Category: Customer Service

Article Contributed by Brooke Cade

So you’ve been gathering customer feedback and you’ve gotten what you believe to be honest responses from your customers and now you can either pat yourself on your back or make a few tweaks to achieve the next level of customer satisfaction. That’s great! …Isn’t it? Actually, no.

Instead take the customer experience to the next level and actively listen to the voice of your customer with the full intention of implementing real changes they actually want to see.

The Wrong Way of Asking

“Fine.”

That’s the typical response everyone gives when asked “How you are doing?” But replying “fine” doesn’t give any details and doesn’t share any real feelings. The same can apply when you ask your customers about their experiences with your company. Most often, their responses will be a meager “fine.”

The problem? Your question is a) too common, b) too general, and c) too brief.

Traditional long-form customer surveys aren’t much better as they tend to have numerous inherent faults, which can include:

• Putting your own words in your customer’s mouth.

• Giving over-simplified answers to multifaceted problems.

• Catching only a narrow portion of your demographic.

• Inconveniencing your customer.

• Waiting too long to survey until after a particular customer experience.

• Sitting on results without knowing what to do with them.

You’re Not Listening to Me

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone when a disagreement begins to escalate the tone of the conversation from mere annoyance to agitation and anger? When that happens, how often does the phrase, “You’re not listening to me!” come out of someone’s mouth?

The truth is, when someone tells us we aren’t listening, often we actually are listening…but only to their words. What we need to be doing is listening to what they are trying to say but aren’t articulating.

Don’t Get Lost in Translation

Have you ever tried using Auto Translate on a foreign-language website? The results are, at best, mixed. You can decipher the main points but might get a little lost in the details.

Similarly, once you have gathered all your customer’s feedback data, translating it can get a little muddy. A correct interpretation may feel like anyone’s best guess.

For instance, if you are looking to reveal a certain trend, chances are you can find one. If you are hoping for a specific result, the data can be easily manipulated in order to give it to you.

Changes That Make Your Customers Like You

All of these scenarios prove that simply listening to what your customers are telling you isn’t enough. By a long shot.

In order to understand your customer’s true voice, you need to do the following three things:

1. Ask the right people. Ask the right questions. Ask in the right way.

2. Listen not only to their words but in between them. What is their tone? What are their emotions? What actions are they taking?

3. Use undeniable, advanced analytics to diagnose root causes, generate verifiable insights, and apply tactical strategies that pay off.

Once you do these three things, you will be better equipped to make the changes that your customer are afraid to ask for or don’t even necessarily know they want.

Staying ahead of the customer curve is an invaluable tactic in the continually quickening pace of modern business. So find ways to engage with your customers which will allow them to openly share their suggestions, feedback, and their stories with you in a way that will benefit everyone and bring greater ROI.

About the Author: Brooke Cade is a freelance writer who’s committed to helping businesses and sales professionals build stronger connections with their customers. She writes for a variety of publication including InMoment.com.

Article Contributed by Finn Pierson

When many entrepreneurs decide to go into business for themselves, most never dream about how many hats they are required to wear and how many different sources of information that they will need to manage in both their macro and micro-environments. As an entrepreneur, as you begin to interact with more and more people, generate more sales, and have more sales leads in your sales funnel, you will need to manage not only the processes but also all of the different people that you interact with. Although this may seem very daunting, especially if the number of people you interact with is beginning to grow, then there’s no better way for you to manage them all than with a Customer Relation Management software, known as CRM.

There are immeasurable benefits from using a CRM software program. For example, according to Forbes Magazine business owners have experienced an increase in sales by 29% as a result of using some form of CRM. However, it’s most impactful the correct data is maintained and updated regularly. If you are a small business owner or entrepreneur and are interested in better streamlining the management of your contacts, below are some reasons why you should make a CRM program your next entrepreneurial investment.

1. Managing Your Contacts

First and foremost, if you are new to CRM, you may not realize how many people you interact with on a daily, monthly or an annual basis. Since you likely have many people contacting you from a wide variety of different sources, who also serve many different roles, these individuals must be managed to ensure your company’s success. From email management to sales activity, to keeping up with birthdays or the birth of a vendor’s child, your relationship with all the people you come in contact with is probably one of the most sensitive areas that you can manage. And since businesses are built on relationships, it’s very critical to properly manage them.

2. Tracking Your Customers

Each of your customers is unique. They have different buying and spending patterns based on wide variety of different factors. In order to manage this process and better determine what they are buying, how frequently they are making purchases, and how much they’re spending on a particular item, it’s important to have a great tracking system in place to not only track these areas but to also track customized experiences that each of your customers may have.

3. Target Marketing and Market Segmentation

Of all the customers that you interact with, they make up your general target market. However, some of them make up smaller groups known as your market segment or in some instances, your market niche. In order to implement effective relationship marketing plans, having appropriate software in place that manages these groups will help you develop more streamlined, better-targeted marketing strategies.

4. Social Media-based Integrations

Social media is exceptionally prevalent in today’s society. Therefore, social media management based integration software programs can be better streamlined with the integration of various social media platforms. This will make tracking all of the ads and responses to those ads a lot easier than you could without having some form of CRM and tracking integration software in place.

5. Customer Feedback

Managing your customer’s feedback is a very critical part of running a business. When customers reach out to businesses online, if they are neglected, many of them may move on to your competitor. To reduce such occurrences, the use of the proper software to better streamline customer feedback is also an excellent investment for entrepreneurs.

There is such a wide variety of areas that the entrepreneur needs to oversee and manage; including additional areas such as document management, task management, mobility management, sales tracking and more. Essentially, entrepreneurs need to track pretty much everything. As your business grows, so should your CRM and related software programs. It should be seen by entrepreneurs as their greatest next business investment to manage their contacts and their overall growth.

Article Contributed by Dan Razak

Regardless of what you do or sell offline and online, retaining customers should be on top of your priority list. According to the Bain & Company’s study, it’s 6-7 times more expensive for companies to acquire new clients/customers than to keep the current ones. That’s why most businesses today develop all sorts of client retention strategies to ensure their clientele’s satisfaction and engagement.

Nurturing your existing customers and stimulating them to come back and do more business with you, or recommend your brand to their friends and work associates, is probably one of the most efficient ways to grow your company in this day and age.

Even though this may be true, getting someone to become your regular and loyal client/customer is no easy task. Especially if you operate in the SaaS or marketing industry. A lot of different factors come into play here.

No matter the quality of your work, products, and services, it’s imperative to have in mind that we live in a highly competitive world where every single one of your clients is faced with an unlimited number of options.

There are literally dozens and dozens of companies out there that probably offer the same products or services as you do.

Some of them are maybe a bit cheaper, others more expensive, but nonetheless – all of them are basically threats for your business. They want to steal your clients away from you, which automatically requires that you to come up with bulletproof client/customer retention strategies that will surely keep your clients satisfied and impervious to everything that your direct or indirect competitors have to offer.

Looking back at some of the most common causes for client dissatisfaction, I have created a list of 3 crucial business elements that you need to optimize if you want to influence your client retention numbers for the better:

1. Excellent Support and Customer Experiences

Quality support plays a key role in customer/client satisfaction. It’s highly unlikely that people, regardless in which niche or industry they operate in, will continue to do business with a company that treats them poorly. Providing fair support and great customer experiences is a big deal today. According to Gartner’s predictions, more than 50 percent of today’s businesses are changing their customer experience priorities. They believe that by 2018, most currently active organizations will allocate bigger chunks of their budget to customer experience innovations. Kampyle’s study concurred that, shining the light on the fact that above 80 percent of customers believe that companies need to put more effort into providing pleasant shopper/client/customer experiences.

In their big research, the people behind Accenture found out that almost 90 percent of questioned customers get frustrated when they have to repeat their issues to different company representatives.

But what can you do to improve your user, shopper or client experiences? – Many things, actually. First and foremost, you should work on reducing the amount of effort your clients or customers need to invest in order to get to their desired answer. If you want to make sure that your clients and customers are satisfied with how you do business, make sure that you make it simple and easy for them to get what they need from you.

Make yourself and your business accessible on social media. Respond quickly to your client’s or customer’s questions through the platform that suit them best. Speed and efficiency – these are the two factors that really influence your client retention numbers for the better.

2. Impressive Reporting Game

If you work in an industry such as marketing, then you probably know that nothing influences your business like reporting. Quality client reporting plays a key role in your client satisfaction and retention game. It’s the only thing that ensures that both parties are on the same page with what has been done so far and what needs to be done in order to drive better results for your client’s business.

Even though most clients only glance at their reports, they still demand tight feedback from companies that handle their business. If your reports aren’t really good or clear enough, your clients will almost immediately take their business to some of your direct or indirect competitors. This is quite normal when you really think about, because they’re entrusting you with the faith of their business.

So, what can you do here to ensure that your reports are up to their liking?

The same thing as with everything else – find a great tool to help you optimize the process and take the quality and efficiency of this game to the next level. There are basically dozens of quality reporting utilities out there. I personally use Reportz. It suits me best. This software helps me produce amazing, detail-oriented reports in record time. Thanks to its kpi marketing dashboard, I can easily integrate all the data from my favorite tools and present them in a fashion that will surely impress my recipients, and thus – stimulate them to continue doing business with me.

3. Content Marketing

Content marketing isn’t only for reaching out to new audiences. It can be a great client and customer retention tool, if leveraged right. Everyone knows that quality content has the power to influence decisions and stimulate people to take action, so it can easily be used for building up client and customer loyalty and strengthening the relationships with people who do business with your company.

There are numerous examples of organizations that use content marketing for providing value to their clients, users, or customers. Evernote does a great job of feeding their existing users via their blog with quick tips and community stories, designed specifically to get their clientele to use the app more frequently. Evernote’s blog is basically there to help the user better understand their software, and thus – become more dependent on it.

The goal here is to deliver useful and entertaining content that keeps the value of your brand, products, and services, constantly in front of the mind of your users, clients, or customers. If you do a good job of demonstrating your expertise, worth, and overall importance in the industry – people won’t have the need to look for additional solutions online.

About the Author

Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is a coauthor on several websites and regular contributor to BizzMark Blog. Currently, he is working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies.

Much of this change is being driven by the pervasiveness of technology, especially social media. The following are some of the trends in customer service expectations that I have identified by talking to workshop attendees, customers, friends, and conducting a survey of available research and publications.

Prompt response. Another one of the trends in customer service crucial in satisfying today’s customers is prompt service. The days of accepting “Someone will get back to you within twenty-four hours” are over. Customers see progressive companies using multichannel service response systems (e.g. online FAQ, customer care center 24/7/365, access through mobile technology, automated voice response systems, email, and chats) to ensure availability and response to customer needs, wants and expectations. They expect all companies to follow a similar model.

Human interaction. Automated response might be acceptable in some situations if it provides the information or satisfies customer needs. However, efficient human contact is typically the preferred means of response for most customers. The key is that the humans involved need to be well trained, competent and knowledgeable, not scripted. They also need to be fluent in the native language of the majority of company’s customers.

Free shipping. For years, leading companies like Zappos, Amazon, L.L. Bean, Lands End have been offering free shipping, and in some cases free return shipping. This can result in big savings if someone regularly orders from a company or places large orders.

Low tolerance for errors. In a world where companies like FedEx promised “When it Absolutely, Positively has to be there overnight,” computers have spellcheck to help catch errors, and many companies have unconditional guarantees to make it right when something goes wrong, customers are not as likely to accept excuses. They expect companies to live up to their promises and what they put on their websites. They also expect that all employees are empowered to make decisions and fix problems without having to get their supervisor

24/7/365 mentality. Today’s customers expect that they can get what they want, how they want it and when they want if twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and three hundred and sixty-five days a year. When service and product providers are not available or cannot meet this expectation, customers simply go to a competitor who can.

Efficiency in service. With the advances of technology, customers do not expect to have to repeat steps or be inconvenienced when receiving service. This means that when they enter their credit card and personal information onto a computer screen or an automated phone system when ordering or calling with questions or problems, they do not want to have to completely re-enter or repeat their information when transferred to another point in the process.

There are many other trends in customer service of which you and your organization should be aware in order to meet the needs, wants and expectations of your customers. Take time to read additional articles and books on customer service trends, and attend customer service conference and training sessions on the topic. Do whatever it takes to better prepare to meet changing customer expectations and help ensure customer satisfaction.

Valentine’s Day is not typically considered a holiday most companies would recognize to celebrate their clients. But we think it’s the perfect reason to celebrate—companies value their clients and customers as the heartbeat of the business. Shift the focus from romantic love to “we love our clients!” Valentine’s Day is the perfect and unexpected opportunity for business owners to show appreciation for their customers. It’s a great way to break up the monotony of the week and have a little fun. Below are fantastic ways to recognize your clients on Valentine’s Day:  

10 Ways to Recognize Clients and Customers on Valentine’s Day:

·         Signed, Sealed & Delivered. Call up your local bakery and have a delivery of heart-shaped cookies or cupcakes sent to your clients with a note of appreciation. As an alternative, get one of your employees to dress up in full Valentine’s Day style, such as head-to-toe red or as Cupid, and arrive at your client’s office bearing goodies and hand-written notes of thanks. It’s an easy little surprise your clients are sure to love.

·         Get the Party Started! Host a special Valentine’s Day get together at your office. Send out real Valentine’s Day invites and serve special treats like candies, cupcakes and chocolate covered strawberries along with a coffee and tea bar.

·         A Lovely Cause. Donate to a charity in your client’s honor. A great one that just so happens to include the word “love” is Love a Child. Or you can give to a charity the client already volunteers with or supports.

·         Client Coupons. Who doesn’t love coupons or a great free offer? Give your customers a “We Love You” client coupon for a future service they typically pay for or you could offer them a new service free of charge that they don’t usually budget for as a bonus. Trust us, they’ll appreciate the awesome offer! 

·         Honorable Mentions. Use your social media accounts, such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, to give your special clients a “shout out.” If you have specific clients that you work with directly, also mention their names and why they are loved by your business.

·         Work with a local florist to have individual flowers wrapped up for clients. Gerber daisies are beautiful and cost a fraction of the cost of roses this time of year. Have volunteers from your business personally deliver them.   

.        Send Personal, Hand-made Valentine’s Day cards. That’s right- Bring out the paper lace doilies and conversation hearts. Be creative and make each card unique by including something special about each client.

.        Host an event for client’s and their families. Rent out an area roller skating rink for an afternoon. Purchase tickets for a family-themed movie at a local theater.

.        Give a Great Book. Look for books that have either been influential for you or have recently received a lot of great press. Write a brief, personal note to each client about why it’s one of your favorites!

.        Send a Gift Card. Everyone LOVES getting a gift card to their favorite coffee shop, restaurant, or salon. Get into the habit of sending gift cards to clients throughout the year, but especially around Valentine’s Day!

Justin’s Valentine’s Day client ideas are available to share by replying to this email with your intent to feature and including the credit and link below.

Credit for Justin Lavelle of Been Verified

Justin Lavelle is Communications Director at BeenVerified (https://www.beenverified.com). BeenVerified is the fast, affordable, and easy way to access public records and search for people. Find out ages, marital status, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, criminal records, and more.