The issue of poor customer care is taking a centre stage of every bit of business in the country with government agencies and private partners pumping in money to see how they can turn around the image of the service industry tainted by poor customer care. But in real business world, that ‘smiling and talking well’ customer care has never been a driver to service delivery or improvement in your sales. It is a component of knowing your customers. So what is important is to know your customers first.

So understand that customers come to buy from you for a reason, therefore a business must have a reason why customers buy from it, and whether you are selling directly to individual or other businesses try to understand to ask yourself how much you know about their clients, knowing your clients will help you also know how to handle them, serve them the way they want.

In the first instance, find out about your customers who they are, know their gender, occupation, do they buy on behalf of others, their organizations, or try to know why they buy a particular product, is it because they have enough to spend. This will also now help you understand when they buy, the way they buy and of course this is all about their choices and attitudes- look at the power of products to pull them.

Most importantly, now you need to drop a close eye into their finances, just know a bit of their financial status, know roughly how much they earn, bit this should not involve direct question like how much you earn, but rather a more friendly approach like trying to propose products of different prices and also getting close to their friends. Then know what customers expect from you. Do they really need that smiling customer care? Do they need simple explanations or long explanations; do they have time for explanations?

Moreover knowing what your customers think about you is also important and increases trust in them, for example, it is most common that customers who don’t know how to make choice enjoy older people to make choice for them with that conviction that they wont dupe them, while those buying products that the society takes to be ‘not allowed publicly’ will always look for that person who looks like they are free with the use of that product, most probably a person of their  sex, age or tastes to do the choice. So before you train yourself or your staff to smile and talk well to customers first knows your customers.

It is disappointing when you have little time and  you reach a customer care attendant and all she says is to thank you ten  times, smile at you and tell you how much you are welcome and indirectly trying to entertain you as if you never had enough to hire your own entertainment amusement.