It’s all about customer service

It’s all about customer service

customer service When customers abandon a business, two times out of three it’s because they perceive the service as inattentive, indifferent, or even insufferably rude, says Steve Hines, UI Extension educator in Valley County. And losing customers is the last thing—the very last thing—that struggling rural businesses need.

“In an economy that depends as much on tourism dollars as ours does, you want your local customers coming back rather than going other places to spend their money— and you want to keep your out-oftown customers in town long enough to get a few more dollars from them,” Hines says.

To help local businesses in McCall, New Meadows, Council, and other Valley and Adams County towns, Hines offers 3-hour classes in customer-service training—either right on the clients’ sites or right in their community. “We can provide the training very inexpensively. Otherwise, they would have to hire outside consultants, and they are already stretched so thin.”

“Very basics” of customer service
Using a curriculum developed at Oklahoma State University, Hines covers what he calls the “very basics” of customer service: greeting customers within 5 seconds of their entering the business, listening carefully, identifying solutions, drawing out feedback, and leaving a positive last impression.

“We still quote things we learned from Steve,” says Barbi Burke, who opened McCall’s first spa, Indulgence, in July 2002 and invited Hines to help train six employees.

A manicurist since she was 15, Burke had dreamed of starting her own spa for years and did considerable research before launching Indulgence, with its Hawaii-, clouds-, and wine-motif rooms on Park Street.

“I learned it doesn’t matter what YOUR dreams are, they may not be that of your employees,” says Burke. The hardest part of starting a business “is growing your employees’ skills. Mine are trained. They’ve gone to school to be cosmetologists, manicurists, or massage therapists. Our focus, as a group, is treating customers in a very special way, pampering them.” That’s what Hines taught. His suggestions are still taped to the spa’s refrigerator.

“He taught us to ‘Give customers the pickle,’” meaning, go the extra mile. “We still say that to each other. ‘Did you give that customer a pickle?’” says Burke. “Today’s customers have so many choices, unless you give them the pickle, they’re going to move on.

“We need Steve’s class twice a year, so we don’t forget,” she added. Especially in tourist areas, Hines also emphasizes training front-line employees to know what’s available in and around town so they can direct customers to other local businesses, such as a restaurant for lunch or a boat dock where they might rent a canoe.

“You’d be surprised by how many people say ‘There’s nothing to do here’ instead of ‘There’s Hells Canyon this way and Seven Devils that way,’” says Francee Wassard, economic development coordinator for Council, who has requested this class and others from Hines.

According to Wassard, “everybody benefited from the conversation” in Hines’ spring 2003 workshop. “There was a lot of introspection.” She particularly values the progress retailers are making in responding to customers’ requests.

Why don’t you carry socks?
“You have a lot of customers saying, ‘Why don’t you carry socks?’ We have a lot of novelty and arts-andcrafts shops, but somebody in the community needs to carry a line of socks or work clothes so people don’t go down to Ontario or Boise. We’ve got merchants here that are finally doing that sort of thing—and I think the customer-service workshop helped.”

customer service In Bonners Ferry, extension educator Sarah Howe has also offered the customer-service workshop. “We’re kind of a gateway community —the first town you hit from Canada—and we’re on the I-95 thoroughfare, so we want our frontline people to be able to recommend things to do and places to eat to outof- town customers, and we want them to go the extra mile to keep local customers,” she says.

Richard Beck, owner of Beck’s Furniture in Bonners Ferry and a participant in Howe’s workshop, says today’s time-strapped customers won’t settle for less than attentive and efficient service. “Ten years ago, it wasn’t so important, but, anymore, good customer service is probably the reason we have the business that we have.”

“This is classic community development,” says Hines, “trying to help business owners run more customerfriendly businesses so they will stay in business longer.”

--Marlene Fritz