Guest Post by Lynn Daniel, president of The Daniel Group

I have been paying a lot of attention to how easy, or difficult, it is to do business with a company.  Ease of doing business matters a lot to good customer service.  I have two recent examples to illustrate my point.

I do a lot of shopping with Amazon.  In fact, I am now buying more things from Amazon than in the past.  At one point, it was mostly books (yes, I am one of those people who still like a physical book).  Now, it is electronic equipment, coffee for the office, and a variety of other things.  I think about why and the first reasons are competitive price and great selection.  As I was ordering our regular office coffee supply last night I thought about another reason.  It is just easy to buy from Amazon!  I selected the coffee I wanted and selected the office address and the appropriate credit card and it was done.  I will receive it in two days.

The second example happened this morning.  I had to have new keys made for some additional office space.  I stopped at a large building supply store and started looking for someone who could make the additional keys.  Instead, I look down the aisle and see a sign that says “Make Your Own Keys Here.”  Being the gadget geek that I am I could not resist.  I simply put the key to be copied into a slot, the machine asked me how many copies and what patterns I wanted, and I made my selections.  In about five minutes I had my keys.  The receipt was even emailed to me.  Best of all, the keys all worked, which was not true in an earlier key-making experience.

Put yourself in the place of your customers.  Just how easy is it to do business with your company?  If you can make it easier my guess is your customer service will get better.

Lynn Daniel is president of The Daniel Group, a Charlotte, NC (USA) based consulting firm that helps business-to-business companies measure, manage, and improve customer service.