Do your clients rave your the best?
The rat race – most of us are a part of it. People are constantly striving for the new ‘edge’ in business – that certain something that will make them stand out a little bit more than their competitor. Many small businesses put so much money into marketing in hopes of obtaining their next big sale, and then end up really upset when their efforts fall short. But is it all worth it? Are we getting any wiser, or making our jobs any easier?
Let’s face it: business is competitive – but the truth of the matter is that it doesn’t have to be exhausting. There are two big factors that I feel make or break a business; “raving fan service” and being the best.
A common thread that most people can attest to is that we all lead crazy, busy lives. People are constantly on the go. There is your work life, personal time, spiritual time, family life, and socializing. It can be overwhelming to fit it all in! But here is the trend that most companies fail to realize – people want to be taken care of. Everything nowadays has a very “retro” feel to it. Cars, clothing and even appliances are looking very similar to what they used to. Even television shows we all watched are becoming blockbuster films. Why? Because it reminds people of a time when they used to be taken care of – a time of “Sunday night” dinners with the family, where you have roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, and warm pie for dessert. A time, where things seemed more relaxed and the “ol’ fashion values” seemed to be more prevalent. So let me ask you, does your business create that pampered feeling for your customer? What do you do that is above and beyond people’s expectations? Services you offer aren’t enough – your customers expect that – it’s what they pay you for. Your clientele needs to rave about what you do! I highly recommend the book, “Raving Fan Service” by Ken Blanchard. It’s an easy read on how to have your clients rave about what you do. This is so important because it will generate referrals for you and have people in your town talking about – you! This will assist your community in viewing you as the best – which brings me to my next point.
Let’s play out a scenario for just a moment: Who is the most important person in your life right now? Imagine that this person had a serious disease (heaven forbid!) and there were only two doctors in the world that knew what to do with it. The first, in Switzerland costs over one hundred thousand dollars for the operation – and has a flawless track record. The other, nearby to you is much cheaper but…the track record isn’t the best; this doctor has lost a few people. Now let me ask you this; how fast would you be on that plane to Switzerland? Read more
Customer Service for the Independent Retailer
I consider myself to be a professional buyer. One who knows how to research like products and compare their value against each other and my needs. This tends to reduce the value a retailer can offer me.. You may be asking yourself “why is he saying this to his clients?” Well, let me tell you why.
I am a product of the poor customer service many of today’s retailers offer. I can’t trust that I will get accurate information from sales clerks, so I have been forced to fend for myself.
Poor customer service is so prevalent that just today my wife told me a story that shocked me about a shopping experience her sister had recently. Her sister went to a well known children’s chain that she shops at regularly to purchase some clothes for her daughter.
Toward the end of the point of sale transaction the sales clerk told her the total, which included some fraction of a dollar. She was holding cash in her hand and set it down on the counter to see if she had the exact change. She did have the exact amount in cash, but when she handed it to the sales person, the sales person became aggravated with her and said that it was too late, that she had already entered the dollar amount. Read more
How Shopkeepers Can Unite and Provide Discounts to Loyal Customers
Many retailers and shopkeepers are quite receptive to the idea of uniting, and working together to provide discounts to their shared customers. Shopkeepers are beginning to realize that this is the only way for them to compete with bigger retail chains opening up all across the nation. The problem is however, that most shopkeepers simply do not know how to go about doing this. There is a very simple solution however, and one that has already proven to be effective. That solution is a rewards program.
Many credit cards companies and bank issued debit cards are now offering rewards programs to their users. This usually works by rewarding you with points for every dollar you spend using that particular credit or debit card. Points can later be redeemed online for great prizes; anything from gift certificates, frequent flyer miles, hotel room stays, car rentals, even high end electronics, vacations and in some cases, cash back is even offered as a reward. And as a result of implanting such reward programs, credit and debit card companies alike have seen an increase in card usage like never before.
This is an ideal solution for shopkeepers and local retailers to unite, work together, and provide their customers with discounts. By creating some kind of card to distribute to their customers, shopkeepers can keep track of purchases not only at their stores but any “partner” establishments as well. And as you can see, any number of prizes or rewards can be offered in exchange for loyal service.
Tactical Uses of Telemarketing
Like any outsourcing decision, retaining outside telemarketing services
should be subject to cost/benefit analysis. Evaluating the costs may be a complex process in some cases, but it is at least a quantifiable side of the equation. Less readily quantifiable are the benefits.
While ultimately the goal is that some benefits can be quantified in terms of sales results, it is useful to recognize that there may be additional, tactical benefits to be gained by outsourcing telemarketing. Only when these broader implications are understood can a full cost/ benefit analysis take place.
The goal of this white paper is to provide a framework for telemarketing outsourcing decisions. By detailing some of the broader, tactical benefits of retaining outside telemarketing services, this paper will both provide a template for fully-realized cost/benefit analysis, and suggest criteria for selection of a telemarketing company.
Comparing Costs and Benefits of Telemarketing Options
Comparing the cost side of in-house vs. outsourced telemarketing operations is relatively straightforward. In particular, where a company has a history of in-house telemarketing operations, there is an established budget which can be compared against outside telemarketing quotes. Even where there is no existing internal operation as a basis for comparison, a pro-forma budget can be formulated for comparison against telemarketing quotes.
Make Your Customer a Fan
In his article “Seven Steps to Remarkable Customer Service,” Joel Spolsky suggests that businesses should “make the customer a fan.” He tells a story about ordering shirts for a trade show. When the shirts came in, the colors were off on the logo and they were unacceptable. The mistake had been his, not the company who made them, but they let him return them for full credit anyway and shipped the order FedEx so it would get there in time for the trade show only two days away. Spolsky continues on by saying:
When customers have a problem and you fix it, they’re actually going to be even more satisfied than if they never had a problem in the first place.
It has to do with expectations. Most people’s experience with tech support and customer service comes from airlines, telephone companies, cable companies, and ISPs, all of whom provide generally awful customer service. It’s so bad you don’t even bother calling any more, do you? So when someone calls Fog Creek, and immediately gets through to a human, with no voice mail or phone menus, and that person turns out to be nice and friendly and actually solves their problem, they’re apt to think even more highly of us than someone who never had the opportunity to interact with us and just assumes that we’re average.
Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to actually make something go wrong, just so we have a chance to demonstrate our superior customer service. Many customers just won’t call; they’ll fume quietly.
The Importance of Effective Communication and Effective Listening in Customer Care
Communication has been a business buzzword forever. You can go back in history and find diatribes by businessmen on communication as far back as the great Roman and Greek civilizations. Obviously, it must be a very important aspect of business as well as everyday life. The irony lies in the fact that many, many businesses never train their employees in how to effectively communicate with other people. Not only is effective communication ignored in the workplace, it is catastrophically ignored in the area of customer care.
Wikipedia’s general definition of communication is, “Communication is the process of transferring information from a sender to a receiver with the use of a medium in which the communicated information is understood by both sender and receiver.” This simple definition describes the rudimentary act of communicating, but could never in a million years describe the complex act of human communication. Humans communicate with each other in a myriad of ways and over many different mediums. Almost all college degrees require some study in communication. Although (in my experience) the general studies college communication classes miss the mark (that being to teach students how to communicate in the college environment in which they find themselves), at least degree curriculums realize the importance of some kind of knowledge of communication in everyday life. I believe that the general public is by and large uneducated in the art of communication. A standard model of communication might look something like this:
Customers, Nothing Else Matters
It doesn’t matter how well you know the whats if what you really need is to know the whys. And the gap between knowledge and comprehension is never greater than in business when you need to be able to answer the really important questions – those that test your fundamental empathy with your customers. Knowing who they are and where you’ll find them is one thing, but will you really be able to serve them successfully - and therefore profitably – if you don’t truly know what makes them tick, what they really need, and why.
It’s an issue that’s been highlighted countless times since the Investor in Customers (IIC) standard was introduced in 2006, because we’ve been asking customers exactly what they think of the businesses we’ve assessed. In fact ‘countless’ is probably the wrong word, because we have been counting – and now we have been able to conduct a study into the results of 25 corporate assessments, involving more than 6,000 customer and staff feedback questionnaires. It’s a rich seam of knowledge, and while confidentiality rules preclude the use of specific names or identifiable details, it’s knowledge that is powerful in its generic similarities.
The assessments cover businesses across a number of sectors, namely financial services, marketing, PR, IT, recruitment, outsourcing, FMCG and supply chain. Different as those businesses are, they are all assessed under the four guiding principles of the IIC:
Svp Customer Service - the First Customer Communications Management Sponsors Meeting
You will need cross-functional sponsorship at executive level to ensure the successful delivery of a customer communications management infrastructure. We’ll talk about all the SVP roles within the business over time but for today, lets talk about the SVP of customer service and lets talk about outbound communications in this article. (I’ll cover inbound benefits in another post).
The Senior Vice President (SVP) of customer service within your business may be one of the biggest benefactors from customer communications management. In a full scale roll-out you are almost certainly going to need to enlist the SVP of Customer Services support.
Customer Communications Management will have a significant impact upon the call centre and the way that call centre operatives will work. Below I set out some of the items of discussion that you should table with the SVP of Customer Service.
Adjusting the Picture on Customer Focus
At first glance, big picture thinking and customer focus would seem to be mutually exclusive terms. After all, the first phrase connotes a farsighted, panoramic view of business, while the second implies an intense, laser-beam-like concentration on the customer. Yet as revealed in Magnifying Customer Focus: A Study of Current Trends and Future Possibilities 2006-2016, a global study commissioned by American Management Association and conducted by The Human Resource Institute, the terms are not only compatible, they are inseparable.
The study finds that customer focus is a top strategic concern for many businesses today and is ranked as one of the most important needs concerning issues ranging from leadership challenges to ethical behavior and innovation. Yet it also reveals that there is a wide disparity between what activities companies practice when it comes to customer focus and what they should be practicing.
The study asked respondents to rank a variety of strategic actions in each of five areas environment/culture, communications, HR practices, measurement and organizational practices in terms of what their companies are doing now and then to rank those same actions in terms of what their companies should be doing. Here is a closer look at the results for each of the five areas.
How to Market Your Salon Business Part 3
3. Conversions to clients - this is where the magic really happens in marketing your salon and where you start to grow your business.
You’ve already given them a number of excellent sessions no matter what the services were that you fulfilled. And you do things different then most, you send a thank you card to them after every visit. Wow, what’s that all about? Well, it’s about building a customer into a loyal client.
A friendship is what you’re building by exceeding their expectations by giving great customer service, and providing some other small but important acts of care and kindness to them.