An article in the Credit Today's Weekly eNews details how not to kill a customer. 1. Holding Orders unnecessarily 2. Treating All Customers the Same 3. Continually Sending Out Incorrect Invoices 4. Taking a Long Time to Resolve Disputes, Discrepancies and Deductions 5. Repeatedly Sending out Statements and Past Due Notices that Contain Disputed Items or (Unresolved) Deductions 6. Passing Customers with Complaints from Person-to-Person and Department-to-Department 7. Not Listening Do you have any additional items to add?
How to Lose a Customer: Seven Practices Credit and Collections Need to Avoid
Answers
Good list to start!
8. Over promising and under delivering:
-on service or product -not meeting real needs
-timeliness
-quality
9. Using terms & conditions that contain one sided/unnecessarily onerous obligations or limits on liability
Yes, all areas to lose customers very quickly. I would emphasize: 7. Not Listening…and not taking quick actionable steps to address questions / issues to achieve solutions. And 10. Not providing updates to customers in the case of lengthy solutions.
Not having a process that communicates to the Credit and Collections Department what Sales agreed to orally or in writing..
And a plus: Give customers the option to pay EARLY in return for a better-than-standard discount.
Why would you like to kill your customer?
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