Guide to Customer Service: The Most Valuable Service You Sell

Share your expertise with customers

One of the best ways to build customer loyalty and brand recognition is to share your knowledge. My company helps many new self-storage businesses come to life. One way we set ourselves apart from our competitors is to give these new self-storage investors the support and information they need by answering their questions and publishing a self-storage industry newsletter.

Some of our competitors withhold information until they’ve made the sale, or worse yet, give bad advice just to make a sale. Customers quickly lose respect for this type of business and go elsewhere, taking other customers with them.

I recommend: Learn more about Informational Marketing at CRM

Go above and beyond

I train my staff to make the customer happy. I believe in selling a good product at a fair price but sometimes you have to go one step further.

One of our customers which had ordered and used us to erect one of our self-storage buildings had a slight leak during a hard rain. One of his elderly customers had stored a worn, wobbly table and it suffered some water damage. It probably wouldn’t have brought $10 at a rummage sale. Still, it was important enough to her that she had paid and trusted our customer’s business to store it.

After our customer informed us of the situation and told us she wanted $250 in damages so she could replace the table. We could have just given her the fair market value, but we sent her a check for $300, along with our sincere apology. It sounds expensive, but in the long run it was well-worth the customer referrals and continued business of one happy customer.

I recommend: Visit American Steel Buildings to see excellent customer service in action, or call us at 800.400.5121. A friendly, knowledgeable staff member is waiting for your inquiry.