Customer Service Archives

Customer Tested Buying Triggers – 2

Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 22:28  
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6 Allow your visitors’ experience to be an enjoyable one at your web site. Provide easy navigation, good content, fast loading graphics, search options, etc. You could offer online games that are related to your web sites theme. You could offer prizes to the high scorers too.

7 Keep changing or adding freebies to your web site. If people see the same freebie in your ads they will say to themselves, “Been there, done that”. For example, you could introduce a new freebie every month. People will revisit every month to get the new freebie.

8 Add a directory to your web site. When visitors submit their web site, e-mail them confirming their link has been added and remind them to revisit. In your e-mail you could mention a product you are selling. You could also always send them an e-mail again to remind them to resubmit their listing when it expires (if the listings do).

9 Organize your marketing and advertising into a plan. Create a list of daily, weekly, monthly and all other future promotional plans. Try to follow your plan step-by-step every day. This will free up your time by being more systematic and organized. If the plan isn’t working, don’t be afraid to tweak it some.

10 Trade links only with web sites that you or your target audience would visit. They should offer their visitors valuable content or freebies. There is nothing wrong with filling your web site up with outside links if they’re are interesting and helpful to your target audience.

More to come soon…


Customer-Tested Buying Triggers – 1

Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 21:36  
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Customer-Tested Buying Triggers: 

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1 Offer to write exclusive articles (that means you only submit them to one place) for high traffic web sites in exchange for a link back to your site. You could also target high subscriber e-zines if they include your resource box. These publishers will publish them quicker because they will be the only ones with this content.

2 Create a positive online image. Tell your visitors about fundraisers you have sponsored or that you donate a part of your profits to charity. For example, you could say, “We regularly attend fundraisers and donate about 10% of our profits to charities and aid organizations.”

3 Improve your customer service on a regular basis. Try out new technologies that make it easier to communicate with your customers over the net.  For example, you could communicate with your customers or visitors by phone, instant message, web site messages, chat rooms, message boards, video conferencing, fax, e-mail, etc.

4 Ask your customers what they would like to see offered by your business in the future. This type of information can boost your sales. For example, you could find out they are interested in buying DVDs from your business. You could contact a DVD supplier and start selling them as back-end products.

5 Make sure your web host isn’t losing your sales. If you get an e-mail from someone who told you that they couldn’t access your site, it might be your host. You should ask them what kind of tracking or back-up system they use to make sure your web site is always up and running for business.

More  Customer-Tested Buying Triggers in a few days…


Handling Customer Complaints

Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 16:05  
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Customer complaints are generally difficult for small businesses to handle. Where the staff is small and there is a lot of direct personal contact with the customer, any customer complaint tends to be taken personally and causes frustration and disappointment for the staff. So what is the way out?

The crucial first step to handling customer complaints effectively is to admit and acknowledge the reaction of disappointment or failure that the complaints produce in you. This will allow you to address the complaint objectively without being defensive or feeling hurt.

Ensuring customer satisfaction is a guaranteed means to cultivate and maintain loyal and returning customers, so you have to take care that your customers feel and believe that you are very serious and attentive about their complaints.

If you can make them feel that you respect their problems irregardless of the nature of the specific complaint, you can by extension make a statement about your respect and concern for them as individual human beings.

By building your personal relation with them when thy complain, you stand to ensure that they return to do business with you and have a high opinion of you rather than severing links with you or giving you a hard time.

Here are 10 tips to deal with customer complaints

  1. Allow the customer to have their say and blow off steam. Show interest and listen attentively to them, no matter what.
  1. Apologize clearly for the situation and express regret for any inconvenience caused. You do not need to admit that your organization or anyone from its staff is wrong, but do apologize.
  1. Use active listening and repeat to the customer the complaint that they just made. This way you ensure that the customer understands the fact that you have understood their complaint.
  1. Get the facts straightened out by questioning courteously but effectively. This ensures that you get to the heart of the customer’s problem, and there is no misunderstanding anywhere. Often, the stated problem could have different strands or issues. Make sure that you identify and grasp the most important aspects.
  1. Always maintain an open and friendly tone and manner, and never lose your composure especially if the customer is heatedly angry.
  1. Do not enter into any argument with the customer and do not become defensive. In a service-department this is one of the hardest things to master, but is essential for people who receive the complaints.
  1. Try to fathom exactly how the customer wants his or her complaint to be dealt with and also what they expect from you next: do they want their money refunded, do they want an exchange, or do they want a cut in price, etc.
  1. Be very clear about your position and your options: explain to the customer precisely what can be done and what can’t be done by you.
  1. Do not ever impose upon the customer your own solution without paying any heed to their demands. Try and reach a solution with and for the customer, something which they find acceptable.
  1. Sum up the situation, both the problem and your offered solution, and verify that customer understands and agrees to the solution. Try and ensure that the customer finds the solution apt and helpful.

Can Customer Service Can Be Detrimental To Your Business?

Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 23:44  
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Succeeding at business for the long term involves being able to make profits on a continuous basis.  Being able to make quality products that have a high-perceived value can go a long way toward enabling your business to be profitable.

However, as important as developing quality products are to making your business viable for the long-term, it’s equally as important to ensure that your customer service representatives are professional, courteous, knowledgeable, and patient toward your customers and prospects.  This will greatly increase the chances of those customers and prospects to buy from you again.

If your customer service representatives are not professional, courteous, knowledgeable, and patient with your customers and prospects, it’s very likely they’ll go elsewhere for the products and/or services they need.  Even if your product or service is top-of-the-line, the unprofessionalism displayed by your customer service representatives will very likely trump the quality of your product/service and encourage your customers and prospects to look elsewhere for a comparable product/service.

This is how your company can lose profits, even with a quality product or service.  Customers and prospects want to feel like they are being taken care of, that the business cares about them and their needs.  

Unprofessional, rude, and inattentive customer service representatives will send the wrong message about your company to those customers and prospects, as they’ll start to think that the whole company is inattentive toward their wants and needs.  This will drive them away from your business, which can greatly cripple a business’ viability long-term and something that you need to avoid at all costs, so make sure your customer service representatives are professional, knowledgeable, courteous, and patient with your customers and prospects to make your business viable long-term.

For more information on how poor customer service can result in the downfall of your business, check out “Customer Service Profits.”


Basic Question: What is Customer Service?

Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 23:38  
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When you run a business, online or offline, the main goal is to make as much profit as you can from that business.  The best way to make the most money is to have customers come back to you time and again.  These recurring profits will enable your business to survive and thrive.

However, to gain those recurring customers, they need to have had a positive experience with you the first time they purchased from you.  Certainly, the quality of the product has to be high for them to consider purchasing from you again, but an equally important factor is how well the customer service treated them.

Customers want to be treated like they are special, so they expect quality customer service who can answer their questions and who can assist them when they have a problem.  

If it’s an offline business, it could be answering a question about which type of product has a better performance record or aiding a customer in finding a specific item.  

If it’s an online business, it could be answering a question about the compatibility of a software program working with a specific web host or helping a customer install that software on his/her web server.

Essentially, customer service is being able to help the customer get the most from his/her purchase and help potential customers gain all the information they need to make an educated purchase of a product or service.  Without quality customer service, your business cannot survive and thrive in the long-term.

For more information on how customer service can affect your profits, check out “Customer Service Profits.”


Customer Service Profits for YOUR Business

Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 22:45  
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Get “Custome Service Profits” Now!

Want to Know the Secrets to Fierce Customer Loyalty?

Are you worried about your business’ reputation and customer loyalty because you just can’t seem to strike that necessary balance between customer service spending and customer service productivity?

Quality Customer Service is Absolutely Crucial to Your Business Success!

Your customers need clear answers, quick response times, and that personal touch that makes shopping with you an enjoyable experience that they will come back for (and recommend to friends and family)!

Think about your current customer service set up. Is it as effective and cost-efficient as it could be? Chances are, it’s not. If you’re not maximizing your customer service set up to increase profit and customer loyalty, you are literally throwing your money away!

The success of your business depends on your ability to keep your customers satisfied. In today’s busy marketplace, consumers refuse to settle for second-rate customer service, and if they can’t get the timely answers, refunds or exchanges, and top-notch customer service experience with you, they won’t hesitate to take their business elsewhere!

You may be thinking, “I know excellent customer care is integral to my business’ success and survival, but how do I know what changes to make to keep my customers happy? What do I do?”

Fortunately, the answers to those questions are right here at your fingertips!

Customer Service Profits by LotCon Biz Solutions

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Customer Service Profits tells you “How to Create Wildly Loyal and Profitable Customers!”

Inside this book you’ll find everything you need to know to revolutionize your customer service offerings so that you can cut costs and attain an explosive level of profits while ensuring unmatched customer loyalty.

Discover Critical Customer Service Tricks Like:

bullet The optimal time frame for responding to a customer inquiry

bullet Vital tips to avoid miscommunications with customers

bullet How to turn an angry customer into a happy, loyal-for-life customer

bullet Simple ways to dramatically reduce the time demands on customer service reps

bullet Essential customer care expressions that build your business’ reputation

bullet How to plan a customer service rotation that slashes your expensewhile increasing customer satisfaction

Happy, Loyal Customers are the Single Greatest Asset
Your Business Can Aquire.

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Success!

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LotCon Biz Solutions

 



Enhance Customer Relations with Promotional Items

Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 17:27  
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In case you’re in search of promotional items for your business you would be bombarded with a wide range of products. For handling this situation you need to carefully select any one of your product.

This should be a suitable gift to the employees or customers printed with the business information. If you want to have a strong ground in this competitive world where there is always a cut throat competition select the right promotional item. This item should give you the right kind of impetus and it should be unique by itself.

If the selection of your promotional gift is perfect, I can bet that this will help you to develop a better customer relationship.

Make sure that there are different gift for number of different reasons. Organizations have it planned to gift their employees for special events and also as an incentive to hard work.

Companies use various promotional gifts for their staff. This is a common practice in appreciating the work of other individual performance professional. This definitely enhances customer relationship.

Strategically presenting a promotional gift to your business partner or your client would be very helpful. This gesture may be remembered and would be to your advantage so that the next time you contact either of them they would welcome you helpfully.

You should know the branding exercise if you wish to survive in this corporate world. It is an intelligent device of getting your company’s name in the forefront.

Gifting these promotional items can be handy as they would be great marketing tools for your company. The basic idea of promotional items is backed with the idea of providing something new with every single purchase.

Make sure that your promotional item goes with the theme of your business. It should also have the perceived value.

Promotional items are usually helping the infomercials. Infomercials are the ones you see on TV.

Most of the companies use the promotional items in a handy way. They do extensive research and they use these items to the capacity. By making the maximum use of these promotional gifts, the majority of the companies benefit.

In case you have been callous in doing your market research you could find that your promotional item has no parity with your main item. This could be disastrous and create a big hindrance for your company’s reputation. 


Why Email is Killing your Service Support Business

Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 23:13  
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We live in a world of technology. Nowadays people choose to click online to research, to chat, the shop, to be informed, to be entertained and to connect to others. While cyberspace is thriving in almost every single way possible, if is also slowly killing your business. 

And the culprit is Email. 

Although email may be extremely convenient, inexpensive and effective, it is actually doing more harm than good. 

Read on to discover the top three ways that email is killing your business.

1. It’s unreliable: You never can tell if your email was sent through. Emails are constantly getting lost in cyber space. There are problems with connection, with servers and with your customer’s servers. 

Sometimes a customer will send an email and you will not get it for days. Furthermore, sometimes your reply will get lost. 

Either way, the customer will blame you and this miscommunication error will result in an unhappy customer and a lack of sales. 

2. It’s not personal: Emails are so standard these days that we forget how personal a real live conversation can be. When you receive an email, it is hard to determine the tone, emotion and feeling in the email. 

Customers are left wondering if your response is a generic email, an auto-response or an actual, personal attempt to solve the solution. This can be extremely frustrating for the customer.

3. It’s not in “real time”: Emails are quick; there is no denying this. However, they are still not in ‘real time’ meaning the response time can vary depending on when the reader receives the email and replies to it. This can be anywhere between 10 minutes and 10 years. 

Of course, when replying to customer inquiries with emails, you always reply within a standard period, say 24 hours; however, this is still not a real time solution. 

Often a customer needs help now, not whenever the email is answered. 

So what’s the solution to this?  Simple. Help Desks. 

Help Desks fix all of these email-related problems. They are reliable as someone is always there to answer a customer’s call. There is no more confusion or worry about whether your email went through. 

Furthermore, they are personal as each customer complaint is handled in an individual fashion. Speaking one on one to a customer service rep will allow the customer to feel connected and prove to the customer that your company cares about them. Speaking to a real person can work wonders in the customer service sector. 

Finally help desks are in real time. That is, when a customer calls, they will be connected to someone immediately. There are no long response times while the customer waits for a sales rep to log on and check their email. 

A customer inquiry should be answered the moment they place it. That way you are proving to them that you care about their problem right then, and that you are dedicated to helping find a solution now, not later. 

Help Desks are the perfect way to ensure your customers complaints and inquiries are taken care of in a professional and personal manner.


Loyalty Marketing Program

Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 05:13  
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What is it that does best for your commercial enterprise? Often you have wondered about it and wandered about the various options that are coming up in front of you. You might think a good and efficient labor force or simply technology or something simpler like advertisement.

But the truth as we found out was that if a company can develop a sincere and loyal client base, not only will the sales increase manifold by virtue of direct sales to these clients but in fact they will also preach about your company and make it famous enough to draw sales.

Loyalty marketing has for such reasons become such a concern nowadays. In the present stature of competition it becomes important to sustain a group of extremely dedicated clients who have a strong bond with the company and help spread it and recover sales figures. They also last the longest.
 
Your loyalty marketing strategy should be well planned out and devised with due attention paid to every aspect possible. For this you need to know a few things. To begin with you have to know with what frequency your customers and which ones are returning to your enterprise to make purchases.

Offer special services to your valued customers and you’ll see them responding positively in turn. Thus you craft an efficient two-way system that facilitates al your transactions in future.

At no point should it look to them that this is becoming a sole money-garnering tactic on your part. There should be considerable attention you pay to their requirements too.

Your strategy should be important in how you approach your customers to ask them to refer you to new customers. There are 4 basic measures by which strategy is devised. These are:

  • Customer behavior tracking: To facilitate loyalty marketing, there needs to be a definite attempt to locate your consumers and especially the loyal ones. You have to find out the expenses he/she incurs on your products. Their behavioral dimensions and attitudes towards the company should b noted simultaneously. This way you know in advance who is impressed enough and who is not.
  • Measurement: Keep a track of the performance objectives that your company is trying to accomplish. Also find out the customers’ retention analysis data. These will enable you to track what is working against your concern.
  • Dialogue Marketing: Make sure you are sending the right signals and the right ideas to your preferred customers. Also crucial is that you are sending them at the right time.
  • Customer Rewards and Benefits Programs: Match the needs and the requirements of your loyal customers and offer them bonus and other gift items that will always please the customer concerned and act as incentives for them to push your firm.
  • Loyalty brochure: There should be separate loyalty brochures that you could deal out amongst your customers to tell them what’s in store for them.
  • Customer Rewards and Benefits Programs: For loyalty marketing, this is a very helpful platform for your loyal customers to actually earn or reap rewards from your company that is actually particularly matched to every individual customer’s needs and preference.

Art of Customer Follow-up

Saturday, May 30th, 2009 at 05:07  
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One of the most important factors of Customer Management in business is building up of customer loyalty through follow-up. This field is increasingly gaining prominence since companies now recognize the importance of customer retention, which in turn, leads to new customers.

This type of marketing, which relies more on turning first-time buyers into loyal future customers instead of merely acquiring new customers, is called Relationship Marketing. 

The processes undertaken by a company to handle its customers is called Customer Relationship Management. One of the most common and important processes of Customer Relationship Management is sending a letter.

Though it sounds simple, it helps in bringing many first time buyers back to a particular company. A few things that might be introduced in a letter to induce customers to buy again are:

  • A sincere thank you, welcoming customers to the company’s services and assuring them that they are the most important part of a company.
  • A feedback form, which enables the customer to directly offer his opinions on the services and products of the company. This, in turn, may offer valuable suggestions to be kept in mind for new customers.
  • An assurance that your company was easily the best bet and the customer was, in fact, correct in opting for your company. This helps building up the customer’s confidence that this is the best company for his/her required product.
  • A time-limited offer which introduces a sense of urgency in the customer’s mind. Asking them to grab an offer within a particular time-period raises the customer’s interest. Introducing the same offer in more than one letter with varying levels of urgency (each being more urgent than the previous one) makes the customer excited about the offer as well.
  • A general follow-up merely asking whether the customer is happy and satisfied with the product purchased helps in building up of customer faith.
  • Additional references to other products (by your own company) shows that the company cares abut customer comfort and the personalized needs of the customer.
  • Asking the customer to refer the company to somebody they know, is also a good idea to promote not only customer faith but also introduce new buyers to your company. The customer might also be “rewarded” for his/her effort by giving them a discount on their next purchase (this also ensures customer loyalty.) Using a coupon in the letter encourages customers to pass them on if they don’t require them.

Statistics also show that companies who get back to customers making inquiries about their products and services also gain customer loyalty. By making note of potential buyers, the company also gains a reputation of good service and excellent customer care. 

Any company’s main objective should be to promote a sense of security in the customer. It is important, therefore, that you make your customers feel comfortable, so that they keep coming back to your company, bringing in new references as well. After all, ‘the customer is always right’!


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