• Graham’s new book Seducing the Vigilante Customer – winning strategies to guarantee the return of happy customers and healthy profits is now available online at www.grahamharvey.com.au/Products/index.htm for AUD $24.95, plus p&h. Copies purchased online will be personally signed by the author. Copies of the book are also now available at your favourite bookstore.

• www.ideasiteforbusiness.com Constantly looking for new ideas to increase the level of service to your customers and ways to keep ahead of your competition? This site provides both information and inspiration on how to keep creating the difference that makes the difference. Subscribe to their free weekly email for a constant flow of great business ideas.

This edition of Touchstones primarily relates to trades people who in my opinion are the worst offenders in this area of customer service. For some reason, most trade’s people seem to believe that their job if finished when they have completed the immediate task at hand. That is, the plumber has mended the broken pipe in the laundry, the electrician has installed the new kitchen appliance, the motor mechanic has replaced the faulty engine part, the lawn mower contractor has mown the lawn, and the list goes on.

But what about the bits of broken pipe left in the laundry sink, the pieces of wire and packaging left on the kitchen floor, the grease marks around the car’s engine bay, the lawn clippings scattered all over the garden path?

I thought that cleaning up afterwards was one of life’s basic rules that we all learnt in kindergarten. Obviously I was mistaken.

Not only do I believe in cleaning up and leaving the place tidier than when you found it, I believe the degree to which you do that will not only leave a lasting impression with your customer, but also will be the source of referral business. The reason I say this is because you will stand out from the pack of other companies who essentially don’t give a damn.

To further enhance this part of your service, there are a number of things you can do to emphasise the fact that your company is different. As mentioned in an earlier Touchstones, one plumbing franchise I know has all their plumbers wear bright red socks so that when they take their boots of at the door, the customer cannot miss them. Another plumbing company has their plumbers wear cloth ‘booties’ over their boots when they are inside a customer’s premises. An insulation company, whose corporate colours are pink, ceremoniously throw down a bright pink drop-sheet under their ladder when they inspect the roof space of a prospective customer’s home.

For other companies, make it part of your servicing procedures that equipment left for repair is cleaned before it is returned to your customers. It takes very little time to spray and wipe a computer CPU and keyboard, to wash and vacuum a car, to dust and clean an electrical appliance.

Cleaning up afterwards may not seem that important to you, but to your customer it is probably the deciding factor as to whether or not they will use your service again. And isn’t repeat business the name and aim of the game.

Until next week, many happy customer returns!

Graham Harvey B.Com APS

Graham’s new book, Seducing the Vigilante Customer – winning strategies to guarantee the return of happy customers and healthy profits, is now available at your favourite bookstore.

It is also available online at http://www.grahamharvey.com.au/Products/index.htm

Previous newsletters available at www.grahamharvey.com.au/Articles/

Please feel free to recommend "Touchstones" to your family, friends and business colleagues. Tell them that their free subscription is waiting for them at www.grahamharvey.com.au