Customers For Life

By Carl Sewell & Paul B. Brown

Book “Customers for Life" is devoted to teaching the businessperson of today ways in which they can turn one-time buyers into customers for life. He states that every customer has the ability to be worth 332,000 dollars to your business if you can keep them for life. Mr. Sewell is the number selling luxury automobile dealer in the country. He started from the bottom and manipulated his automobile business into a  250,000,000-dollar business. In his book he explains the things that he has found to work for his business in great detail so that you may also apply them to your business. He has given his philosophy, strategies and procedures for accomplishing this in his excellent book.

For motor car dealerships, this book is compulsory reading. For other owners of closelyheld businesses, it is mandatory reading.

The entire book revolves around these 10 commandments to customer service:

The Ten Commandments of Customer Service

1. Bring 'em back alive. Ask customers what they want and give it to them again and again. Do not try and guess what the customers want, just ask them. They are more than willing to tell you. You should make it easy for the customer to tell you what they want by giving them a short questionnaire. Most importantly, you do not want to pester the customer; if you bother the customer, they are not going to be happy.

2 Systems, not smiles. Saying please and thank you does not ensure you'll do to make customer happy but you must have the right system .

3. Underpromise, overdeliver .Customer expect you to keep your word. Exceed it.

4. When the customer asks something, the answer is always yes. When a customer asks if you can do something for them, the answer is always yes, providing the request is somehow related to your business. Even if you cannot figure out immediately how to do what they ask, the answer is still yes. Do not charge extra for things that a friend would do for another friend, you will more than make up the money in future business. Help your customer. No matter what business you are in, customers like to have a number
to call after hours .

5. Fire your inspectors and human relations department. Every employee who deals with clients must have the authority to handle complaints (to a point). Inspectors make people sloppy. If you know that someone is checking your work, you may be less likely to check it yourself. Having a human relations department allows you to become out of touch with your employees and your customers.

6. No complaints? Something's wrong. Encourage your customers to tell you what you're doing wrong. 96% of unhappy customers never say anything, they simply do not return. You need to encourage your customers to speak their minds so that you can get

7. Measure everything. Baseball teams do it. Football teams do it. We should do it too. Counting the number of things we sell is one way of keeping score. It gives us overall picture. We should know exactly how we’re doing, so we can find out where we should improve. The only way we are going to find that out is by measuring everything that we possibly can.

8. Salaries are unfair. Pay people like partners, offer them a piece of the profits for their department. Give your employee some incentive to overachieve and most usually will. This will lead to larger profits, better efficiency, and greater productivity in your overall business. It will also make the employees feel important.

9. Your mother was right. Show people respect. Be polite. It works. Every impression is important. Good manners never hurt anyone. Make extra effort. Do little things. Hold doors for people .. people will appreciate it. Think how much you appreciate it when it’s done for you .

10.Japnese them- Learn how the best really do it, make their systems your own. Then improve them. Borrow idea from the best , it is quicker. Given enough time, you’ll be able to figure out just about anything.

-We should actively search for new idea to borrow, organize field trips to go look for new ideas. If see idea you like, ask about it , people love to talk about their business or idea.

Overall we have implemented this in Borneo Eco , however we are still doing our very best to be perfect where it is a journey and no one can ever be perfect especially in their system, I like this book because it so easy and every chapter has the check list what we should do . I strongly recommend this to be read by everybody not only TC but accounts department as well.

Beside all this there is some part that I don’t agree like customer always right and what ever it is we must always say YES! I did mentioned I don’t really agree about this statement unfortunately we are in the industry that customer always right and it is our job to make them smile, because believe it or not our
pay cheques actually paid by them . Last but not least their smile is our GOAL!