In dealing with your customers, you can depend on one constant — change will
happen. To be effective and keep your loyal customers, you must be willing
to confront and handle these changes. Here are five steps you can take
to handle change.1. Anticipate change. It may occur next month, tomorrow,
or this afternoon. Be aware that it will happen and be proactive with
questions, such as: What are my customers doing differently? Do they have
new products and/or services? How can you be involved with these changes?
What services or products do we offer that will complement our customers’
needs? Become the only company your customer wants to call for assistance.
2. Give change a chance. I have this quotation on my computer:
“If there
were no problems, there would be no opportunities.”
It’s easy to view change
negatively, but change can be positive and a good thing. As I reflect on my
professional and personal life, some of the greatest successes started out
as perceived problems. Look at your problems as challenges and as
opportunities to positively change.
3. Communicate change. If change happens, then everyone affected by the
change needs to know about it. If you keep change a secret, you are
undermining opportunities for success. Share change with other departments,
managers and employees and especially your customers. You can do this
through manager meetings and newsletters. In the case of your customers,
visit with them and gain an understanding of their business. Encourage your
customers to share changes in their organization with you. THEN, take the
opportunity to become involved in the change.
4. Realize that change causes more change. Change is like a stone being
thrown into a pond. It doesn’t just hit the water and sink. It sends out
ripples that affect the entire pond. Change in your department will affect
your entire organization. Change in your customer’s organization affects
your relationship with your customer. If you identify change in its early
stages, it is easier to identify and handle “the ripples in the pond.”
5. Don’t wait for “things to get back to normal.” I worked for an
executive vice president who told the leadership in the organization he had
some good news for us. His message was this, “Normal is not the way it was
yesterday, last month, or last year. Normal is not the way it will be
tomorrow, next month, or next year. Normal is the way it is right now, right
here, today. If you’ve been waiting for things to get back to normal to do
something, I have some good news: things are normal.”
When we draw on what we’ve learned from changes in the past, we can use
them to make effective decisions today and sculpt what will take place in
the future. Most important of all, we can use change to develop loyal,
satisfied customers.
