers mad, upset and god-forbid twitttering and facebooking negative things about them. No one. Then why are they so hard to do business with? Because they don’t prioritize making the customer experience one the customers actually designs and one they actually enjoy.
So, how do you do that? How do you make sure you are easy to do business with? I have read, researched and come upon many complicated systems and processes to do this, but you know I think the best thing to do is just ask your customer. Do it informally, through formal survey, or assessments. I have several clients who ask me to once a year perform and customer assessment to determine what they could improve in their systems and process to enhance the customer experience. This is not only a fun process, but you gain great perspective and information.
Making sure you are easy to do business with, makes prospects happy about their decisions, customers loyal and advocates happy to keep sending business your way! If you want to turn your prospects into customers then make sure your customers believe you are easy to do business with.
