Show notes:

You’ve made the sale, but that’s just the start of the journey! How can you offer exceptional customer service so that your customers rave about you to their friends? Today is the final part of our 4 part summer series where we talk about how to excel when it comes to boundaries and customer service.

Time Stamps:

00:04 – The Next Steps After the Sale

01:35 – Setting Boundaries and Expectations in Customer Service

12:00 – Surprise and Delight in Customer Service

16:06 – Dealing with Difficult Customer Situations

22:32 – Effective Customer Service Strategies

Transcript:

Becca

00:00:00.160 – 00:32:41.950

You’ve made the sale, you’ve popped the champagne to celebrate. Surely that’s the end of the process. Think again, because what happens next has the power to make or break your wedding business.

I’m Becca Poutney, Wedding Business Marketing expert, speaker and blogger and you’re listening to the Wedding Pros who Are Ready to Grow podcast. I’m here to share with you actionable tips, strategies and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level.

If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business business doing what you love, then you’re in the right place. Let’s get going with today’s episode.

Today we’re going to be talking all about customer experience and customer service as we have reached week four of our August series, All about the Customer Journey. Week one we talked all about discovery. In week two we talked all about getting the inquiry.

Last week we talked all about making the sale and today onto the final session where, as I said, we’re going to talk about customer service and the final part of the customer journey and ideally leading to further work in the future.

If you haven’t yet listened to part one, two and three, I recommend that you go back and do that, listen to those and then come back and join me for week four. I really hope you’ve enjoyed this miniseries over the summer. They’ll be here for you to come back and listen to at any point.

If you’re struggling, at any point in the customer journey and if you want to go through it in more detail, this is what we can do together. If we work one to one.

Whether we work together via Zoom or we meet up in person, one of the things I love to do is go through this with you step by step and improve each element of that customer journey to increase your inquiries and increase your sales and conversions. Anyway, enough about that. So let’s move on to today’s topic, which is customer service.

So the first part I want to talk about is setting boundaries and expectations early.

Often when I talk to people about customer service falling apart or the customer relationship breaking down, things going wrong, often it’s because there’s mismatched expectations or a breakdown of boundaries. As the business owner, it’s our job to set out those boundaries to our clients.

And when we do that early on and we set expectations super early in the process, then our clients are much more likely to respect that. When we give no boundaries or no expectations, but we think about them in our head People can break them without realizing.

So, for example, sometimes I hear people complaining to me that couples send them messages at 11 o’ clock at night, or they’re returning messages at 5:00am in the morning, or, you know, inconvenient times over the weekend, or that their couples are expecting instant replies all of the time, even when you’re on holiday or doing something with your family. But if we’ve never set out those rules and expectations for our clients and we’ve just left it open, why shouldn’t they contact you any time of day?

Why shouldn’t they do that if you haven’t told them that they can’t? I don’t know about you.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a problem with something technical and you’ve gone on to the customer service help desk or quite often Those are available 24 hours a day, which I love, because when we want the help, we want it there. And then when it’s not open and it’s closed, we think, oh, that’s frustrating. But we go back and we visit it the day when it opens.

But if it’s available 24 hours a day, I might do it late at night. The customers are going to think about you and your business exactly the same.

They are not necessarily going to think about the fact that you’re just an independent business owner, that you’ve got a family, that you’ve got all sorts of other things and other clients going on. Therefore, it’s really important we set those expectations there early.

The other thing is we can sometimes feed this when we start replying to those messages late at night, replying to emails late at night, they think that that’s the normal thing to do and so therefore they’re more likely to contact us at those times in the future. So how do we set boundaries and expectations early?

Well, I’ve had plenty of podcast guests talking about these things before, but from my point of view, based on everything that we’ve talked about on previous podcast episodes, I think it’s really important. Number one, essential, in fact, you have a contract.

I know that sounds basic, but there is a lot of people that I speak to who where things wrong and they realize no contract was ever signed or they never have a contract in the first place. It’s all based on word of mouth or email chains.

Well, it’s important that you have a contract so that you can clearly state that you’re professional and set out boundaries very early on around when you expect paying. What happens if they don’t pay? What happens if they cancel? So that you can always go back to that contract.

But on top of that more formal contract, I’m a big fan of some kind of onboarding document, onboarding video onboarding pack that you send in the post, whatever fits your business, whatever you want to do that that welcomes your client to working with you and in the process sets out those very clear expectations.

So in that onboarding document that you would send to someone once they’ve gone ahead and paid their first deposit booking fee would be something like the following. First of all, maybe give them a timeline of what’s going to happen in their planning process.

Now, this is going to be very different for every single one of you, depending if you’re a venue, a florist, a cake maker, a dj. For some of you, you may not speak to them again until one or two months before the wedding.

For some of you, there’s going to be a lot more touch points along the way. So why not put timeline on paper and show them when it’s going to happen?

Now, don’t make this specifically personal to them because that’s going to take you ages, but do it on weeks and months before their wedding date.

So have wedding day at one end and today booking at the other end and then put on points in the map about when things are going to happen along the way.

So, for example, second payment due six months before wedding, three months before, we’re going to ask for this information one month before final payment due all of those touch points because they are going to be working with loads of different suppliers for their wedding day. They may not know what they’re doing and it’s quite, quite complicated and difficult for them to understand what’s going on.

And everyone works differently. So if you set out straight away that timeline, then they know what to expect from you. They can have it there in front of them.

Also in that document you can have a section where you talk about your communication expectations.

So this is where you can set out how you’re happy for them to contact you, how long it will take you on average to reply and what times of day you work and reply to emails. So, for example, you can set this however you like, it’s your business. So you can say to me, feel free to contact me anytime.

It will offer often take me between 24 and 48 hours to respond, but do know that I’ve got your message and sending me more messages won’t speed up that process.

I will reply between the hours of 9 and 7 Monday to Friday, Monday to Thursday, whatever it is that you want to say, set it out there because then they’ve kind of signed up to that right from day one. And if they break it, number one, you don’t have to reply to them until a convenient time because you’ve set that out.

Number two, you can also go back to them and say, you know, you keep sending me these text messages, which is fine, but don’t forget our communication expectations that I set out at the beginning, that sending me lots of messages won’t make me reply quicker.

It’s fine if you send me stuff so that I’ve got it there, but know I’ve received it and know that I will go back to you in the timings that I’ve set out right from the start. So communication expectations, you can also set out here you’re working hours if you want to.

Again, this may be different for every one of you, but when are you working? Do you want to set out that you work certain days of the week or maybe you have a day off that you never work?

So, for example, I don’t regularly reply to emails and messages on Sundays because that tends to be a day when I don’t work and switch off and be with my, my family. Actually, over time that’s kind of expanded to the whole weekend, but originally it was always Sundays.

And so I would often say don’t expect to reply on a Sunday. And again, for you, whatever works for you.

If you have those expectations, you’ve got to set them out because how’s anyone else going to know that Monday’s your special day of the week if you don’t tell them?

So this onboarding document is going to set out those expectations right from day one, which is going to enable your client and you to have a great relationship for everyone to understand where they stand on communication and expectations, for everyone to know what’s happening in the timeline, but also going to serve, as I said before, as a way for you to push back if those boundaries are broken.

Now, if you have no onboarding document and people start messaging at 2 o’ clock in the morning, it’s quite difficult for you to go back and go, can you not message me at 2 o’ clock in the morning because you haven’t told them? They can’t. However, if they start doing something that really breaches what you set out in your document.

For example, if you say, only send me questions on email and they start sending everything on text message, well, you can then go back and go.

Just a reminder that Actually, I don’t review the text messages from clients, so if you want something done, please send it on email where I’m going to be doing all of my admin. It’s easier when you set out the expectations, especially when someone reaches them.

Now, as I said, the form of this onboarding document can come however you like. It’s going to depend on you, your business, and also the level of service and level of expectation from your clients.

If you’re serving people who are spending a lot of money with you, then you may want to go above and beyond with this.

Send it out as part of a welcome pack I always remember, and I talk about it a lot when I signed up with Becky Lord to have my website designed and my onboarding information came. But it came in a little gift set with some Prosecco fluff and a face mask and I will never forget it.

It was a lovely way to get an important document because it also made me feel valued as a customer. I’d spent a lot of money with her. I was grateful that she’d set this out for me.

So perhaps for you, you do need to send it as part of a bigger set and make it part of the customer experience. Or maybe you put it in audio or visual form like a welcome video or an audio. Or maybe it’s just a simple PDF that you send over as a welcome.

As a yay, I can’t wait to work with you expectation. So we’ve talked about setting boundari expectations.

We’ve talked about having this onboarding document that’s either sent to them via email or sent in the post. The number three thing I want to talk about when it comes to customer service is panicky couples.

Now, I find in my experience of working with lots of you over a long time, that couples tend to panic when they don’t hear from wedding pros for a long, sustained period of time. They see things on the news about scams. They see things about wedding businesses shutting down in Facebook groups and places like that.

Or they just get unsettled because they worry they haven’t heard anything and it’s been a long time.

If someone gets eng and books you in 2025 and they’re not getting married till 2027 yet your timeline means you don’t contact them again until one month before their wedding. That’s a long period of time for them to panic, worry, or start stressing that you don’t exist.

So how can we as wedding pros and venues overcome that?

Well, I think it’s really important that whether our client is getting married next week or in five years time, that we make sure we’re giving them regular updates and keeping them in the loop. Now I know this for some of you will be a lot of work, which is why I highly recommend that you make it automated.

I talked in the last Epis episode about the power of systems such as Bright Biz, Dubsado, Wed Pro by Weddings. There’s loads of great systems eternity that you can use Aisle Planner.

But having a system will help you do this in a lot less time and a lot more efficiently.

So when you work with one of these systems and you put in the wedding date, what you can do is set emails to go out at certain periods either before or after the wedding date. So for example, you could set an email in your system that goes out to a couple exactly six months before their wedding date.

Just saying, hey, exciting news, it’s six months, your wedding day. Just a reminder, here’s the timeline. We’re really looking forward to working with you.

So it can be a fairly generic email, but the great news is they’re hearing from you six months before, three months before, two months before, nine months before, whatever you want to set it as. You can set it as many times as you want.

And it’s reminding them, yep, they’re still, they’re really remembering me, they’re valuing me as an individual. They’re not a scam. It’s definitely happening. I don’t need to panic, I know this is happening. They’re keeping in regular contact with me.

And the great thing is if you set this up in an automated system, you’re not having to do all of those reminders manually because that’s when things slip through the gaps. So your customers are being served without any energy or effort from you other than setting it up in the first place.

The other great thing is when you start digging into some of these automations is actually you can use them for upsells. I’m working with a one to one client at the moment where the agency is building out their system for them.

And we’ve talked about some of these automated emails and making sure that maybe at three months before the wedding that one of those emails includes an opportunity to upsell to some of their other products because it may be that that couple get to three months before the wedding and have some additional budget while now we’re landing in their inbox not only with an update but also with an opportun for them to spend more money with us.

So these emails and touch points are vitally important for you as a business owner to make sure that you’re giving yourself the best opportunity to make more money.

But also they’re super important for the couple because they know that you exist and they’re getting that reassurance that they need because silence equals panic.

Okay, number four on my list is thinking about how you can include the element of surprise and delight if you want to be exceptional at customer service. Surprise and delight is one of the best methods that you are going to have for doing this. Surprise and delight is exactly that.

You’re giving your couple something that they’re not expecting and they’re delighted with. There are multiple ways you can do this. You can go extravagant and big, you can go very small.

But just showing that you care, showing that you’re thinking about your customers, will go a long way and make you memorable. So how can you make your customers feel extra special on the journey once they’ve spent money with you and up until and after their wedding?

Well, first thing is a great time to do it is the onboarding.

As I talked about earlier, sending them some kind of gift in the post, some kind of congratulations card, card, some kind of something along with the onboarding document. That’s a great time to do it. Or six months before the wedding, could you send them a little postcard, a magnet?

Six months until you become Mr. And Mrs. Mrs. And Mrs. In six months time, we’re going to be enjoying your wedding day with a little gift. I don’t know what it is for you. Maybe it’s just a postcard.

Sometimes a postcard is enough. Doesn’t always have to be a gift.

But if you show you spent the time writing something out and send it to them in the post, it will go an awfully long way. Another great time to surprise and delight people from a psychological point of view is just before their final bag balance is due again.

If someone books you in 2025 and they agree to pay you a large amount of money, they’ll pay their fee up front. And for some of you, they then don’t pay you that large amount of money until much closer to the wedding day.

And that could be 6, 9, 12, 18 months after you first met.

So if we do something maybe two or three weeks before that money is due, where we give them a bit of surprise and delight out of nowhere, then they’re going to feel a lot happier. When that bill comes in, in the next next few months, I’m going to let you into a little secret. We Used to do this with our wedding business retreat.

So when we ran the wedding business retreat, there would be a small amount to pay and then a larger amount to pay up front and we would always send a little gift in the post. But we before the retreat to say we’re, we’re really excited to see you at the retreat.

But we made sure we timed it so that that gift landed on the doorsteps just before they had to pay their final balance to remind them that we cared, to remind them that we were excited to see them, to get them in that zone. And so that money didn’t feel like such a scary thing to be paid paying. So can you tap into that?

Is there something in your system where you can send them something not to remind them that they need to pay you, but just a bit of surprise and delight, but you’re making sure that timing fits in with when you’re going to be starting asking them for money the other time that’s a really good time to do it is the first Christmas or their first wedding anniversary.

So I see photographers doing this very successfully where they have Christmas ornaments made that say it’s your first Christmas married or first Christmas as Mr. And Mrs. Or, you know, all of those kind of things or their first anniversary and they send them out. Now the good thing about doing Christmas is that you can do it in one big go.

Any couple that’s been married in the last year before that Christmas, you can have everything made and send them all out in one go. A bigger job in one go, but it’s then done for the year. What’s lovely about sending those gifts or cards is often they get shared on social media.

It’s a lovely reminder to the couple. It’s a lovely thing to do. It’s great for customer service, great for reputation and it all happens at once.

Or if you want to take that personalized touch a step further, doing it on their first wedding anniversary.

Having a system like your CRM system remind you two or three weeks before their anniversary that it’s coming up and having a bunch of stuff ready to go. Make it as easy for yourself as possible.

Have your envelopes or whatever you’re going to send it in, have loads of things made up already so that it’s as easy as possible.

Every time that ping goes off to remind you that it’s so and so’s wedding anniversary coming up, it’s not going to take you more than five or ten minutes to get it sorted and pop it in the post.

Surprise and delight works really well, because when people aren’t expecting something and then they receive something lovely, it really does make them feel good about you and your business. And that is the kind of customer service reputation we want. As I talk about a lot, Disney do this exceptionally well.

And that’s why people love Disney so, so much, because they’re great at doing it. So what can we do in our businesses to just give a little element of that surprise and delight to make our couples day?

Okay, next, I want to talk about what we do when things go a little bit wrong. Because we can set out expectations, we can set out boundaries, we can do all of these things.

We can try and give this level of customer service, but sometimes it’s still deranged rails. Sometimes couples expectations are out of control. Sometimes they’re rude to us. You know, there’s all sorts of things that could go wrong.

Sometimes other members of the family start getting involved. So how can we deal with that without entirely tarnishing this reputation for good customer service?

Because sometimes I think that’s what we’re afraid of. We’re afraid of a negative review. We’re afraid of people giving us a bad name.

So what can we do when some of these situations do go a little bit wrong? The first thing I would say is that I do think the old adage of the customer is always right is a good one.

Now, often the customer in our heads is not right, and we’re frustrated, and that’s fine. Rant it out. Rant it out to your family and friends. Rant it out to trusted wedding colleagues.

But try not to rant it out to the couple themselves, because in their heads, for whatever reason, they think they’re right. And if we all want to fight about who’s right, it’s definitely going to go downhill.

So that’s why that old saying, the customer’s always right is helpful to have in your head. Not that we let them take advantage of us at all, but that we try and take the professional approach and think, okay, in their head, they’re right.

Right? They’re coming at this for a certain reason. What’s behind that? Maybe they’re very stressed. Maybe they’ve got someone in their ear.

Maybe they’re panicked that we don’t exist anymore. Remember that they are the paying customer, and so we do have to give them a little bit of grace sometimes, even when it feels difficult.

So try not to say you’re wrong, because that will go down like a lead balloon. But instead, try and have that stance of the customer’s Always right, even though in your head you may think that they’re definitely not right.

But treat them with respect, treat them as if they’re right. And at least to start with and be professional.

The second thing that I say a lot when my one to one clients and members come to me about difficult situations is the first thing you’ve got to do is rip the emotion out of it. I think emotion gets in the way a lot, particularly for female business owners, but actually probably not just for female business owners.

Sometimes the emotion gets in the way of what we want to do or say because someone makes us feel bad or we feel guilty or we feel sad that they don’t like what we’ve done, or we feel defensive because they’re accusing us of stuff, that it doesn’t sit right with us. And when we’re sitting in the emotion, that’s when we reply things we regret or make decisions that aren’t sensible for our business.

We make decisions based in emotion rather than in logic. So you gotta strip the emotion out of it and try and think of it in black and white terms.

Imagine that you’re a big customer service center for a big brand like Tesco’s and act like they would because they’re not feeling emotional when someone sends a product back. They’re not feeling emotional when someone rants at them about the opening times of a shop because they’re so far removed, moved, they don’t care.

But when we’re so close to it, we feel it. We feel it in every being of our soul. So try and take the emotion out of it and look at the facts. What are the facts? What are they saying?

Take away any accusation, take away anything else. What are the facts and how can we fix it?

Now if you’re struggling to do this, then going to someone you trust who’s not so closely involved in the situation is a really helpful thing to do because often they’ll be able to see it for the logic and they will be able to strip out the emotion for it. I often do this for my members. I always say being in the Wedding Pro members lounge is kind of an insurance policy.

Yes, it’s great because you get all the training and the community, but also when something like this goes wrong, you’ve got that insurance policy that you can know, you can reach out to me, we can have a quick chat, we can look through it and I will help you deal with that situation and I will help you take the emotion out of it and work out your next steps. Once you’ve done that, you’ve taken the emotion out of it. You now need to refer back to the things you sent them at the beginning.

So as long as you sent a contract and as long as you’ve sent that onboarding document, you can look at what they’ve said and refer back to what you set out at the beginning and make a decision on how to proceed.

So, for example, if they’re set saying, I don’t like what you’re doing, I want to cancel, well, go back to your contract, look at the dates, look at what they signed, look at what they agreed to and work out what they need to do next and send them some options. Now, whenever you do this, before you reply to them, I also want you to assess the situation on circumstances.

Because we can be black and white and say, yep, well, it’s six weeks before and they haven’t paid, so they’re not getting any money back or whatever it is. That’s what my contract says and that’s fine, you can go down that route. You are entitled to.

But sometimes, just sometimes, there is circumstances which may be you have done something wrong, you’ve forgotten something, something massive has happened in their family and you may want to be slightly more lenient on your contract because of the situation.

So, for example, if someone message you and it’s a month before their wedding and suddenly they message you to say they need to postpone the wedding because there’s been a death in the family, you could go back and say, well, my contract says no postponement, so sorry, you still got to pay. Or you could assess the situation, decide whether you think it’s genuine and legitimate, have you got a good relationship with these people?

And perhaps in that circ circumstance you could say, look, I wouldn’t normally do this, it’s breaking my terms and conditions, but I am available for the new date in six months and on this occasion I will move it for you. That’s going to keep your customer service intact. It’s not going to make you lose out, particularly on any money.

And in that situation, it may be the right decision.

In other situations, when people are rude, dismissive, when they’ve been difficult customers, then maybe you do need to go a bit more hardball and stick to your terms and conditions. You don’t need to be horrible about it, you just need to set it out at the beginning.

This is what you agree to, this is what you signed, therefore you, you are needing to do X, Y, Z. But again, don’t put the emotion back into it, don’t say things like, oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. I’m really sad that you don’t like what I did.

Take the emotion out of it and keep it very straightforward and businesslike because that’s what will gain more respect from those people. The next thing you need to do is learn from it. Learn from what’s happened. Right?

We learn so much in business from mistakes that we make or things that go wrong. Often these circumstances, when they arise, we hadn’t even imagined that they were even possible. So what can we do to learn from it?

And what can we change in the future? Maybe it’s a line that needs to go into your contract. Maybe it’s something new that you need to add into your onboarding document.

Maybe you need to change the way that you word things on your website to set expectations more clearly from day one, maybe it’s that you’re not doing enough communicating with people in that big gap and they’re panicking and going elsewhere. So learn from the situations. Now.

Sometimes the situation will be that client was just a complete nightmare and I never want to work with someone like that again. Put it down to explain experience. Now you’ll know the signs and the red flags to look for in the future.

And if you see those behaviors come up again, maybe they’re not a client you want to sign. Going forward, you can part ways with clients if they’re being incredibly rude and breaking your boundaries. That’s a whole nother podcast episode.

But it’s not impossible to do that. You’re not shackled to these people as long as you do it in a fair and respectful way and you’re not taking advantage of people’s money.

So learn from the situation. But what do we do if someone is really angry with us and they leave us a bad review?

All I would say is if someone leaves you a bad review, that’s okay. Number one, it shows that your reviews are balanced. Because if it’s all five star reviews, sometimes it can look a bit sketchy.

But also often people can see through the bad review and make their own decision. But what you do need to do is respond to the review in a very calm, polite manner, setting out what you did to resolve the situation.

Or to say, we’d love to help you resolve the situation, we haven’t. This is the first we’ve heard about it. Please email us here and we can discuss it further.

If a potential client comes across that bad review and they can see how you’ve handled it, they can see that You’ve replied to it. They can see that it’s a crazy review. That won’t stop them working with you. So don’t be afraid of bad reviews if sometimes it happens.

If it does happen, just deal with it head on and don’t panic. Okay, A final few thoughts for you on good customer service. I want you to think about going above and beyond for all your clients.

One of the things that people say after they get married is that their suppliers, some of their supplies, just made them feel like a number. And I get it because sometimes you have 30, 30, 40, 50 weddings a year and it is just another wedding.

But to them, it’s the most important day of their life and they don’t want to feel like a number. So the little things that you do, the way that you go above and beyond, can make a huge difference. If you’re there on the wedding day.

Look out for everyone. Talk to people. Are they got grandparents that are sat in the corner and looking lonely. Go and say hello to them, chat to them. Go above and beyond.

Take them a drink, take them a snack if you’re working at a venue and make sure you’ve taken their photo. If you’re a photographer, make sure they’ve got a piece of cake.

I don’t know what it is for you, depends on your job, but look out for the those things. Remember all the small details. You go to weddings all the time.

If you see something that you could help with and isn’t going to interfere, maybe suggest it or help with it, keep smiling throughout the day. These people are on the happiest day of their life. They don’t want wedding professionals there who look miserable, fed up and tired.

You may feel miserable, fed up and tired at the end of a long wedding season, but for them, it’s the first day they’re getting married and you need to show up as if it’s your first day on the job. So keep smiling, keep positive.

And another great tip, particularly if you’re there on a wedding day or on a wedding morning, is to have a bag of tricks either in your car or on you, that you can solve little problems all the time.

So for example, how many weddings have you been at where someone needs a plaster, someone needs some paracetamol, someone needs a safety pin because something’s happened to their dress, someone needs some nail varnish remover. I don’t know what it is for you, but start collecting a few of these little items in a little bag that you can take along to a wedding day.

Because Then you are going to be the best customer service provider.

When they’re in panic mode, when they’ve suddenly cut their finger and they’re worried about getting it on the dress, you can pop out with your plasters straight away and give it to them when they’ve got a headache, because nervous, you can give the paracetamol. When something’s happened with their dress and they’re worried about it, you can be the one who’s there with the safety pin to save the day.

It won’t take much to put together this little bag and to have it on you every time you go to a wedding day.

And it will help someone in the future, maybe not at every wedding, but the wedding, when it comes into use, they are going to remember it and they’re going to thank you for it. One of the big mistakes that I think pros and venues make when it comes to weddings is sometimes we over promise and under deliver.

And that is a big no no when it comes to customer service. So going forward, I want you to have my mant, which is always under promise and over deliver. Don’t over promise and under deliver.

Under promise and over deliver.

So, for example, if you’re a photographer and you say to people, yep, normally I get the weddings back to you in two weeks and then it’s busy wedding season and it’s going to be six weeks, what you’ve done there is over promised and under delivered.

But if you say to everyone, I’m going to get your wedding back to you in eight weeks and you consistently deliver them at two to four weeks, wow, they’re going to be impressed because if you tell them two weeks, they’re going to get to the end of the two weeks and they’re going to be waiting. And now it feels like it’s late dates.

But if you tell them eight weeks and it arrives at two weeks, you’ve now done them an amazing service and given them an amazing gift. So what is it for you?

Maybe you’re a wedding dress shop and you know that the dresses don’t come in for so long or maybe say it’s slightly longer again and so that when it comes in early, you’ve helped them out. What you don’t want is to be telling people things have happened late. So what else can you do to under promise and over deliver?

Another example is I know an amazing DJ who sometimes takes photos and puts them on his DJ booth live during the event. Now, if he promises that he will do this as part of his package, it Puts additional pressure on him.

It means if things go wrong, he’s still got to deliver it, but if he doesn’t tell them that’s part of the package and then just does it on the night, it’s a surprise and delight. They love it, they’re really happy with it and he’s gone above and beyond in their mind.

Even if he’s trying to expect to do that every time, he’s saving himself from the pressure of over promising and under delivering. So what is it for you? What is it for you that you can do to under promise and over promote over deliver?

The wedding day’s happened, everything’s gone well, they’ve gone off on their honeymoon. Now what? Well, the final part in this customer journey is to offboard our clients.

Now, depending again on the level of service, the amount of money they’ve paid you, what part of the industry you’re in, you may just send them an off boarding email, you may just send them an email saying it was great to work with you, can you leave us a review?

Or for some of you, you may benefit from doing an off boarding call where you catch up with them, you find out what they liked about the wedding day and you could even record some of that if it’s on Zoom and use it on your social media.

If they’re saying great stuff about your service, it’s important that we don’t just leave them to be after the wedding, we’ve got to do some kind of offboarding. Even if it’s just a simple email that says it was great to work with you, thank you very much.

If you are happy with our service, please leave us a review. If you are going to ask for a review, make it as easy as possible for people. Make sure you just give them one place to leave a review.

Make sure it’s just one click and they get straight there. If they’ve already said something nice to you in an email, copy and paste it and say this was a lovely sentence.

Would you copy and paste it onto a Google review and leave them the link? Especially if they’ve got Gmail email address because it will take them less than 10 seconds.

Or if they’ve left you a review before and you’re now trying to get them to leave your review somewhere else because of wedding awards or something like that.

Then put their original review in the email and say would you mind copying and pasting this onto this link Because I’m trying to enter some wedding awards, make it as easy as possible for them.

The other thing, when it comes to reviews is sometimes it is hard to get them to leave reviews on these kind of sites, like Gmail, Google reviews or Facebook or directories. But sometimes people will just leave us reviews.

They’ll send us a text or they’ll send us an email, or they’ll send us a message, a voice note saying how amazing you did at their wedding. Well, these can also count as reviews. If you ask them, can I use this?

Just screenshot it, or screenshot it and take their details out and use it that way because they’ve said those things about you that still counts as a review, even if they haven’t left it in an official place. So don’t neglect those things. If someone says something amazing, screenshot it, or ask them, can I use this? Or my website.

Finally, the final thing I want to talk about is repeat business. Now, we are in the wedding industry and therefore repeat business isn’t easy to come by.

Most people only get married once and if they do get married multiple times, they’re probably going to use different suppliers. So how can we get repeat business from our own customer service?

Well, the first way is that if someone likes what we’ve done and they’re shouting about it all over social media, if they’re talking to all their friends about it, because we’ve gone above and beyond for them. Well, quite often when people get married, other people in their friendship group get married quite soon after. So that’s a great way to get things.

If you’re going above and beyond on this customer service, it may feel like a lot of time and energy for you, but if it’s leading to more work and more referrals is absolutely worth the time and the money that you put into it.

Also, if your customers are leaving you reviews that you’re then using on your social media in order to help you get future work, that’s also a benefit.

But there are a few formal things that you can try and do now, depending on your business, depending on how you work or operate, or depend whether or not you want to do these kind of things or not. But two things that I know businesses do that work for them. Number one, some businesses I know will actually reward people for giving reviews.

So they’ll either give them a voucher for something if they leave them a review within so long after the wedding, or they’ll say that there’s going to be a draw for everyone that leaves a review in the next three months and one of them is going to win an iPad or a £500 voucher. Something pretty worthwhile, people doing it for now, this can work and it will increase the amount of reviews you have.

Again, it’s up to you whether or not you think this would be something you’d want to do in your business, but it’s worth considering. The other thing that people do sometimes is referral gifts.

So for example, if I get married and then I have you as the photographer, you might say to me, becca, I hope you loved having us as a photographer. Thank you for your review.

If any of your friends book us and say that you recommended us, we’ll send you a bottle of champagne, a SPA Day voucher, 10 pound Amazon voucher, Starbucks. I don’t know what it is for you to say thank you because we really appreciate it when you spread the word for us.

Some people will go ahead and do that and that can be a really lovely way because if that leads you on to another couple of thousand pound booking, well, a 20 pound Amazon voucher is the least you can do to say thank you for that booking. Why not reward them for using you again for for something else?

They may not get married again, but maybe your service could be used for birthday parties, for wakes, for baby showers, christenings.

I don’t know what it is, but do you gift them a voucher or something like that that they can use towards booking you in the future for something else? Maybe you give them a discount or a piece of added value or say to them, if you use me again, then you know you’ve got a lifetime 10% off.

I don’t know what it is again, these things, you’ve got to take them and you’ve got to work out how they work in your business. But I do hope that it gives you some ideas about how you can more formally try and get people refer you on or to leave you a review.

That brings us to the end of our summer season. Going through the customer journey. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

We’ve gone in detail through all the different aspects and today has been all about customer service and going above and beyond.

The next couple you work with, try it out, go above and beyond, show how much you’re willing to do under promise and over deliver and I guarantee it will make a difference.

If you want to go through any of this stuff in more detail, you want to work with me one to one or find out more about joining the members lounge, reach out to me, I’m over on Instagram, echapoundey or head to the links in the show notes. We’ll be back to normal programming from next week, where I’ve got some more guests and exciting opportunities coming up.