I’m sure by now we have all used one or more of the services designed to make our lives easier. We live in an age where we can get groceries delivered to our car or even our home; we can get meals from almost any restaurant delivered to our home; we never have to go into a bank anymore and there are countless services that are willing to drive us wherever we want to go.

The field of sales is no different and regardless of what you are selling, I’m sure technology has made your job easier in one way or another. Technology can never replace the fundamentals of customer service. Let’s look at some examples of how today’s technology and customer service can and do exist.

• We ordered dinner one night to be delivered and we did not receive the drinks that we had ordered. The rest of the dinner was excellent, and we decided to do the same thing a couple of weeks later. When we ordered online, we noted that we did not receive our drinks in our last order. When the food arrived, we were told by the driver that there was a free dessert with the order as an apology for forgetting the drinks the last time. Even though we ordered online and never spoke to a person, the business was still able to perform a simple act of customer service.

That is a real-life example but it’s indicative of what should happen. If a customer orders a necklace online from your company, do they still get a thank you note? Ask yourself this: would you send a thank you note if they had bought that same necklace in the store? If the answer is yes, then a thank you note should be written to the online buyer.

The bottom line is this, just because technology makes our lives as salespeople easier, it does not give us a pass on customer service. It’s not always easy to provide great customer service in the world we live in today, but the professional salesperson will always find a way to put the customer first. Customers may buy the first time because the technology made it easy, but they will buy a second time because the customer service was excellent.

FINAO - Brad Huisken