Posts Tagged ‘customer service’

If you run a business, marketing is a necessary evil. For larger organisations, their dedicated marketing department will take care of everything for them, leaving the boss to concentrate on the more important things such as lunches, golf days and seeing how many tickets to the major sporting events he can get his hands on. What happens when you work alone? Like many entrepreneurs you have to do everything. You have to be the Operations Director, Financial Director, Marketing Director, Office Junior and tea boy/girl. It is highly unlikely that you'll be an expert in all these areas, so how do you cope? Marketing madness Promoting your business can take on a number of forms, such as: Brochures Website Emails and newsletters Case studies Press releases Blogs and articles Direct marketing But do you really understand each of these fully? Your marketing materials are vital for the survival of ...

    Google has been a God send for shopaholics everywhere. No longer do you have to spend hours trudging around over-heated stores. Now, you can sit and relax in the comfort of your own home and shop to your heart’s content. But as an online business, are you making the most of these leads when they come to you? Considering how most people shop today, once they’ve fired off an email to you, they will want a reply ASAP. So how quickly do you respond?   According to a recent survey by Insidesales.com and Omniture, it would appear that you don’t respond very quickly at all: Average email response time: 19 hours, 31 minutes (the optimum response time should be within an hour) Average phone response time: 36 hours, ...

  Once upon a time, customers could only get in touch with you by telephone, letter or by visiting your premises. If they were unhappy, they’d probably moan about you to a friend or two and you’d be non the wiser. How times have changed. Now, if they’re unhappy they’ll tweet about it or post in on their Facebook page. Before you know it, the whole world will know they received bad service. That’s why, as a business, it’s vital you’re using social media. How social media can be used to your advantage If there’s one thing everyone loves, it’s to talk. By listening to social media channels, you ...

  Finding out what they really want There is one sure fire way of finding out what your customers are looking for – ask them. They can tell you if your products/services are providing what they’re looking for, whether your customer service is hitting the mark and how they would prefer to interact with you (email, social media, telephone etc.) So what’s the most effective way of conducting your research? Here are a few ideas you could try. 1. Ask them directly Talking to your customers – scary thought but quite effective. Whether it’s face to face, on the phone or using social media ask ...

  This is amazing. Your search engine optimisation strategy is working. Targeted traffic is flooding to your website and your professional copywriting is converting them because they are going straight to your contact form. Fantastic. So what happens next? Getting traffic that converts is one thing but does your customer service match their expectations or is it letting you down? There are a number of ways your customers will be able to get in touch with you so you must ensure the service they receive via their preferred method is first class. 1. Email Although your customers won’t expect an immediate response via email, they don’t to be left hanging around for weeks either. When you get an email send an acknowledgement so they know you are aware of their ...