If I Could Show You, Would You?
What if I could show you how you could save money, would that be of interest to you? What if I told you that you could capture more market share, would you like to hear how we can help you do this?
Be My Guest
In recent years many different businesses have begun to approach their clients differently.
How Would Your Customers Rate Your Service?
Rendering exceptional customer service is both a responsibility and a smart business decision. Unfortunately, far too many salespeople view customer service as an administrative burden that takes them away from making a sale.
Awful To Ordinary To Awesome
Losses of customers and business do occur because of awful customer service.
Dealing With Aggressive Customers
Are you in a job where you get paid to let people verbally abuse you? People in helping or customer service roles are just some of the people who get to deal with more than their fair share of demanding and aggressive people.
The Ripple Effect
We have all had the experience of throwing a stone in a pond and watching the waves ripple across the surface in ever expanding, concentric circles. Just as a ripple hits the shoreline, your reputation for the quality and quantity of service you render, precedes you in your marketplace.
How Do I Deal With Client Objections?
Many sales people will tell you one of the biggest worries in sales, besides prospecting, is dealing with customer objections.
How Not To Stuff Up Customer Service
One of the most common frustrations customers have in taking up a customer service issue is being able to easily find how and who to contact.
Build A Client-Retention System
To become a top-ranked sales professional (and to stay there), it’s vital to have a system running all the time designed specifically to help you hang on to your existing clients so that they call you again and again for new business.
Build A Client-Attraction System
We can learn a lot about attraction simply by taking the time to notice the world around us. In the sales profession, that means taking a good look at your existing and new clients and asking questions, such as: “What is it that attracts more clients in less time, and how can I fine-tune the way I achieve this in my own organization?”
The Cheat's Guide To Exceeding Expectations
'Under promise, over deliver!' is considered brilliant advice for business owners. But many people only focus on the hard work of over delivering, when it can be easier, and frankly more effective, to get better at under promising.
Win More Clients By Becoming A Master Relationship Builder
In business, a strong relationship with your prospects and customers often wins over price. Rather than focusing your energy on competing on price with your competitors, focus your efforts on building stronger relationships. Your competitors can easily match and even undercut your prices, however, copying your relationships with your prospects and customers is much more difficult for them.
What To Watch For That Indicates We Have A Customer Service Problem
Do you frequently hear that customers are unhappy about something, and sometimes they are downright frustrated? You've been given an indicator of what is going on in the organization. The customers aren't getting what they thought they paid for, and the employees are actually blocking access to what the customer wants.
Understanding Customer Evolution
In the current economic climate, getting customers to support your business is even more important than ever. With customers being more discerning with their dollars, you need to understand customer evolution to ensure they support your business.
Technology Can Bring Us Together And Increase Sales
Technology can bring us together and increase our sales. The four vital areas of Live Chat, Web Conferencing, Questions and Autoresponders have brought customers closer by use of these new and upcoming technologies.
The Voice Of The Customer: Helping Customers Find Theirs
The two objectives of business process improvement are to improve customer satisfaction and to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the business. The former is not always easy to achieve and there is very little guidance in how to achieve it.
Building Loyalty In 8 Magical Moments
Bingo! You've changed a one-time sale into a lifetime customer.
Seven Factors For Building Extreme Customer Loyalty
A satisfied customer is NOT always a loyal customer! Discover seven indicators that will help you go beyond simply satisfying
customers, to protecting and growing your strategic accounts.
Keeping Good Customers By Earning Customer Loyalty
A goal of every organisation is to increase its assets over time. These assets are typically defined in terms of revenue, customer accounts, properties, human resources, and capital. But there are two hidden assets, that every organisation can develop, and are critical for marketing success - their brand and customers.
7 Strategies To Increase Your Customer Service Levels
Everyone deserves good customer service. Your customers deserve excellent customer service because they're your customers.
21 Ways To Deliver Great Customer Service
You don’t need a million dollar marketing budget or even a large staff to deliver great customer service.
Keeping Your Clients Happy In Tough Times
Here are some of the strategies that businesses are implementing to ease their clients through this current economic crisis.
10 Practices Of Exceptional Customer Service
The very best service providers do a lot of things right, however there are at least 10 practices that they all have in common.
Keeping The Sale
Just because a prospect has agreed to move forward it does not mean that the sale will go ahead - especially if you sell a complex system or solution. Dozens of things can happen to derail your efforts. Before you start counting your commission, it is critical that you keep the sale.
Making Your Clients Feel Like VIPs
Key to business success is making every single client feel like they are your most important client, irrespective of the value or revenue they generate for your business, or the size of their projects.
Nine Great Ways To Build Customer Loyalty
Companies are losing customers at a staggering rate without really hearing from most of them or understanding why. So, what are executives really doing about it?
If You Have 'Happy Customers' You Could Be Heading For Trouble!
The concept of a happy customer seems both virtuous and victorious; after all, this is surely the ultimate service goal of most organisations - and also the best way to stave off attacks from competitors. Not everything is what it seems though, especially when you define what is meant by a happy customer ...
Enhancing Client Satisfaction
The benefits of analysing and actively seeking to enhance your client's experience are multitudinous and can have a significant impact on brand loyalty, revenue, referrals, products sales and the take up of new products and services. So how do you show your clients you care?
Building Lasting Client Relationships In A Regulatory Environment
Many industries operate in a regulatory environment, which dictates not only the technical requirements for doing business, but also the need to deliver service satisfaction without bureaucracy. When regulations tie up your flexibility, what can you do to continue meeting customer's expectations?
Plant The Seed For Future Business
Cultivating your past and current customers is a guaranteed way of building future business. But for this to succeed you will need to have a thorough and functioning Customer Relationship Management system in place.
How To Stay In Touch
Most business owners are great at what they do. Yet, if they have one skill deficiency, it is in marketing themselves. And that's fine. We are not all experts at everything. Here are some simple, yet effective ideas to help you develop what I call a "stay in touch marketing program".
Client Contact: The Importance Of Consistency
Research has discovered that communicating with your clients at least 25 times a year is optimal. WHOA! That's the initial reaction I get from people when I say that. "Twenty-five times a year is way too much for my business!" No, it's not.
10 Customer Service Tips To Build Loyal Customers
It costs about three times more to find a new customer than it does to retain an existing customer. But what does that mean? For most businesses, your best investment can and should be, in keeping your existing customers happy, rather than always chasing new customers.
Discover The Buried Treasure Your Clients Are Hiding From You
What is the average lifetime value of a client to your business? Do you know? Sadly, many business people do not have an answer for that question, nor do they understand the value of knowing.
Free For The Giving
The best things in service situations are often free.
Why Aren't You Doing Win-Back Campaigns?
Many companies allocate budgets for customer acquisition but spend nothing on win-back. Handled smartly, you have much more chance with win-back than with acquisition.
Managing The Customer Relationship For Results
Customers - where would we be without them! But managing the customer relationship requires skill, and well-trained staff.
Go On, Give Them A Try
Allowing customers to test your product or service is an underused marketing technique.
Wrap Your Clients Up With CRM
Knowing and speaking with your customers regularly is smart business.
Create Engaged Customers
We are all in the same business - the delivery of value to stakeholders that they demand, desire, and feel they deserve. Once you know what these really are for customers (just one of your stakeholders), create a memorable service experience around their delivery.
To Win The Service Battle - You Must First Declare War!
The business equivalent of a declaration of war, is a 'service promise' that offers true and distinctive value to customers.
Growing Your Business One Customer At A Time
The people aspect of business is really what it is all about. Rule No. 1: Think of customers as individuals. Once we think that way, we realise our business is our customer, not our product or services. Putting all the focus on the merchandise in our store, or the services our corporation offers, leaves out the most important component: each individual customer.
Keep Your Customers For Life
How much time do you spend trying to entice new customers to your business?
Grow Through Your Existing Customer Base
There is real growth potential in a sole trader's existing customer base, but many fail to realise its full potential. Often, more energy goes into attracting new customers than looking after current ones.
Magic Words
What words are music to the ears of your customers?
Keeping Customers For Life
We all know the adage that it’s a lot cheaper to keep a customer than it is to get a new one. But why do we lose customers, and what can we do to keep them with us “for life”?
5 Steps To Effective Customer Loyalty Programs
Increasingly organisations are becoming dissatisfied with their customer satisfaction surveys and turning to designing and implementing customer loyalty programs instead. They are beginning to understand that it’s not just about satisfaction.
Complaints Key To Improving Sales, Retention And Loyalty
It's said nobody likes a complainer. I beg to differ. In customer service a complainer is doing you a favor.
Pervasive Customer Experience
Expensive advertising is no longer sufficient to stake your position in the market. A pervasive customer experience, consistently actioned across all your customer touchpoints, and executed in alignment with your purpose and values, is way more powerful.
Silly Service Has Its Serious Side
Test your customer service knowledge!
Customers For Life!
The most successful companies place great value on developing lifetime relationships with their customers.
Turning Customer Service Inside Out!
How poor internal customer service negatively impacts external customers, and how you can turn it around.
The Power Of Saying Thank You
An easy thing to forget in the midst of our frenzied lives is the simple act of saying "thank you." And yet, by incorporating a thank-you strategy into your marketing, you'll reap immense rewards.
Developing KPIs And Estimating The ROI For Events
Using events as a relationship marketing tool necessitates an investment that, like any other investment, requires a gauge on effectiveness and return on investment (ROI).
Customer Relationship Management: Challenging The Myth
What company today does not want to be more customer oriented to stimulate growth through higher sales and better services with higher margins?
How To Make Customers Say “WOW!”
Almost without exception when business owners and managers are asked what their customers really want their answers are “service”, “good prices”, “knowledgeable staff”, and so on. And those owners and managers are wrong!
Customer Service Is No Accident!
It’s true that the buck stops with the leader of an organisation, but when the buck stops because the customer stops walking in the door, it can be a little too late to start asking why they’re going to our competitors, not renewing contracts, or worse still not wanting to do business with us again. But go on, be brave ASK your customers what they think – they will still respect you in the morning…
Four P’s Of Customer Retention
It has been approximately 40 years since marketing professor (and subsequent guru) Dr. Philip Kotler coined the concept of the four P’s of marketing — product, price, place, and promotion. While still valid today, Kotler’s original four P’s do not have as much application to customer retention as they do to customer acquisition.
Making It Easier For Your Customers To Do Business With You
Or 'Why Do Companies Make It So Difficult For Customers To Do Business With Them?'
The PS Paradigm Of Customer Service
The PS Paradigm provides a frame of reference for diagnosing and treating your customer service problems.
How To Make Your Customers Fall In Love With You!
Providing great service is all about developing a relationship with your customers. It’s about treating your customers as though they are your partners at work. It’s about getting them to fall in love with you so they don’t want to go anywhere else.
How Your Service Defines The Customer
Financial services institutions have spent large volumes of money to try to discover why at times customers are no longer excited by the value proposition of their products and services.
Is Your Business A Leaky Bucket?
This is a question I always ask small business owners who attend my marketing seminars. The reason I ask, is because many businesses are so focused on attracting new customers they forget about retaining and providing good customer service to their existing clients.
Customer Service Is Personal
Personal is the essential prerequisite to service excellence in businesses. The customers, clients and stakeholders are and always have been close to their service providers. Accordingly, the nature of the relationships and expectations have been higher, more immediate and, yes, personal.
Creating A Culture Of Organisational Customer Service
So who are your customers, really? As leaders, whatever the business we are in, we are all aware - or should be - of the importance of customer service to the success of the business. Not only does the way your individual customer receive the service impact on their desire to do business with you again but the very nature of customer service is such that it is critical to your business success.
Building The Foundations For Effective CRM
Is Customer Relationship Management (CRM) an important strategic methodology or just another management fad that should be consigned immediately to the out—tray. Taking time to address some of the more basic questions will pay dividends in stablishing a clear, common starting point when deciding whether CRM can benefit your organisation.
Are You Listening?
Listening to the customer. Not a radical concept, but how many companies have a strategy for making sure it happens consistently?
Customer Service Importance Stressed
I can’t stress the point enough! The cornerstone of good customer service is removing stress for consumers and clients in the buying, use and maintenance of all products and services.
Simply Better: Winning And Keeping Customers By Delivering What Matters Most
In 1954, in the seminal work The Practice of Management, Peter Drucker provided us with a vision of what it really means to be customer orientated1. He encouraged managers to move away from a specialized functional notion of marketing and redefine it as an overall business philosophy. He proposed that marketing is best thought of as the whole enterprise seen from the customer’s point of view.
Are You Matching Your Retention Strategies With The Customer Life Cycle?
The best customer retention initiative to implement for a specific customer often depends on their position in the customer life cycle. What’s more, the earlier in the customer life cycle that you execute a customer retention initiative the more effective and higher the overall return on investment (ROI) of the initiative. So what should you do and when?
Back To Basics
Into service or Internet. Some choice. An increasing number of entities whose business is centred on satisfying and servicing consumers are concluding that the Internet is a distraction and are returning to the fundamentals of personal interaction with customers and clients.
Is Your Company Seen As A General Supplier - Or A Generative Supplier?
This is a critical question to confront, especially if your business is intent on winning new customers - and retaining good customers.
No Service, No Profits; Know Service, Know Profits
Vacation periods should teach all in business one important lesson. Customer service never goes (or must never go) on holidays.
Customer Care Starts And Ends With Your Phone
Is your business dependent on communicating with customers by telephone? The telephone is often the first contact the customer has with your business. Customers - existing and potential - who phone your business are people with questions to be answered and problems to be solved.
Create Real Relationships For A Change
What’s lacking in a lot of current service and marketing?
Top 10 Customer Service Tips
Ten quick and easy tips for improving your customer service.
Increasing Customer Loyalty
Whether it is a small business like a local pizza shop, the members of a tennis club or users of a large mobile phone network, customer know-how is everything. In essence business success is determined by the ability to nurture intimate, two-way learning relationships with your customers. To help you improve customer loyalty let us take a moment to explore 6 tips that can lead to higher levels of customer relations.
What Drives Customer Retention?
Many companies would like to improve their customer retention but are unsure how to make the changes in their business to improve this important profit lever.
Customer Service - A Matter Of Fact(ors)
In business there are two factors which contribute to job satisfaction. In customer service it seems there is a similar dichotomy of factors. One set contributes to satisfaction and another set counters dissatisfaction.
Why Are Service Level Agreements Still A Must Have?
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) have been around for as long as bad service has, and yet, like most preventative solutions, they have been highly under-rated.
Who's Answering Your Phone
What impression do outsiders get when they call your business/department/office?
Customer Loyalty
Establishing and maintaining a loyal customer base has become one of the most important business strategies.
Developing Fast Cycle Selling - Collaborative Approaches To Business Development
There is a distinct difference between Information Research [Company Strategic] and Information Research for Customer Relationship Building [Tactical].
Customer Profitability - Is It Enough?
Customer relationship management demands that you understand which customers create profits and those that destroy it. However this is just not enough if you want stay in business in the long term.
Important Ways to Say 'Welcome'
I’ve just returned from an evening at my favourite local restaurant. What a great night! It is only Tuesday and, as usual, it was packed. Fran and John’s food is good, but hardly outstanding, so why is their business such a success? Why do so many other guests and I keep coming back?
Customer Development Strategies
The dividend from your database investment.
Making The Telephone Work For Your Business
The telephone is the first point of contact for most businesses yet many organisations seem to ignore its importance as a customer service tool.