Yeah, they are sort of related.
If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that follow up is one of the most important elements of a good networking strategy. Customer service is another piece of following up. I had a couple of good experiences recently, and I wanted to share them as illustrations.
1. Referral Follow Up
I recently had the make the phone call you never want to make. I had to call a friend to tell her the referral she’d made for me had gone south. The person she referred completely dropped the ball, and I hated to tell her, but she needed to know.
Her response to me? “I’ll get on it right away, call him and see what I can do.”
Awesome! It’s exactly the right way to handle it. She didn’t make excuses for him. She did ask me a few questions to make sure she understood the situation, and off she went. Now, we’ll see if her butt kicking has any effect. 
2. Sales Follow Up
In another example, I was having trouble with logging in to my account for a particular service. Keep in mind that this is a network marketing type company, so my salesperson was just that, sales. He doesn’t know or get into the technical side. He wants me to order product so he gets his cut.
But he’s a good guy, and I thought maybe I was making a simple mistake, so I called him. He tried to troubleshoot. No good. Did he tell me to call customer service and see if they could help me? No, he went one better than that. He called customer service himself and set up a three-way call.
Awesome service! I felt special and cared for, and he learned valuable information in case another client calls with the same problem.
That’s how it’s done, folks.
When you pass a referral, do your best to make sure it all works out. You can’t make people do their jobs, but you can and should touch base with all parties to make sure everything went smoothly.
When you’ve sold a product, even if you’re not responsible for fulfillment, ordering and all that, it’s still good to maintain contact with the customer. Setting up a three-way call is an excellent way to ensure everything goes smoothly.
Anyone else have a good follow up story to share?
Tags: communication, Follow up, Referrals
good points that you make, and one thing I was teaching an HVAC company this past weekend about SEO that ties in with customer service is that he doesn’t have any of his customer service philosophy on his site.
I told him that since he offers the same products and services as his competitors, it’s important to look for any edge at all to differentiate his company from others. After we talked about his customer service ethic, I told him he had at least three great things to post on his site.
Thanks for reminding all of us about great customer service!
So true, Nancy. We often forget that it’s okay to brag about ourselves. If we don’t do it, no one else will do it for us.
Excellent website, really enjoyed reading what you have to say.