“The customer is always right” isn’t just a meaningless cliché. The best way to strengthen your customers’ devotion to your brand is to treat them well, and with respect. Dave Ratner, author of Creating Customer Love: Make Your Customers Love You So Much They’ll Never Go Anyplace Else!, is a firm believer in this philosophy. Here are seven tips from Ratner’s book on how to improve your customer service standards:

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1. Understand the customer experience. Everything the customer encounters while visiting your business makes up their overall experience. Making that experience pleasant and memorable creates customer love. Are customers able to find you easily? Do your products appeal to them? Is the staff friendly and easy to work with?

2. Know who your customers are. You cannot be all things to all people. Ratner tells a story about his friend, Joy Leavitt, and her store, Kiddlywinks. “It’s clear she put a lot of thought into designing her two stores to give her target customers a wonderful experience. It starts outside in the parking area — certain spots are reserved for customers with little kids. Everything in the store is set up to be kid-friendly: shelves are lower, the merchandise can be touched, and everything is safer than safe. It’s targeted at a niche audience.”

3. Create a great, clear store promise. One of the best ways to build trust with your customers and make it easy for them to do business with you is to offer absolutely unbelievable guarantees. L.L. Bean removes all risk from transactions by including one of the best guarantees on the market — a 100% satisfaction return policy, for life.

4. Hire people with a customer-first attitude. By and large, skills can be taught. Make sure the people you hire not only do a good job, but also have a good attitude. The customer always comes first, and your employees must believe this too.

5. Set a good example. A huge mistake bosses make is when they break the rules. Employees notice when the boss says one thing and does another. It gives you a bad reputation and encourages your employees to behave similarly.

6. Make returns easy. A liberal return policy is a good thing to have. There will be those who abuse it, but only a very small percentage of shoppers do. Having a generous return policy makes it easy for customers to trust you. With that comforting thought in mind, customers will buy more.

7. Don’t sell to customers; give them a reason to buy. Selling is both an art and a science, and good salespeople are worth their weight in gold. By listening to a customer and offering products that meet that person’s needs, a good salesperson can do more than almost anything else to reinforce your store’s relationship with that customer.
   

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