ONE of the great myths of business is that you have to go all-out every day to keep your customers and clients happy. While always giving your best is admirable, advisable, and preferable, it is not necessarily true.
The real picture is that customers and clients are forgiving. Once they commit themselves to being your customer or client, you have to mess up in a major way and mess up often before they will admit they were wrong.
Yet a lot of people still manage to fall short of this bare minimum and watch their prized customers and clients walk out the door.
Customers and clients use three criteria to measure you: communication; service; and added value.
How well you handle these three items is a reliable indicator of how long you will keep your clients. Here is a checklist to see how you are doing: Communication.
We all have enough sense to communicate well before the sale, but it is even more important to communicate after it.