Businesses all agree: you must serve customers well. But in today’s always-on digital ecosystem, this has been ramped up to the umpteenth degree. If you ignore your customers on the many different channels in which they communicate, they might just go away — for good.
Micah Solomon’s book, Ignore Your Customers (And They’ll Go Away), hammers this point home. A few weeks ago I reviewed his book and gave it a 5-star rating. (Read: Review of Ignore Your Customers)
And now we’re excited to bring you an exclusive 3-chapter excerpt of his book. Scroll down to the end of this article for the download link — but first let me tell you a little more.
Who Micah Solomon Is
Named as “a new guru of customer service excellence” by the Financial Post, Solomon explains what you need to do as a business. Today, customers have a dizzying array of ways to reach you — in-person, phone, live chat, email and website forms. Not only that, they can be talking on social media channels, online review sites, even their own blogs.
With all the touch points that now exist, how do you engage? And convey an attitude that helps your business, not hurt it?
Micah Solomon is a customer service consultant who has experience with leading brands to make his case. From Richard Branson, to Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, as well as insights from companies such as Amazon, Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, Cleveland Clinic and others, you will learn how to engage with your customers and build long-term retention.
What “Ignore Your Customers” Tells You
In Ignore Your Customers, Solomon lays out an approach to customer service that he insists will yield huge results. It also is immune to being copied, he says:
“What I’m going to challenge you to do in this book isn’t easy: to build an organization that is centered on your customers in fundamental yet sophisticated ways. But it will be an incredibly fruitful venture, resulting in a multipart payoff:
- You’ll retain a higher proportion of your existing customers
- You’ll increase per-customer spending
- You’ll attract new customers … and you’ll do it all in a way that is almost entirely immune to being knocked off by competitors
If this last claim, ‘immune to knockoff,’ sounds farfetched, let me explain and defend my reasoning. I’m making this claim because I have a strong hunch that if you do the work suggested in this book, you can sleep easy knowing that it’s unlikely that your competition will buckle down and do the same. Although your competition may copy your pricing, ape your innovations, duplicate the look and feel of your website, and so forth, they’re unlikely to muster the vision, energy, and follow-through required to replicate the customer centered organization that I’m here to help you build.”
Solomon counsels organizations to develop an “automatically positive” approach — employees who want to respond “yes” automatically. Not “no” or “I’m not sure if we can do it.”
They should convey the following general attitude: “The answer is yes! Now what was your question?”
He recognizes that companies cannot always say yes. However, he explains, there’s almost always a way to soften the blow and say “no” in those situations.
Instant Download
Download your 3 free chapters here. (No registration required!)
If you want advice on WHAT to do to build a world-class customer service approach, you will get it. And if you want advice on HOW TO do it, you will get that too.
Many thanks to the author for making this excerpt available, with permission.
Image credit: Micah Solomon