|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Transforming Disgruntled Customers into Your Biggest Advocates "I am writing to complain about the widget I bought from your site the other day." From Scowl to Smile: 5 Practical Steps to Instill Exceptional Customer Service Whether in a restaurant, a retail establishment, or the local post office, we have all experienced a decline in customer service. Rarely do smiling, happy employees interact with us anymore. Instead, the person we are dealing with in face-to-face relationships does not even attempt to feign a smile, but rather greets us with a scowl, completely avoids eye contact with us, and grudgingly mutters responses to our requests and questions. When did customer service cease to exist? Why is it suddenly so difficult for employees to show customers some common courtesy along with a little friendliness? Have we ventured so far from the service standards of yesteryear and become so shortsighted that we refuse to treat others as we would want to be treated ourselves? First Contact: The Source of Customer Loyalty With customers being smarter, more cost conscious, more product knowledgeable and more demanding, improving customer service has become a major focus within many businesses. In Customer Satisfaction is Worthless; Customer Loyalty is Priceless, author Jeffrey Gitomer contends the real solution is shifting the paradigm away from customer service to customer loyalty. This may be the first step, but the next step is to shift the focus away from loyal customers to loyal employees. Courting Customers - From First Date to Marriage Landing a new client is like courting a potential spouse. The first date is usually a make or break situation and if the door is still open, the work has just begun. Like dating, you'd better give your prospect a pretty good reason to meet with you again, because there is usually more than one suitor. Sorry, No Customer Service After 4:00 P.M. A few months ago, I wrote about ingenious styles of customer service that every business should know about, mostly because their employees were inflicting them on their customers. The Nine Principles of Customer Service for the Travel Industry© If you want to learn how to get your clients to do your selling for you through excpetional customer service, read on. Learn customer service secrets from tourism professionals, apply them to your business and prosper. Wholesale Buyers Versus Retail Customers Are wholesale buyers and retail customers really different? Frankly, there are two answers to this question: yes and no. Yes, because they are different from the buyers and those selling to buyers' point of view and no, because the principles that apply are the same for both types of buying. Does Your Customer Talk Back To You? What is your customer saying about you? Do you really know? Does your customer really know who you are? Handling Customer Complaints Even the best business will receive an occasional customer complaint. Knowing how to resolve these complaints will help you gain loyal customers who will then refer others to your business. Here are some important tips. 4 Myths about Customer Value The purpose of business is to create and retain a customer. Clients... and 38 ways to communicate with them As Alan Weiss (guru to the savvy consultant) says: Are You A Coward? I Was Over the last month, I have come to hate emails and answerphones; not because I get 100 emails every day but because emails and answerphones are fast becoming the tool of the coward. At Beyond Philosophy we worked with a client a while ago whose account managers and sales teams never used to speak to anyone! They just used to send emails. If the customer called in they were greeted by answerphones which were kept on all day. You see the sales teams were all busy doing "real" work. The customers were just interrupting them. Surely this must be the height of "inside out" behaviour. What Every Manager Should Know About How to Learn from the Complaints of Customers and Employees Listening to complaints, whether they're reasonable or not, is a part of every manager's job. Sometimes complaints can be overwhelming. However, when we take them in stride with an open mind, we can learn much from our employees' and customers' feelings about the workplace. After all, a complaint is nothing more that a person telling you that his (or her) needs have not been met. As dissatisfied customers, they are giving us a second chance to correct something that should have been done properly the first time around. (In some cases the customer might happen to be your employee.) 4 Easy Steps to Better Online Customer Support Customer support is very important when you're running a business, whether your business is on or off the net. If your customer support is hopeless, you'll soon find your customers running away from you and worse, telling others to stay away too. What Type Of Software Is This? The other day while at the book store, I came across some accounting software CDs strewn with other CDs and books in garage sale box. Complaining Consumers The salesman's job is to be well informed; extremely well informed. For this information is how he earns his bread. At a car dealership the commission over the MSRP on some cars would barely be enough to pay rent. A dealer must fight for every penny of the margin in order to receive the best paycheck. On the other hand, the consumer must also fight for every penny in order to receive the best deal. And The Difference is... Attitude I returned a rental car at an airport yesterday. As the person who was going to check me in approached, he smiled (which shocked me) and said, "Hello Mr. Galler," which shocked me further as I don't have a clue how he knew my name ? obviously there was some way of identifying my car, and therefore me, at a distance. "How was your trip; was everything OK with your car?" he inquired in a friendly, personal tone. "Everything was fine I replied" "Great ? I hope we'll see you back soon. There is some bottled water in the cooler over there for you" he said as he directed me towards the shuttle bus to the terminal. Making the Connection: Customer Relationships That Build Your Business Have you ever wondered why you often find a coupon tucked inside your cereal box, or get invited to a customer preview sale at your favorite department store? Those companies know that their existing customers are the best - and most profitable - customers they'll ever have. So it's not surprising that they'll do whatever they can to keep these customers happy and coming back again and again. Customer Service, Italian Style Nowadays, we complain nearly all of the time about how few businesses remember how to provide quality service to their customers. But a recent trip to Italy not only reminded me that the art of service is not dead, but that providing outstanding service is the key to almost any successful business. Here are a few well-worn but important principles that I was reminded of during that trip: Find Out Where Your Firm Stands in Today?s Customer Looking For Ways to Improve Sales and Customer Relationships?
|
|
|
|
|
