CHICAGO — It is very important for laundry operators to learn about their customers and even potential customers, shares Jo Dekmak, member services manager at Metropolitan Detroit Area Hospital Services Inc.
“Outstanding customer service distinguishes your laundry from other laundries,” she says. “Building those relationships will not only improve agreed-upon service levels but will also improve communications and resolve issues promptly.
“Learning about each other will build partnership, loyalty and will create positive experiences that might also be shared with other potential customers.”
But how can industrial and institutional laundry operators learn more about their customers and potential customers?
American Laundry News asked Dekmak and customer service/experience guru Shep Hyken to find out more about the process of enhancing relationships with business-to-business (B2B) customers.
VALUE OF GETTING TO KNOW CUSTOMERS
Dekmak says that working hard to get to know laundry customers will build and improve work relationships even before an operator tries to understand their needs and expectations.
“Getting to know your customers personally definitely allows you the opportunity to better understand how to even approach them,” she says.
“Listening is the first step in achieving better understanding. Providing and seeking continuous feedback is another way to improve and understand your customers’ needs. Don’t always assume your customers’ needs will remain the same.
“One of the most important factors in whether you are even able to meet a customer’s expectations is whether you take the time to set accurate expectations in the first place. Be as transparent as possible.
“Lastly, follow The Platinum Rule: treat customers as they want to be treated not as you want to be treated.”
Hyken, who has conducted presentations and training for many companies and organizations on customer service and customer experience and has written eight books on the subject, says that laundry operators need to recognize that every buyer, whoever that procurement officer or purchaser is in a business, is also a consumer.
“They are going to compare the experience they have with the B2B provider the same as they might a general consumer experience, so we can’t get away from that because everybody’s a consumer,” he points out.
“They know what great service looks like. They know what bad service looks like, and they expect and hope the best from you, even though it’s not a consumer experience. That’s important to understand.”
One of the things Hyken “preaches” in his B2B work is that a company doesn’t want to be seen as just a vendor.
“We want to actually become a partner, and the way to become a partner is to understand the businesses that we’re serving and to learn enough about them to meet their needs,” he says. “That we’re not just sitting down and providing a product, which in this case is that which we do in an industrial laundry, but it’s to really get an understanding of what their needs are, what their challenges are, related to what we do so that we can come up with the best solutions.
“It’s one thing for us to say we’ll be there three days a week for the laundry, but what if that’s not really what the customer wants? What if they have a different schedule? Maybe they have peak time.
“We need to understand who they are and what they are and put together a program that makes them look at us as a partner versus a vendor partnership.
“It’s a vendor relationship on steroids.”
Check back Thursday for Part 2 about important information to know and relationship-building techniques.
Have a question or comment? E-mail our editor Matt Poe at [email protected].
