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10 Key Strategies for Success in a Home Based Business
Copyright 2005 Geoffrey Young
When you finally decide to work from home in an internet based
business, you will need to follow certain steps to be successful.
Following are the basic steps in setting up for home business
success.
1....
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10 Tips for Improving Customer Service and Keeping More of Your Customers
1. Customer service is all about customers' needs first and your
needs second. If your customers expect a response from you in 24
hours and you always respond much later, that's putting your
needs first and their needs second.
2. Customers are like a spouse, they need to feel special to
continually respond to your offers. You make your customers feel
special by over-delivering in every area, especially in those
areas they don't expect. Imagine how you'd feel if you sent an
email with a question to a merchant and they responded within
half an hour with an answer when you were expecting an answer
the next day. You would definitely feel special. It's a
wonderful feeling. Create this feeling within your customers.
3. Stay in contact with your customers, not only when you need
to make a sale. This could be as simple as sending an online
greeting on holidays. It could be giving helpful advice that you
researched or offering something free that they really
appreciate. Make sure whatever you do the quality is on par or
better than whatever you'd sell them. This also means the
presentation or packaging. Remember you always want to appear as
putting their needs ahead of yours, even if you don't all the
time.
4. The service you provide after the sale should be just good or
better than the service provided before the sale. Have you ever
called the sales department of a company and the representative
was more than helpful, and then once you bought a product and
called their customer service department you were greeted by a
machine that put you on hold for over an hour? Even worse, when
you finally got someone they tried to get you off the phone as
quickly as possible. What if their customer service department
were to take the attitude of the sales department and be as
eager to help you? Wouldn't you would be a loyal customer?
5. The perception of the quality and use of your products and
services that you project should be honest. There are few things
more infuriating than to be told the benefits you'll get from a
product or service and then to find out you didn't get what was
promised. If enough determined customers get angry they could
put you out of business. Look at honesty as a service to your
customers and prospects that builds trust. Have you ever thought
about customer service in this way?
6. Your customer service personnel should be well trained for
the job. There are few things consumers dislike more than a
company that have well-trained sales people and poorly trained
customer service personnel. You do not want your customers
spreading bad publicity about your customer service, since if
they do they'd be reversing your
marketing efforts. So spend
just as much time training your customer service personnel as
you do your sales force.
7. Your customer service should be as good as or better than the
competition or you won't keep your customers for long. Reputable
companies have the least trouble selling their products and
services. The marketplace has developed trust and admiration for
how they operate and how they treat their customers. One of the
tenets of a reputable company is its excellent customer service.
When any company has great customer service even the most
difficult customers can walk away feeling better than if they
had dealt with the competition.
8. Your customers should receive a consistent service. Walk into
any McDonalds in the world and what you'll find are consistent
services. Everyone knows what they'll get when they walk into a
McDonalds Restaurant. Fries and hamburgers are prepared the same
way. Imagine if one day you walked into a McDonalds Restaurant
and got well-prepared fries and another day you got over-cooked
fries, you wouldn't like the inconsistency, would you? Your
customers expect the same consistency as franchisees are
renowned for providing.
9. Give your customers the benefit of the doubt even when you
think they are lying. Remember, only a few customers will take
advantage of you. Follow the model of Procter and Gamble, a
consumer goods company. A customer once wrote in about a bad
diaper and they sent several cartons of diapers to this mother.
Can you imagine the word-of-mouth promotion they got from this
mother instead of an angry customer spewing out bad publicity?
Consider any amends made to customers as a cost of doing
business.
10. Create and project an impressive image of your company and
the competition will have to work very hard to seduce and steal
your prospects and customers. This is how brands develop. Brands
work on the projection of images. "Sony" and "Lexus" both
project images of quality and great customer care. If there are
two products or services of identical quality and one sells
better at a higher price using a different brand and all else is
equal then image is the reason for the difference.
These ten tips will improve any company that applies them. And
since they improve the customer service function the customer
retention rate will be higher as well.
About the author:
Windsor Pennicott is a marketer and writer who specializes in
the business and marketing area. He created the free booklet
Power Sales And Marketing Innovations That Automatically
Convert More Prospects. Get your copy at UsefulBizTips.com
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