From the course: Customer Service Mastery: Delight Every Customer

Remember

- I think the Logical progression from personalizing things is to remember the customer from last time. And I've got a few examples of this just to illustrate the point. I've already mentioned my Chinese takeaway place. When I ring up, they say, "Would you like your usual?" And they remember me. They don't actually remember me. They've just got a system, but I feel as if they remember me and that's great. But imagine if you phoned up the takeaway and they recognized your voice, and they said, "That's Chris, isn't it?" You know, that would be really good. I used to have a doctor who remembered me. It was Dr. Yates in Bristol, and when I used to go and see him, just every two or three years it probably was, he would go, "Oh, hi Chris, how are you doing?" You know, "Are you still working in that factory? Did you ever get that machine working?" And I remember thinking, "God, that's good," but of course he probably just wrote some notes down at the end of each consultation. "A boring bloke who works in factory." And then when I next went to see him, he'd say, "Oh yeah, I remember him." In fact, he probably didn't even remember me. He probably just said "Are you still working in that factory?" But the point was, I felt as if he cared and the fact that he'd made enough effort just to write some stuff down shows that he does care to an extent. So if you have to have a system where you make little notes about your customers, why not? My final example was that I stayed in a bed and breakfast once and they said, "What would you like for breakfast?" And I said, "Please, could I have bacon and mushrooms?" And they said, "Oh, we're really sorry. We haven't got any mushrooms, really sorry." And I said, "That's okay. I don't mind, bacon on its own is fine." And then when I stayed there again a few months later, when I first arrived there, they said, "Oh, we've got some mushrooms in specially for you, 'cause we know you like those." And I said, "I've gone off mushrooms now." No, I didn't. I was just delighted that they'd remembered me and made the extra effort of buying those mushrooms. It's not much money. I mean, it was probably only 50 pence or something for some mushrooms, but the fact that they've made the effort to remember me and made the effort to buy them, I thought that was really great. And I would always stay at that B&B. I would recommend that B&B to everyone because of that. So can you have systems that help you remember people? Can you actually find a way to remember them, and can you show them that you remember them from last time? 'Cause if you can, you really will delight those customers.

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