6 Smart Ways to Make Unhappy Customers Happy

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.” - Jim Rohn

Smart business owners are coming to terms with the fact that happy customers are good for business. How to keep customers happy has therefore become a common concern for many business owners. If as it happens often a customer isn’t happy, it is smart to use some tried-and-tested strategies to turn things around. Here are some of the strategies some top entrepreneurs routinely use to handle unhappy customers.

01. Take full responsibility for mistakes. When any of your customers gets agitated about your product or service, do not make the mistake of shifting blames. Take full responsibility and get to work on the issue immediately. Be sure to personally communicate with the concerned customer. Never make the mistake of delegating this duty. When customers realize they are dealing with the “real man” behind the business, it gives them real assurances and that makes them happy.



02. Give your customers a listening ear. Be available always for your customers no matter how busy you are. Many times, customers are unhappy because no one actually listens to their complaints. That is very true! As a business owner, when such disputes arise, you can listen directly and resolve them yourself. A direct telephone conversation with the complaining customer comes very handy here. That goes a long way to douse tension and calm frayed nerves most of the time.

03. Habitually engage your customers. Doing this shows that you value your customers and their concerns. You can directly engage your customers through feedback throughout the buying process or by asking for their preferences even during product development. It is generally true that the more businesses engage with customers, the happier they are.

04. Show empathy and never forget to say sorry. Sorry is a very powerful and highly emotional word to use in business. Never forget to connect to your customers’ emotional levels as a way of reminding them you're only human and are trying everything possible to make them happy. Show genuine empathy with their concerns and be as transparent as possible to make them understand you are doing everything to have the issue of their concern resolved very quickly. That somehow manages to make them happy to allow you resolve the matter.

05. Respond fast to customer concerns. Quick response is always a very vital key in any dispute resolution. In resolving customer disputes, speed could be more essential that even the solution. Without speed, many customers probably won’t even give you the opportunity to find a solution. They could be that impatient.

06. Resolve customer concerns without delay. Always remember that no matter what business you are in, you always have real competitors out there snapping at your heels to take away your customers. Quick fixing of problems could be their selling points to achieve their goals. So, to keep your own customers happy and loyal to you, you must find practical and credible ways to quickly resolve customer concerns. Customers are always happy when they have the full assurances that your business can deliver quick solutions to their problems.

6 Things You Want Your Customers Saying About Your Business

 The not-so-tricky trick he espouses is controlling what people say about your business—not by discouraging reviews or silencing criticism, but by deciding what you want customers to say and then providing the kind of product or service that will inspire those very praises. “The key to this idea working is to not settle for something like ‘we want them to say good things.’” Calloway writes. 

“That’s meaningless. The key is to be focused and specific on exactly what you want your customers saying about you.”

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.” - Jim Rohn

To that end, he recommends identifying your three “what we want them to say” statements, which will be different for every business. For example, one business might want customers saying “they’ve got the lowest prices in town”; another might prefer “the service they provide is worth paying more for.” Here’s a sampling of compliments you might want customers sharing about your business:

1. They make it very easy to do business with them.

2. They always keep me informed.

3. They are problem solvers.

4. They respect me.

5. They have the best products.

6. I trust them.

Once you’ve identified the three things you want customers to say, your focus can and should be making sure they do, with services that target those specific goals. “You may have a business with a thousand moving parts,” Calloway writes. “You may feel, justifiably, that it’s very complicated. But I assure you that if you simplify your thinking to get clarity on and focus on the three things you must get right every single day, it will be the guiding force that drives success.”

Original Article Source: http://www.success.com/article

 

5 Wasteful Small Business Marketing Strategies to Avoid

 For any small business, time and money are way too valuable for any wastage to be tolerated. Granted everyone in business always wants to do what most others are doing to promote their products/services in the market place. It gets real difficult most times. That is because marketing is no easy task. It is where some business owners at times get to overdo certain things thereby occasioning some avoidable wastage. When developing your own marketing strategy, you must take care to avoid wasting your time and money unnecessarily. Here is what to look out for and try to avoid.



01. Casting your marketing net too wide. Almost always, you get better returns on your investments and your marketing efforts work better if you target your audience effectively. Experience has shown that if you cast your marketing nets too wide, you end up wasting valuable time and money marketing to the wrong people in the wrong places. That clearly is a waste which is avoidable.

02. Untargeted video marketing. If you rightly assume that your customers are watching videos online, you must find out where. First you must try to know on what platforms your videos would be viewed on before you even create one. That is because creating videos for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram for instance requires different approaches and strategies for the simple reason that videos are consumed differently on both platforms. Doing otherwise leads to avoidable wastage creating videos which are not well targeted.

03. Using too many social media channels. The more the merrier is hardly relevant when it comes to marketing on social media. If you are one of those marketers who still believe you need to be everywhere on social media, you are simply wasting your very valuable time, effort and money. When you decide to market on social media platforms, what is most important is to target your customers exactly where they are already spending their time. Just take your business to them in the social media where they already are. That saves you time and money.

04. Creating irrelevant content. We hear marketing experts say “content is king” when it comes to blogging for business. And that you need regular and fresh content all the time. Great! But that’s not all. What is important is that your content must be relevant to be useful. That is what helps your customers who want to build a relationship with your business. They appreciate your business more when you regularly give them valuable, relevant and fresh content which helps them. Irrelevant content is clearly a waste of time and money in that wise.



05. Wrong use of influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is good for your business if the influencer is in the right industry. To get good value from the advice of influencers, they must be right for your business and they must also have some visible and identifiable reputation. If however you’re in an obscure industry or you create products for a small niche market, influencers are probably not going to be of much help to you. Using influencers for such business will clearly be a waste of time, effort and money. Therefore, you can do well to avoid wasting your time and money on some low impact influencer or one in the wrong industry.

Cost-Effective Small Business Shipping Trends

 Time there was when to ship or not to ship was a big question. Not anymore. In present day business calculations, that isn’t even the question anymore. Your business must ship goods if it has to remain in business. What concerns every small business owner now is how to do shipping in the right way and at the right cost. Big businesses can afford to offer free shipping, discounts for large orders and certain-day delivery services but small businesses can hardly afford to. Because they have to remain in business and they must ship goods, small businesses need to rely on latest shipping trends to remain relevant. Some of these trends include offering customers more shipping options and taking advantage of the latest technological tools to help monitor and understand customer buying habits. Here is what is trending right now which you too can take advantage of.



01. Offering more shipping choices. Most shoppers expect to be given the opportunity to make choices at all times. For that reason, the more the choices you offer them, the better they like your business. These days, most customers crave quick service. You can therefore offer them choices like, allowing them to choose their shippers, which store or warehouse they want to pick up their goods, same-day shipping, rush delivery, same-day delivery or regular delivery.

02. Monitoring customer buying habits. You need high-tech tools to be able to do this. Tools like Google Analytics when properly used can help reduce shipping costs tremendously. This tool enables business owners to monitor and understand their customers’ buying habits. That way, they can target shipping services while saving a lot of time which otherwise would have been wasted. With Google Analytics, it is possible to easily analyze pricing histories, mobile usage, site traffic, shipping time and arrival and other transaction-related information which can help you gain some edge. With such information, you can streamline and control the sales process and eliminate duplicated or wasteful processes thereby saving your customer’s time and money.

03. Simplifying shipping costs. When you see big merchants increasingly simplifying shipping costs it is to boost sales. Many do so mainly to garner a larger share of online customers. Small businesses are increasingly towing that exact same line for same reasons. Here again choices come into the mix. When you simplify shipping costs by way of offering customers choices, they are happier to do business with you at reduced costs to them. They explore their full liberty to pick and choose how they want their goods to be shipped based on what shipping costs they are prepared to bear.

04. Shipment tracking. These days, many small businesses routinely deploy shipment tracking and expected delivery times to check costs. Shipment tracking helps shoppers plan their schedules around the expected delivery times of their goods. Small businesses can do shipment tracking easily because some delivery services do provide package tracking that shows estimated delivery time and route location. Customers generally appreciate if they know when and how they can expect delivery of their goods. With proper tracking, people are able to make promises and keep such promises. Delays and frustrations are largely eliminated. That adds great credibility to many small businesses and customers do respond positively.

7 Ways to Automate Conversations with Your Customers

Maintaining an open line of communication with your customers is key to any successful business relationship. There is real customer satisfaction when your customers know that you’re behind them and are ready to support them every step of the way. This is a win-win relationship which does not necessarily mean you’ll need to spend extra man-hours to keep your lines of communication open. Even if there are a lot of customer service requests, you may not need a human being to handle them all. That is where automation comes in.

Putting automation to work in your business frees you and your employees up to continue to move your business forward, while still keeping a level of support that your customers expect. Here are 7 cost effective ways you can automate that process.

01. By Making Use of New Technologies: The commonest technologies that might assist in the automation process are the use of mobile apps. The most effective of these apps are those which help to walk customers through common issues so they can fix problems themselves without the need for your involvement. Others might use SMS to text a code to a number to get information on their account, a balance due, or to automate the payment process.

02. By Using Technology for Follow-up: Even after you’ve made a sale, it’s still important to keep the lines of communication open to your customers. The follow up helps to increase customer satisfaction by merely letting your customers know that you’re out there if they need you. That helps to address potential problems early on by addressing issues early. Common problems are easier to fix early on. For instance, using a simple automated email might be all that is needed to open a line of communication between you and your customer.

03. By Automating Your Social Media Presence: As many business owners have come to realize, Social media outreach is an important part of their business’ public face. It helps to give potential customers and customers a sense that they’re connected to you. Promotion of what your business offers through social media channels may open up new sales leads, while customers may turn to social media to contact you about issues. There are many social management systems such as HappyFox that can actually filter social media contacts based on the content of the message itself. That helps to take out the work of a middleman to direct queries to the right person. These same systems can also automatically post to your social media accounts, allowing you to automate your marketing strategy and give your content maximum exposure.

04. By Using Surveys: Surveys are fairly common methods of automation. Granted you’re not always going to get a high response rate, the data obtained from well designed surveys are great ways to not only spot potential problems, but also initiate a dialogue with your customers. It helps to keep them short, relevant, and to the point. You may also find it necessary to use your survey answers to initiate further automatic emails to gather additional feedback on areas where the responses might be a cause for concern.

05. By Using the Callback System: These days, even though many consumers may show a preference for using the Internet to communicate with businesses, many still appreciate talking to a human being. Call such people “old school” if you like but they are still out there and in large numbers too. It is because of such people the callback is still a worthy option to include in your customer relationship strategy. On the same pages where you might have a “Chat Now” button, a “Call Me” button might be just as useful. For example, MobiForge software has some great examples of Click to Call or Click to SMS solutions.

06. By Initiating Conversation without Prompting: Smart business owners do not wait for their customers to first reach out to them. They easily recognize such actions their customers may take that might be a clear sign of a need for assistance. For example, a website visitor spending a lot of time in your help pages probably needs some kind of support, while somebody looking through your products and services might benefit from talking with a member of your sales team to assure the sale. There are multiple great tools out there which can help initiate any conversation. Tools like LiveChat and BoldChat, both with customizable audience interactions can really be useful here.

07. By Using a Virtual Assistant to Handle the Simple Things: Just because you’re trying to be proactive doesn’t mean you’ll need to hire additional staff. A good portion of customer service requests are simple in nature, and with chat bots becoming ever more intelligent, automated systems can handle those issues quickly and easily. This frees up your employees to deal with more complex problems. Chat bots such as Botsify (for Facebook Messenger and other apps) can answer those simple questions that might arise from whatever actions your customer is taking on your site.