Popular Articles

Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

read more
by Ileana Tudor
August-September 2013

Related Article

Banking

Read more

How to increase profits? Try great customer service for best results

“Thank you for calling ABC Company. All of our agents are busy assisting other customers. Your call is important to us and it will be answered in the order in which it was received. Your estimated hold time is 25 minutes. We appreciate your call.”

For those of you who don’t experience a dramatic increase in heart rate and blood pressure when you hear these words, may I offer you my personal congratulations on having mastered the art of true serenity. 

For the rest of us, the automated call system combined with long wait times and confusing menu options is one of the key reasons why we decide (or wish we could decide) no longer to work with our existing providers.

What does any of this have to do with small businesses? After all, it is unlikely that your company is using an automated phone menu. Fair enough. Neither is mine. However, customer service is a powerful driver of profitability, regardless of the size of your firm. 

Stated another way, the impact of poor customer service on a company’s bottom line is much greater than the expense otherwise incurred in order to treat clients well. 

Let’s start with the basics. What is customer service?

Simply put, customer service is about expectations. When you offer a product or a service and you price it, you are implying a certain level of support—answering questions, resolving issues, providing refunds or exchanges, handling complaints. To the degree that you are clear about those expectations and you consistently deliver highly satisfactory experiences to your clients, you are keeping that implied promise.

Why is customer service a powerful driver of profitability?

1. Repeat business, referrals and lower marketing costs. Treating your customers well results in high client retention and loyalty, repeat business and referrals.  Accenture published a study several years ago which indicated nearly 70 percent of customers left their last provider due to poor customer service. Roughly the same percentage of new customers chose a new provider based on one single positive client experience. 

Another study (by the Insight Advantage Group) estimated it is five times more expensive to acquire a new client than to retain an existing one. Creating a loyal client base through great service pays off in many ways. As your company grows bigger and an increasing amount of new business comes from repeat business as well as word of mouth, you will need to do less marketing and advertising, thus decreasing your operating costs.

2. A stronger brand. Your brand is one of the most valuable intangible assets your company owns. Re-establishing a damaged brand can take years and require significant investment in marketing, advertising and operations support.

Your brand is rendered especially vulnerable by poor customer service. In this age of pervasive social media, your brand is no longer what you say it is, or what your marketing materials portray it to be. Your brand is what your customers say it is.

One unhappy client may have hundreds of Facebook and LinkedIn contacts, and their story or opinion could go virtual within seconds. Since the Internet doesn’t have an “erase” button, undoing this type of damage could be both costly and time-consuming.

3. Innovation. One of the most overlooked benefits of great customer service is the insight it provides. If you listen to your customers, you will find that they will tell you exactly what your next enhancement or innovation should be. They will tell you what they don’t like, what’s not working, what they want more of, and what they wish would go away altogether.

While not everything can be granted or fixed overnight, your customers are your best resource for what‘s needed in the marketplace and what your competitors are not providing. The next time you’re on the phone with your customers, ask them questions about why they buy from you, what they love about your company, and what you could do to improve their overall experience. You’ll be surprised at how much useful information you’ll receive.

What does great customer service look like?

It’s personal. Customer service is about the human element. It’s a hearts and minds interaction. It is also the only area in your operations where more efficient is not necessarily better. 

If at all possible, have a live person answer the phone. If you do rely on an automated answering system, make it easy for the customer to reach a real person instead of having him or her redirected to another menu.

Have an internal policy that specifies how quickly a call will be returned.  Even if you do not have the answer or the solution the client requires, simply calling to acknowledge the request and communicating when the issue will be resolved will go a long way in terms of creating a positive client experience. 

With email, use a personal response rather than an auto-reply. When interacting with a client, use their name. Thank them for their business. Ask what else you can do to help.

It’s transparent. Be open with your customers about your policies, the options that are available to them, and your desire to help. Hear, listen and acknowledge. Most of the frustration with customer service stems from what people perceive as indifference to their problem or issue. 

An empathetic attitude and a genuine willingness to make things better make a big difference in the client’s experience of the situation, even if it’s a difficult one. 

It’s action-based. Once you’ve listened to your customer, you need to take action. Whether you are providing a refund, correcting an erroneous invoice, or offering a future service for free, make the customer aware of his or her options and implement as soon as possible. Once you’ve addressed the issue, follow-up with the customer several days later to ask if everything was resolved to their satisfaction. 

Is it always this easy or pleasant? Of course not. Let’s face it—irate or unreasonable customers are not fun. I actually beg to differ with whoever coined the phrase “The customer is always right,” because it’s not really true. 

However, whether the customer is right or wrong is not as important as the fact that your customer is in fact having a negative experience with your product, service, sales representative, or any other facet of your business.

While it’s not always possible or advisable to give customers everything they demand, demonstrating a helpful attitude, being flexible and offering several options in terms of resolving an issue will increase your client loyalty and retention, and indirectly, your long –term profitability.