Archive for 'Customer Service'

Get Your Customers to Say ‘Wow!

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 at 20:03  
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What is the WOW response? It is not that easy to figure out, is it? The wow response is ideally the kind of response that you would receive from the satisfied customer.

A customer, who walks into a shop, finds what he or she wants and is happy not only with what he or she has found but the entire shopping experience, and also a customer who has discovered the bonus of shopping in a way like never before.

This is the customer who will return again and again to the shop and would prefer to do all her shopping in the same place if possible or even let out a “WOW” every time she walks out of the shop after the shopping is done with.

How can your bottom line meet up to the needs of the response, wow?

One key way of accomplishing this is to manage to slip in as many promises as you can in your sale. The ideal would be to slip in as many promisable items that you can imagine your sale to carry with it.

Once you have done this, ensure that you under promise as in you list a week a delivery time when you merely need 4 days to do the same. Do not shy away from such promises as customers necessarily like them and when you work better than you promise they will be simply thrilled and delighted and you will be rewarded with that “wow” response for which you have been trying all this while.  

Work on the first impression that your concern is going to have on the potential customer.

You have to do up your place or site (whichever applicable) as well as possible. There should be every degree of comfort for the customer when he or she explores your shop.

The visitors should like the colors and the textures and everything your design could do should be aiming to soothe the shopping experience of your customer. You should also impress them sufficiently with your services and the kind of help you are offering your customers.

Your problem solving techniques should be optimized to ensure maximum satisfaction to your customers when they visit your place. Do not make your customer feel left out at any point ensuring that you do not cross over to interfering with her shopping. Thus you have to be friends with your customer more than anything else. Your customer when and if she does come back to your shop should recognize you immediately. So keep a habit of making friends with strangers or out of them in turn.

A wow response is further egged on by the value for money that the customer avails off her purchase from your enterprise.

Prices are constantly climbing nowadays and so you should be sufficiently geared up to display that though your price might seem to be high there is definitely more than expected in store for your customer.

Try and squeeze in gifts or something similar as extra for the best effects. This should be an extra and added over anyway in spite of price deductions.

Keep in touch with them. Try and call them again without being irritating. Birthdays, anniversaries are always a nice time to call.

But apart from thus, this should be a part of your service to call them when possible to find out about them and the product.

There you go, now you know how to get the wow response!


Keep Your Customers Happy

Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 17:59  
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You want to please all of your customers, but the problem is they are all different and unique. Pleasing all of them is impossible. Rather select a small segment and try to please them and automatically the number of happy customer grows.

I know of quite a few experienced business men who usually take a feedback from their customers. This is an excellent method of knowing the needs of the customer but the feedback must be used with discretion. 

However, some business men may make the mistake in taking each suggestion very seriously and thus constantly change their product line and business practices. But this constant change may make the businesses unstable and cause frustration, extra cost and extra work.

Customer feedback is important but their interpretation is critical. You can’t please every one rather try to please those you can. Find out the customer need and then streamline the products and services.

Be intelligent in business. Get focused on what needs to be done and the profits will grow. Choose quality over quantity. Try to please the one’s you can. Trying to please everyone will end up pleasing no one. Create a better strong business by combining your strength and majority of customer needs.

Let’s take here an example of a business woman who owned a jewelry store. She has an expertise on diamonds and 60% of her clientele come for that. She also keeps other gold and silver jewelry. She should have been more focused on diamonds and not dilute her market with other things, and grown bigger. 

She could have done surveys which are diamond oriented and could have become the biggest diamond retailer in the neighborhood, by just adjusting her focus.

Always try to focus on your strengths rather than weaknesses. You’ll prosper as a brand and bigger service provider.

Do your best to please people and leave the one’s you can’t. You’ll have more happy customers and strong and stable business.

Here are some tips:

  • You can’t please everyone, so only try to please those you can.
  • Find out your customer requirements.
  • Eliminate ideas that are not focused on customer’s desires.
  • Build on the areas that cater to customer needs.

Here are some important points you should keep in mind while customer handling:

  • Everyone is different and unique.
  • Customer feed back is essential but your interpretation of that is critical.
  • Pleasing everyone is not possible so try to please the one’s you can and you’ll end up with more happy customers.

You must combine your strength and desire of majority of customers to create a better and strong business.


Customer Service Lifetime Value

Saturday, May 16th, 2009 at 22:31  
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Are you aware of the lifetime value of a customer? If by now you have not given a serious thought, it’s time you do now. Customers are the king. They can make or break your business and there’s no two ways about it.

If you already know that, I can bet you do take extra care of each and every customer of yours. There is a simple formula that could do the trick for you and let’s see how it works.

While making our sales we need to show it to our customers that we have something always ready to improve the situation.

You will be surprised once you find out the worth of each customer. To find out the value of the customer one needs to know two pieces of information. We first need to know the average a customer does a year and next we need to know how long the average customer does business with us.

Once you have managed to get this vital piece of information you need to multiply both the values. The product of the two values would determine the lifetime value of the customer. Customers are like gold, precious!

By retaining all our customers we can add value in two ways. There is a definite way to increase business. To do so, one needs increase the frequency and value of the orders. Another way in which you could duplicate good customer is by referral and introducing new business.

It is very important to build strong customer relations. A business research shows it is much more difficult to keep an old customer than to find a new one. It’s sad and humiliating if we lose our customers to poor salesmanship.

The success of our business depends on how often we keep in touch with our customers. The main purpose of the article is to remind us of the importance of keeping in touch with our customer, as this would bring them back.

One should keep in mind that our competitors are always striving to take away our best customers, so the trick lies in keeping them like vintage playing cards. We should set in top priority to thank our customers for their business. It is our duty and we could easily find out how much they mean to us by simply multiplying. This calculation would help you to find out how much your top customers are worth. 


Understanding Your Customers

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 19:38  
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The inability to know your customers is the greatest loss, you, as a potential service provider can face. Since you are nothing without your customer, your first priority should be to know them and what they want and expect from your company or product.

Moreover, knowing them not only increases your chances of selling them more goods, leading to your profit, but also causing the inflow of more customers through recommendation. Hence getting to know your clients, greeting and treating them to their liking is crucial to the success of your business venture.

This kind of rapport with your client is even more essential if you keep in mind the nature and the degree of aggressive marketing your fellow business rivals conduct everyday. Your primary asset in business are your clients, this is because if you know their mentality and gauge their buying trends and their preferences, you have the market in hand.

This kind of valuable customer information will also enable you to replenish stock, get the most viably trendy products in the market, thereby satisfy your customers and in the process entice them into come back again to be serviced.

Moreover not knowing your customers will only hinder your chances at success to a greater degree because if you do not know what pleases your customer, you will never know how to approach them. Some might like curt matter of fat dealings, while another might like that occasional chitchat and “hello.”

So if you do not know who likes what you will only end up causing them dissatisfaction and yourself economic loss, due to sheer ignorance and simple lacking of planning. Moreover if you sit down and think about it this abstract ‘market’ that you talk about is no one but the sum total of your customers. So if you want to target the market, then this is the bunch you have to satiate and cater to.

What your customer says is very important for you and your overall success. After finishing one deal you instinctively try to convince them to buy something else; this is only natural and can be called maximizing profit.

But what you should also be doing simultaneously is trying to egg out information about their economic status, what they can afford and what not, what thy need next in their household which might come from your shop.

All this will help you in fixing future deals with them and wooing them back to your shop. So always engage in conversation with them and most importantly listen to them, they might be unconsciously divulging information that might eventually give you an edge over you’re your next door rival service provider. 


Customer Relationship – Important?

Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 23:40  
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It is said nowadays that whether one buys a cup of coffee, a holiday, a house or a car the decision of purchasing has to be emotional. More importantly it is a crucial factor in customer retention and loyalty. Customer satisfaction is the underpinning factor in customer experience. Customer should feel good in doing business with the product or the service provider.

While purchasing rationality, reflection, judgment of pros and cons do play a part but it has to have an emotional side to it. One’s gut feeling, intuition, sense and interaction plays a significant role in buying.

In every single encounter what the customer feels or doesn’t feel is directly related with the service provider’s managerial capability and handling of customer expectations. Customer experience doesn’t end in keeping a smiley face or having a soft tone while communicating with an irate customer.

It must make the customer whoever they are feel the most important person at that time through operation, transaction and behavior. Addressing a fickle customer who is like “I want it now and can’t wait” and their emotions is not easy and can not be handled by an individual manager. Reaching this emotional goal requires an entire company’s effort which should exceed beyond product quality and protocols.

Before a service provider can decide the best way to achieve this customer satisfaction must decide what exact reaction they want to create every time an encounter occurs. It can be said that customer satisfaction survey and market research can provide the data for that. But sadly enough, these kind of data do not help much, and especially at an emotional level.

Drivers of satisfaction and loyalty must be looked deeply into by the service providers. A good insight into the subject will show that a whole bunch of different factors lead to the sense of satisfaction and loyalty. Expectations, needs and reaction to the organization and the perceived value received by the customer would be some of them. 

The basic requirement for customer satisfaction then shifts from product, service quality, value-for-money, hygiene factors, etc which are common for everyone to creating an emotional, personal and psychological connection with the customer which makes them feel satisfied and loyal. To respond to the emotional approach of the customers the company must have a consistent, differentiated, valued and completely intentional outlook towards customers. This is the best way of dealing with unreasonable, shrewd, specious and feelings based drivers that authenticate the buying decision. 


Call Centers – Satisfied Customers Generate Revenue

Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 21:30  
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A call center is a physical place where customers are dealt by customer care experts, normally with the help of computer automation. Characteristically, a call center has the power to manage a high volume of incoming calls at the same time, to separate out calls and send on them to someone specified to address their concerns also to log calls. These call centers are largely used by companies which are deals on telemarketing, product help desk, on line marketing, service providers, travel industries, and every large business organization that uses the phone to sell products or provide services.

A great call center is mainly depends upon some factors like efficiency, customer satisfactions and revenue generation. The efficiency or the ability to handle customers with effectiveness without wasting time, effort and expense can make any call center bonafide and adequate. Every customers looks for quick and efficient answers to their questions and that is known as customer satisfaction services.

Customer satisfaction takes place when a call delivered the exact answer to the question placed by a customer, whenever they want it. Highly skilled customer care representatives can easily understand the fact that the customer does not perpetually enunciate what they want, sometimes one need to comprehend and should act effectively. Now a days, the scripts are being provided to every calling agent for the purpose of saving time and also giving exact information’s to their customers. However, sometimes one need to understand or determine the reason of being contacted in first place to help him/her right way. If customer representative can understand the exact concern of the customer, they can easily help them justly and this will produce a satisfied customer for any call centers.

To get revenue upon your investment you must have to satisfy your every customers in today’s World because customers are main asset of any successfully organization. As the revenue generation is the one and only bottom line of any organization and begetting revenues is impossible without satisfied customers and the more effective the call center, the more time is usable for the same. To intact the bottom line you must find ways to satisfy your customers to grow your business. If you are unable to provide solutions for customer satisfaction services then the wise idea is to outsource call center services from quality call centers.

Tina Hope is writing articles for Call Centers India Inc. (CCI), a globally recognized call center services provider produce quality agents that serves quality service with little waste of time and energy. Inspired and impelled to satisfy customers’ needs effectively, ensuing to additional and continuous revenue for clients.

Customer Service Strategies

Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 21:55  
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Here are some simple practices that you might add to your customer service routine..

Customers are kind of funny. They will rarely tell you how you messed up, they will simply leave. Poof…gone! 
No matter what the size of your firm there are ways to get to the bottom of this problem. 

Call them. Talk to them. Mail them. Do your maintenance. 

Don’t just take the order and run. Remember, it is a lot easier and a whole lot more profitable to do more business with your existing clients than it is to find new ones. So, do whatever it takes to make sure those existing clients are happy campers. 

Here are a few simple practices that you might consider adding to your customer service routine: 

1. A week after a client buys a product or service, follow-up.

Ask them what worked, what didn’t. 

It’s an interesting fact of business but, sometimes, as long as people get the chance to tell you what’s wrong and you do what it takes to fix it, they may become some of your most loyal customers. 

2. Send postcards, letters, article reprints, notes, whatever, as often as you can.

By staying in touch you create a bond that will serve you well when you launch new ventures and new product lines. 

3. The most powerful yet cheapest research you can get.

Talking to your customers about what works and what doesn’t work is the greatest way to find hidden gold mines in your industry. Understanding very specifically why people choose to buy from you over others is the secret to marketing. 

Be on particular lookout for phrases like…that’s how we’ve always done it or we don’t like it but we’ve just come to live with it. 

4. Schedule routine maintenance appointments or calls with your clients. 

Often after your clients have been enjoying your product or service they forget how much value it is bringing them. Find a way to build regular meetings with your clients into your service. Use the time to educate them on just how much you have done for them. (How much weight have they lost, how much money have they saved, how much more efficient are they, how much more business they now have, how much of what ever it is that you do) 

They will appreciate the time and it is a great way to introduce new products and ask for testimonials and referrals. 

5. Find out everything you can about your clients. 

Don’t stop at name, rank and serial number. Devise a method for collecting personal information about your clients. Information about a client’s spouse, children, hobbies, schools, community involvement can be a tremendous way to further your relationship and offer clues for networking and referrals. 

You don’t have to be intrusive or nosey to make this strategy work, sometimes you just have to be observant. Most people wear their allegiances on their sleeve. Any sales trainer worth a darn will tell you to look for ways to strike a common bond with a prospect as a selling tool, I find that as a customer service tool you are simply looking for ways to get a deeper understanding of the needs of your client as a way to uncover more ways to help them get what they want.   

About the Author

John Jantsch is a marketing coach and creator of the Duct Tape Marketing System. Download your free copy of “How To Create the Ultimate Small Business Marketing System in 7 Simple Steps” at http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com.


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