1. Promise - And Then Deliver More
You should stick to your promises and deliver even more in terms of quality than what your clients expect from you. This will ensure that they are pleasantly surprised every time that they deal with you.
Stick to delivery schedules, and in case of the odd slip-up, make sure that you inform your clients well in advance of the delay. This will at least convey the message that you are working hard to rectify the problem.
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It's a simple fact of business: Most companies are obsessed with getting new customers. They advertise, plead, cajole, bribe, bend over backwards and sometimes beg to get a new customer.
And after all that, once they get them, they ignore them.
"Most companies spend a lion's share of resources to attract a new customer," said Theodore Kinni, co-owner of The Business Reader, a Williamsburg, Va., business-to-business bookseller. "At the same time, more valuable, already profitable existing customers are walking out the back door unnoticed and uncared for."
Show Genuine Happiness
For excellent client service, you should be happy at the arrival of each new client and should also show it. Your smile and interest in your customers should be genuine. Listen to what your customers are trying to convey before you start showcasing your products or start your sales pitch. This is a good business client tip to follow.
Be calm and polite but firm at all times. Radiate energy and enthusiasm through your body language. Your employees should be equally active and interested in their jobs.
The following steps will help you assure that customers know what you can offer - and at the same time, help you know what their expectations are.
Know What Customers Value
You may already be aware of the required mix of speed, quality, and price for optimizing your small business operations and for assuring that these correspond closely to your customers’ expectations.
In business our number one goal is to keep our customers happy at all times. The timeless classic of “the customer is always’ right” comes into play here. But there are going to be time’s when there is more then one customer on the phone-one of them will have to hold. Or there is more then one customer in line-the other’s will have to wait.
To cut down on the frustration that the customer may feel at this point, try giving them something that will keep them entertained even just for a few minute’s. Rather then have that boring classical elevator music that we all love so much on the phone, try a comedy station, or maybe a trivia station.
The idea of partnering with customers is often confused with providing good customer service. But they're hardly the same thing.
Working to build partnerships with customers is a considerably more consultative process than delivering satisfactory point-of-sale transactions.
There are two domains - things we can create and things we have to adapt to. We can agree, that to some extent, the economic environment we find ourselves in falls into the latter. While we adapt and realign our posture to match the times, we also ought to examine the things that we have creative control over. One such issue is how we interact with the world around us.
After spending nearly 20 years building her own business, Cookie Driscoll thinks it might be over.
Ms. Driscoll owns C. Cookie Driscoll Inc., of Fairfield, Pa., which sells animal-themed gifts and office-promotional products. In the past year, she has seen nine of the mom-and-pop shops that buy her goods shutter -- often without paying their outstanding invoices. Her bank revoked her credit line. She expects revenue to be under $60,000 this year, down from a peak of nearly $230,000 a few years ago. She is taking almost no income from her business and paying bills with the last $16,000 from her retirement account.
If not, it's time to get a better handle on your advertising's ROI. After all, why waste money buying advertising that isn't working?
You need to look at two things: which specific ads bring in customers, and which advertising media results in new business. An ad placed in a weekly shopper-type publication may draw new business week after week, while the same ad place in a local, tabloid-format newspaper may not attract any new customers. Or, vice versa.
You can find out which ads and media are producing customers by tracking responses to your ads.
One common way to track ads is to code coupons so you know what publication or mailing they came from. For instance, if you're running a 15%-off coupon in several local publications, change the ad slightly for each publication by including the initials of the publication or some other identifying information in very small print just inside the coupon dotted line. Be sure you or your employees collect the coupons; at the end of the promotion, tally them up to see which local publication produced the most new customers.
If you discover a significant difference in response, then consider dropping the publication with the lowest response rate and substituting another in its place.
If customers call your business rather than sending in coupons, you can track advertising results by telling people to call special extension numbers or to ask for a specific individual. For instance, your radio ad might say, "Call Jack for details." Your print ad, however, might say to call and ask for extension 25. The person who answers your phone should keep a list of all incoming calls, noting which extension or name was requested.
You can track pay-per-click advertising, too. Most pay-per-click ad networks let you include a tracking code on the end of each ad you write. (You put a slash at the end of the URL, and following the slash, enter the tracking code.)
Recently I did a presentation about online tools that can strengthen your business. During the presentation I highlighted several websites that a small business owner can utilize in order to help them out. I personally use the websites that I will tell you about.
The first site is www.surveymonkey.com.
Survey monkey is a great site that enables business owners to be able to survey their customers for a variety of puposes including market research, customer evaluations, as well as any other thing you may want to know. You can create a 10 question survey in literally minutes and be able to post it to a website, upload email addresses to send, or send a link through an email from youself. The website is secure as well as the information that you collect.
There are many types of question formats that you can choose from including essay, multiple choice, or just about anything else that you can think of. One of the best things for you the business owner, is that the first 1,000 responses collected per month on your account is free. If you pay their nominal fee, you can have advance reporting features, more options, unlimited responses and custom content.
I recommend that you create a customer evaluation that will be sent to your customers after a sale. You can see how you are doing and will probably recieve valuable content that can help your business grow for years to come.
In these present times, it is also nice to have a resource for free! Please note that their are alot of online survey companies, I just personally have used this one over the past few years.
Tune into the next posting where I will go over another great online resource to help out your business.
*The SBDC in no way endorses the website listed above. It is simply a suggested site that others have used successfully in the past.
