Hello guys, I know it has been a few days since my last post.  I apologise for that I was having a few problems with my website.  Today I want to talk about Customer Perception versus Reality.  I will start by saying that ‘Customer perception is Reality’.  What I mean is that whatever a customer thinks about your firm is what they use to make purchasing decisions.  These decisions will be made based on customer perception whether or not the decision is logical.  You might know what may have caused a certain problem for your customers e.g. system downtime but how you approach the issue will largely determine whether or not you emerge from a problem with minimal or a lot of damage.  My advice is address the customers perception and not the reality on the ground.  Below are a few examples of how you can do this in different situations.

When you first come into contact with a customer they will already have a perception of your business even if it is their first time doing business with you.  This can arise from word of mouth, your branding or your premises among other factors.  This customer perception might manifest itself as the customer being cranky or overly friendly depending on the situation.  The reality is they might have had a bad day and you can go about your business as if nothing is wrong.  What you should do is deal with the customers perception by quickly trying to establish the reasons for their behavior.  A good way to do this is to engage them, ask them how they are, how things are at home are for example.  This will help by letting you know that you are or you are not the reason for them acting how they are and it will affect how you do business by giving you a good idea of how you can either recover or actually WOW them.

The reality on the ground might be that your systems are not working well that day.  The fiscal printer might be jammed or your computer might be slow due to a lack of service.  This will result in the customer thinking that the service that you provide is slow.  If the customer is given a chance to give feedback they will point a finger at either the firm or the representative.  A way to manage the customer perception is to ensure that the body language of everyone in the firm especially the customer facing staff gives an impression that they are efficient although the systems are probably slowing them down.  This is different from a situation where the customer thinks that the people are the ones that are slowing the machines down.

Sometimes a product or service is not performing at the level that it should.  The reality is that it might take time to rectify the issue and it is critical to manage customer perception of the product during this time.  Many employees are tempted to go the easy route and side with the customer helping them to place blame on the product.  This saves them as they avoid being the target of the customer’s anger and finger pointing.  However this will reduce the level of faith that the customer has in the product and this might affect sales.  The employee should manage the customer’s perception through the way that they negotiate.  They should talk about the product’s benefits while admitting that it has flaws.  This should be done in moderation so as not to discredit the product while not raising an eyebrow at the same time.  I would recommend a 70:30 ratio in terms of product advantages to disadvantages.  How an employee engages a customer in such a situation will greatly affect the customer perception based on the same reality.

You notice that one of your employees is giving a customer a hard time.  Sometimes people do have bad days and you are aware that the employee is either sick or is having problems at home.  You figure that since you know the story behind the story i.e. the reality you can let the employee have a go at the customer.  The customer’s perception will be that your employee is rude especially since they do not know what is going on in the background.  Let us say that the customer’s money had a bad day and they decided to give you 75 cents to the dollar, would you accept that?  Your employees cannot and will not have a bad day, it is not acceptable in this day and age.  Always keep a close eye on your employees and ensure that they can confide in you or someone else when they have problems.  This will help you to identify potential issues quickly and either keep the employee away from the customers or get someone to talk to them.  This will ensure that the customer always has the perception that you provide good service which will reflect positively on your balance sheet.

Procedures are good as they ensure that business flows smoothly but it is usually the case that the more foolproof the process is the more bureaucratic it is to the detriment of the customer.  The reality is that, for example, the process might actually keep the customer safe from financial prejudice but the customer might develop a perception that the firm is hard to do business with among other possible beliefs.  A lot of customer facing staff members are hard on customers and usually make the mistake of saying “The company policy states that…”  The customer’s perception should be managed by negotiating with them in a way that they see the employee as their advocate fighting for their rights as opposed to someone who is there to ensure that they know that the company has a policy.  Future customer purchasing behavior will be greatly influenced, albeit in different ways, by the two different approaches.

As you can see in every situation there is the reality and then there is the perception.  Customers usually make decisions of whether or not to continue doing business with you based on the latter.  It is not easy to ensure that your employees are adept at addressing customers’ perceptions and as such you should actively ensure that they learn through training and other methods.  What is your take?  Do you think that this approach makes sense or that this theory does not apply?

Cheers

RM