Keeping the customer out of the emergency room.

• Author: Hall, Robert
• Position: Marketing Solutions - Financial service customer relations

How much of your sales and service costs and your customer satisfaction challenges is a direct result of customers failing to follow orders or instructions? How many customers do you lose each year because they did not understand or failed to take steps as directed by someone in your organization? If customers fail pretty consistently to follow through when their health is at stake, we can be pretty sure that financial services fare no better.

As much as we would like to say that these lapses are the customers' fault, it does not change the fact that we as providers pay a lot of the cost. Most customers who did not understand, or forgot, or did not know how, or could not figure it out, will, at the end of the day, come back to us in various ways that are expensive. Some come back and take up our time. Others will blame us and, accordingly, their loyalty will diminish, or they may even leave us over it. Finally, some will tell others, and it will hurt out reputation and our brand. Like it or not, we pay the price for the fact that a number of our clients are inattentive, incompetent, uninformed, inexperienced, undisciplined or unsophisticated.

We are not alone. Other industries face the same problem--instances of customer misuse or noncompliance. Some healthcare providers are issuing written instructions regarding how to take the medicine or follow procedures. Alcoholic beverage companies promote responsible drinking and the use of designated drivers. Pharmaceutical companies issue warnings about side effects and advise not operating equipment or vehicles.

What does this mean? It means that whether we like it or not, we are in the business of enabling customer learning and change--helping them to understand what is required and influencing them to take the desired action. There has been much said and done to help our front line people become more effective at making the sale--of the product. A key component of service, satisfaction and ongoing customer management success is making the next sale--selling the customer on following through and taking the correct after-sale action. How? Among the many possibilities are three steps that are already in the repertoire of our front line.

1. Sell the benefit. Just as we have learned to sell product features and benefits of the product, we now need to sell to the customer the benefit of follow-through on the specified steps. Given what we know about their needs, we remind them of the importance of...