Lots of companies say they offer excellent service then make it neigh on impossible to get in contact. I think service is about being there, contactable and responsive to your clients requirements and needs.
Providing good service is expensive and the rewards are sometimes difficult to quantify. Unless you're one of those professions that charges for every phone call and letter of course. But then I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the sort of service that comes either post or pre sale that isn't paid for.
If I am paying for support then I would expect to get whatever the package includes. But if I buy a product and I need to contact the supplier I don't expect to have to jump through a series of hoops to be able to make contact with them.
Yesterday we had a call from a colleague of a client about a problem with his Apple Mac. Firstly we don't really do IT support but we do know our way around Macs. Sadly the problem was something he was going to have to contact the Software developer about. But we were able to identify the issue and point him in the right direction. We wouldn't expect a penny for that, but we know from experience that providing help where we can not only provides good Karma but an excellent image. It may be at some future date someone talks to him about their website, there is a good chance they'll suggest they talk to us. This isn't just wishful thinking, we know this works and have benefited directly on several occasions. I expect we have benefitted indirectly on more but that is rather harder to identify.
We like to hear from you, even if it's just to say "hello".
A ten minute phone call can make all the difference to your business.
