POSTS TAGGED : customer satisfaction

Grow Your Business in Ways your Customers Will Appreciate

In today’s competitive global business environment, pleasing customers is no longer just about providing quality products and services. Winning customers’ loyalty requires you to engage them and stand out from the sea of other businesses. This is the key to success, and it’s no secret – Nine out of ten American CEOs say they are are building stronger client engagement programs, according to PWC.

Hot dog truck and the happy customer

As you grow your business, it’s critical that you do so in a direction that your customers will appreciate. Here is a look at some of the ways you can expand your business and please your customers at the same time:

Humanize Your Brand

Branding is more than logos and flashy commercials — it’s a way of communicating your values and identity in a memorable way.…

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Why You Need to Hang on to Troublesome Customers

We’ve all been there at one point or another in business: dealing with a mean, snarly, over-bearing, impossible-to-satisfy customer that seems hell-bent on milking every last dime of profit from your business.

As a business owner, it’s so easy to focus on these “PIA” customers: concluding that telling them to “hit the bricks” is the only sensible solution. They exist in your world only to waste your time and money, and generally put you and your employees in a bad mood.

Nagging customer

The good…

Mr. Jones makes his purchase and you never hear from him again until he lavishes you with yet another order every month.…

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Admitting Mistakes In Business Is An Art – Learn It By Heart!

Mistakes are common in businesses and those who are running a new venture or have stepped into entrepreneurship recently, are sure to face plenty of them. However, the concern is not how many of them you face down the line but how actually you end up dealing with them?

When you know you have committed a mistake, admitting it is more of an art. Your attitude to this not only defines who you are but also suggests where you can reach in the future.

Admitting Mistakes In Business Is An Art - Learn It By Heart!

It should be added that learning the art of admitting your mistakes without any fear or hesitation also influences others around you and projects you as a better leader.…

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Small Businesses and Shipping Providers: What Are the Options?

Depending on the industry, small businesses usually depend on logistics and shipping services at some point. While some choose to facilitate those functions internally, others might consider outsourcing the work. When juggling between the two alternatives, it is helpful to consider a few key points.

Any small business owner knows today’s market is extremely competitive, and many small businesses continually battle large businesses to try and stay afloat. Mistakes can be very costly and drive consumers away from a “mom-and-pop” operation to a big business they know will deliver products and results they need. If a business is too small to employ accurate and timely shipping services, it might be better to outsource the work.…

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Angry Customers Mean More than Just Heartburn

Your employees and perhaps even you have dealt with these individuals at one time or another – the angry customer.

In jobs that involve a lot of customer service calls, undoubtedly some of your employees have met the wrath of that man or woman who doesn’t like the service, the product they acquired, the prices charged or more.

In order to placate these individuals, you can take the beating like a man or you can write them off as a customer and never have to deal with them again.

angry customers

For those companies that choose to work with these angry customers, it can take some comforting remarks, coupons and/or discounts on future purchases and more to win them over.…

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How To Combat And Learn From Negative Feedback

learning from negative feedback

Negative reviews and feedback for a small business can have a greater impact today than ever before due to the increased use and accessibility of the Internet. Unfortunately, one negative review can turn consumers away, but with the right proactive approach, negative reviews don’t need to have a huge impact on your business and can even be viewed in a positive light by incorporating the following into your reputation management campaign.

  • Confirm the legitimacy of the claim. Unfortunately, some do attempt to make other businesses look bad for personal gain, so first confirm the legitimacy of any negative feedback you receive.
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How To Deal With Unhappy Customers

dealing with unhappy customersFor a new small business owner who is seeking to grow his or her business, brand reputation is an important consideration to keep in mind, which is why any negative press about the business can be detrimental to its success. All it takes is one unhappy client or associate, the lightning-fast pace of the internet, and a negative blog post to derail even the best laid plans.

If you follow publishing at all, you might have seen this example in the fall of Cooks Source Magazine, whose editor plagiarized a freelance author’s work, and then refused to apologize. What followed was a barrage of negative press, which led to the magazine’s advertisers pulling their support, thus ending the magazine’s life.…

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Top 6 Secrets To Great Customer Service

6 tips to better customer serviceEach of us has different experiences with customer service; some are good while most that we hear about are just horrible. Businesses, no matter how big or small, need to evaluate how well they are serving their customers.

There’s already a new standard and it is not just to have “good” customer service, it’s about being great. In a very competitive market, business owners cannot just ignore the importance of service excellence.

A business book review, by Ivana Taylor, of the book “Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us”, the primary intention of the author was to make a research on what goes on with call centers.…

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Tips For Dealing With Your Most Difficult Clients

dealing with difficult business clientsSome people you just can’t please. At least, that’s the truism my grandpa used to say to me. Clearly, grandpa didn’t run a small business. While some people are harder to make happy than others, as a CEO of a small business you can’t just write off difficult clients, unless of course you don’t mind taking a hit in your business.

But, after you’ve spent all day running your catering business, for example, cooking, responding to calls, and delivering orders, getting a complaint from someone because their food arrived at 5:03 instead of 5 isn’t going to make them your favorite person.…

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Building a Perpetual Marketing Machine

email marketingWhen it comes to online marketing, small businesses are staring at a dilemma. Free online marketing tools like social networks have great potential for reaching new customers, but their actual impact on the bottom line is hard to measure. Meanwhile, established tools like email marketing provide valuable metrics on subscribers, and are more suited for retaining and engaging existing customers than acquiring new ones.

Thankfully, online marketing isn’t a zero-sum game – it’s an aggregate one! Positioning email marketing against social media leaves marketers at a loss because they fail to capitalize on the individual strengths of both these channels. Email marketing gives businesses the ability to build a deeper relationship with customers, while social media helps to reach a broader audience.…

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