Small Businesses and Customer Service
Is customer service too expensive for the small business person?
Recently, the The Social and Economic Council of the Netherlands (SER) published a brochure on complaint handling for small and medium sized businesses. It's a Dutch publication called "Klachten = Kennis - Doe er meer mee!" (Complaints = Knowledge - Do more with it).
The publication outlines a simple complaint handling procedure for small businesses, because good complaints handling not only keeps the business safe from expensive lawsuits, but at the same time gives an opportunity to improve the business and give it a competitive edge(!)
I was completely blown away by this publication... not because of its content (it gives overall good advice), but because it was published at all!
Handling customer complaints is Business 101! Is it really true that so many business owners don't know that they need to handle customer complaints, and how?
That would explain why so many businesses go bust. No customers, no business.
Oh well. A while back I wrote a related article on how to handle customer complaints.
The (Dutch) publication of the SER can be found at: http://www.ser.nl/publicaties/default.asp?Desc=pers_20050829
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