Managing cash flow is so important in business, which is why unpaid invoices are such a huge problem. If you have a lot of customers that are not paying up on time, that will soon lead to cash flow issues and it could mean the end of your business if you are not careful. All businesses deal with a few tricky clients at some point, but if it is becoming a regular occurrence, you need to do something about it. The good news is, there are some simple ways that you can get your customers to pay up on time. These are some of the best ways to avoid unpaid invoices and improve your cash flow.
Provide Clear Invoices
If a customer doesn’t want to pay up, they will try all sorts of tricks to avoid the invoice. They may say that they didn’t know that the invoice was due or they might challenge some of the items on the bill to delay payment and try to get a discount. You can avoid that by writing a detailed and clear invoice that breaks down exactly what they are paying for and when the invoice is due. It’s also important that you keep a clear paper trail when negotiating the price and sending them quotes so they cannot claim that the invoice is higher than agreed.
Consider Recurring Payments
If you have clients that use your services on a regular basis, consider asking them to set up a direct debit for recurring payments rather than issuing a new invoice every month. It makes life easier for you and for the customer and if you use recurring billing software, it’s simple to manage. You can make the prospect more attractive to customers if you offer them a small discount in exchange for making recurring payments every month. This gives you a good steady income, which makes managing your cash flow a lot easier.
Build Good Relationships With Customers
If your customers like you, they’ll be more willing to pay up on time, but if you don’t have a good relationship with you then they will be far more likely to leave invoices unpaid. It’s important that you build good relationships with your customers from the outset, and if you do, you will find that you don’t have an issue with unpaid invoices.
Don’t Be Afraid To Chase People Up
Sometimes, business owners are afraid to chase people up because they don’t want to damage their relationship with customers. However, if you allow people to get away with paying invoices late, they will take advantage of you and the problem will only get worse. It’s best to be clear from the beginning and if people have not paid, call them up and ask them where the money is. In most cases, people will pay up and if they decide that they don’t want to work with you again in the future, you just have to accept that and consider it a win because you don’t have to deal with a tricky customer anymore.
Follow these steps and you should be able to avoid any unpaid invoices in the future.
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Having a great product that satisfies people’s annoyances, or creating a wonderful service that solves problems is obviously great. If you can do the job that’s required of you and do things swiftly, then you’re going to have more good days than bad. In business, however, it’s not just about doing the job on the day and bringing in the cash – you need to be able to keep the work flowing; you need to be able to make people want you again and again and again. You want to maintain your business for a while, and then build on what you have, after all.
If you can’t keep your relationships with your customers/clients healthy, then you may end up falling a little or going stale. You’ll survive if you manage to monopolize your market, but that’s not really how most verticals stay. Competitors will come along and take people away from you in an instant if you’re not careful. You need to stay perpetually in your customers’/clients’ good books. Want to know a few ways you can do this? Well, here are some for you now:
Work Hard For Them
If people see that someone is working hard at their craft, then immediate affection is thrown at them. We all appreciate a trier, after all. If you actually get off your backside and bother, then you’re going to be seen as a group that will do whatever is necessary to get the job done. Sitting idle and shrugging your shoulders when things get tough will not exactly boost customer satisfaction, will it? You need to show that you mean business at all times.
Don’t Make Constant, Quick, Dramatic Changes
People gravitate towards your business because they feel as though they can relate to it in some way or another. If they don’t and they still find you magnetic, then it’s because you’re doing something that they feel is correct. You should stick to the fundamentals of what you’re doing – that foundation is what got you to where you are now. Sure, change a few things, but don’t make massive alterations. It’ll more than likely upset the applecart and cause people to question where you’re going with things. They’ll wonder what else you’re going to shake up.
Focus Your Energy On Customer Experience
From the initial meeting onwards, you’re going to want to ensure you treat customers with the love and respect they deserve. Customer experience is absolutely massive in keeping relationships flowing. If you’re unfamiliar with the whole idea, then you can always read something like this guide to customer experience here. Basically, if you nail your interaction with your customer base at every single point, then you’re going to be in a much better position in the long-term.
Build On What You Have
This may sound like a contradiction regarding the idea of not changing too dramatically, but it’s not. You don’t need to move things around when you’re looking to grow. If you show that you’re ambitious and are looking to add more to your repertoire, people are going to be even more attracted to you. Wanting the best, and wanting to be the best is a very emotive idea for most.
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Senior Concierge businesses help senior citizens with some of their day to day tasks that are becoming difficult for them to accomplish alone. They aren’t home health aides or any other type of medical caregivers. Rather, they allow those who need in-home senior care to get many of the things on their to-do list checked off. Think of them as errand services or personal assistants.
There are many tasks a Senior Concierge can assist with. These seven are some of the most popular reasons to use a Senior Concierge.
A Senior Concierge Can Grocery Shop for an Older Person
Grocery shopping can be difficult for a senior citizen. Getting to and from the store as well as maneuvering grocery carts and reaching many items is more than some elderly people can manage.
A Senior Concierge can accompany an older person to the store, assisting them as they do their shopping. Or, the concierge can go to the store for their client, making sure to get all the items the senior has asked them to buy. A concierge can also help to put the groceries away.
A Senior Concierge Can Accompany the Elderly to Medical Appointments
While concierges aren’t medical professionals, they can take senior citizens to and from medical appointments when a family member or friend is unable to. Not only does this ensure the client gets to and from needed appointments, it gives the senior an extra set of ears to listen to the doctor’s instructions.
An important thing a Senior Concierge can do at these appointments is to write down everything the doctor says, making sure nothing gets overlooked. That written information is valuable to both the senior and to any family member or friend who would like to know what happened at the medical appointment.
Medication Pick Up and Organization Gets Done On Time with a Senior Concierge
Getting medications on time is important for senior citizens, and a Senior Concierge can ensure that prescriptions and over-the-counter medications are picked up from the pharmacy in a timely manner.
Another medication service a concierge offers is to organize medications. They can put medications in daily pill boxes to make sure the senior is taking the right medications at the correct times.
A Senior Concierge Can Make Sure Seniors Don’t Miss Face Time with Family
Many seniors delight in the chance to video chat with their children, grandchildren, and other family members, but sometimes technology can be confusing for them.
A Senior Concierge can come to the home to facilitate video calls between seniors and their loved ones so they don’t miss valuable face time chatting with them. They can make sure the chat gets started correctly and help if it becomes disconnected.
Pets Are Easier for Seniors to Manage when a Senior Concierge Helps
Pets offer senior citizens many benefits. They’re great companions and can decrease loneliness and depression in the elderly. It sometimes becomes difficult for an older person to take care of their pets.
A Senior Concierge can help manage pets. They can take dogs for walks or empty cat litter boxes. They can also take pets for their veterinary check-ups.
Seniors Can Continue to Send Gifts the Way They Love to with the Help of a Senior Concierge
When it comes to buying gifts for birthdays and holidays, many seniors would love to be able to shop the way they once could, but physically they are unable to get to the stores. Purchasing gifts from the Internet can be an intimidating task.
A Senior Concierge can help purchase gifts, either by going to the store to buy them or assisting an elderly person to shop online. They can also wrap gifts or address greeting cards. If gifts need to be mailed, they can take care of that, also.
The Elderly Laundry Gets Done Right by a Senior Concierge
Not all seniors have their laundry room on the same floor as their living area. Managing steps makes it difficult to do their own laundry.
Going up and down the stairs is something that a Senior Concierge can do for their clients. They can wash, dry and fold laundry, carrying the laundry baskets that might be difficult and dangerous for an elderly person.
About the Author
Kelsey Simpson enjoys writing about things that can help others. She lives in South Jersey and is the proud companion to two German Shepherds and spends her free time volunteering in dog shelters.
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The money, time and effort that you put into building your business is always at risk. One day without the right number of customers could see your company suffer catastrophic failures, and that’s why it’s so important that you can take steps to attract loyal patrons that will support your business for the foreseeable future. Many businesses can find it difficult to retain customers and encourage them to shop again, yet it really doesn’t have to be this way. There are so many tips and tricks that you can utilise to ensure your business can thrive with repeat patrons that appreciate your service time and time again, and it couldn’t be easier to get started today! So, if you’re ready to find out more about how you can encourage your customers to stay loyal to your business, then read on to uncover some of the best steps that you can follow to see results in no time at all.
Quality Customer Service
It’s absolutely vital that you are able to offer the highest quality customer service to all patrons that come into contact with your business, as this is one of the key features that can influence whether you can secure or lose a customer. Perfecting your customer service skills is such an easy task, as there are so many training courses and guides or tutorials that you can utilise to develop your interpersonal skills and learn how to handle yourself over the phone, via email and in person. This training must be carried through to every member of staff that can come into contact with the public, as your customer service has to be reliable and consistent no matter what. If a customer feels unhappy with the service that they receive then it’s likely they will post a negative review, which can then influence whether other potential customers decide to shop with your business or take their money elsewhere. On the other hand, taking the right steps to provide excellent customer service will motivate happy patrons to leave positive reviews, therefore attracting other people to spend with you too. Customer service can seem like a difficult feat when you operate a business that works solely online, however there are certain techniques that you can implement that can really help in providing constant customer satisfaction.
Make Your Service More Personalised
Quality customer service is extremely important, but it’s equally as important to offer a personalised level of service that really makes your customer feel valued. There are many ways to do this, such as adding business thank you notes to every order or even sending personalised emails to thank them. This is also where you can make good use of the personal information that your customers have been giving you. For example, it’s very common for businesses to send discounts and vouchers when it’s their customer’s birthday. This is a great way to encourage your customers to stay loyal and it’s also a positive influence on their perception of your brand. These small gestures can seem small, but they’ll add up over time and keep your brand in the customer’s mind, ensuring that they’ll use your services in the future instead of choosing a more robotic competitor that doesn’t offer a personalised service. While it can take a little longer to send a personalised message, it’s a great way to establish a stronger relationship with your audience and will certainly make them feel more valued if you’re willing to put in a bit of extra time.
Take Part In Regular Testing
Another essential activity that you must take part in to ensure that you can gather loyal customers is regular varied testing. You have to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and use your service to identify whether you have to make any specific improvements, otherwise you will be completely honest the wiser to the faults that might litter your organisation. Gather a few different people, perhaps with varied responsibilities and backgrounds to offer a less biased insight, and test the different features and services that your business can currently offer customers. Collect each individual’s feedback on how they felt their experience went, and utilise this information to move forward and make improvements to increase your levels of customer satisfaction. There are also many other important types of testing that you can explore, including regularly examining the skills and knowledge of glue employees to ensure that they can stay in line with your business’s high standards. Always offer training opportunities and information to those who need it, and encourage an open atmosphere in which employees can share their issues if they should ever have any. As well as this, learning how to understand and assess your SaaS customer health score can aid you in identify some of the downfalls that your company may be experiencing, as it can offer an in depth look into when and potentially why your customers decide to leave your business. There’s no point in gathering all of this information if you’re not prepared to act on it, so it’s important that you can utilise the data that you collect to make improvements and progress to provide a better standard of service.
Encouraging customers to stay loyal has never been so simple when you are able to make the most of the top tips and tricks detailed above! Start off by focusing on the customer service that you provide, ensuring that you and your staff have all of the right training, knowledge and interpersonal skills that are needed to offer the best quality experience. Always take part in regular testing to ensure that you can identify problems and seek solutions in super fast time!
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Switchers are unhappy customers who switch from one company to another. Across the nation, businesses are losing close to $62 billion every year because of switchers.
As a business owner, you work hard to provide your customers with incredible experiences. However, sometimes things that are outside of your control are going to happen. Thankfully, business owners can learn to build customer relations that survive bad experiences.
Are you ready to find out how to create loyal customers? Read on to find out the secret to building resilient customer relations.
Build Customer Relations
The first step in learning to build customer relations that last is by knowing where you stand.
Here’s a short quiz to evaluate your company’s current customer relations:
Are your customers recommending your company to family and friends?
Are you attracting new customers regularly?
Do you have a positive customer retention rate?
If you can’t answer yes to the questions above it’s probably because you need to improve your customer service in one or more areas. If you want to be a customer service expert, that means you want to build meaningful relationships with your clientele. Depending on the nature of your business and the budget you have at hand, you can achieve this goal by investing in phone systems for small business or training your employees to improve their customer service. Any of these strategies will require resources from your business, but as long as they’re implemented with consistency, these can serve as bridges for your business upon which to build customer relations.
The best way to lay the foundation for any relationship, whether business or personal, is with trust — and it’ll be very easy for customers to trust your brand if you prioritize their needs and provide excellent customer service whenever they reach out to you.
Be Real With Your Customers
Customers can’t trust you if they don’t know who you are. One of the biggest steps in learning to build customer relations involves learning to be yourself.
Customers want to know the real you. While it’s true you can’t come to work and behave the same way you might at home, this doesn’t mean you have to be fake. Authenticity will go a long way with each of your customer interactions.
If you want to be real with your customers, start by letting them know what your business does and what your brand is. Are you a business that prioritizes customer service? Or do you want to be known as a business that provides high-quality products and services? Regardless of what you want your business to become in the eyes of the public, it’s important that you communicate this message properly.
As a business, you should be real with your customers by setting their expectations and letting them know what your business can and can’t do. Transparency is always key when building customer relationships with your target audience.
Ask the Right Questions
One way you can be truly authentic with your customers is by asking them questions that matter. Let’s say for instance that you work in the hospitality industry.
As the customer is getting ready to leave your hotel, ask them, “Will we be seeing you again soon?”. After you ask the question, be quiet and give your customers a chance to answer. There are typically 3 answers your customer will give; Yes, Maybe and No.
Aside from building customer relations that can’t be broken, asking the right questions at the right time can also help your business improve its process. The information you can gain from your customers during this phase can help your business streamline its efforts, so you’ll end up providing products and services that suit your customers’ needs and wants.
Retaining Happy Customers
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. You can always ask customers if they’ll be bringing their business to you again.
If the customer says, “yes”, you’ll know you provided A-class service. However, just because a customer says they’ll return, that doesn’t mean you should end the conversation.
A happy customer is likely to want to share details about their interactions with your company and employees. Taking the time to listen to a customer talk about their positive experience, shows them you truly care. If the competition isn’t willing to really listen, you’ll instantly have a loyal customer.
You can also use the conversation as an opportunity to learn more about what you’re doing that’s working. Perhaps the customer loved the way you packaged their documents, or they enjoy your user-friendly website. The more feedback you can get from customers, the easier it’ll be to keep making them happy.
Winning Back Unhappy Customers
Let’s pretend you ask a customer if they’ll be returning to your business and they say, “maybe”, or “no”. When a customer feels comfortable saying they’re unhappy, you have a golden opportunity to win them back. However, it’s a delicate situation and you have to be careful to position yourself correctly in the conversation.
Contrary to popular belief, winning back unhappy customers is an attainable task. When you come across unhappy customers, take the time to listen to their concerns or complaints. Often, customers are unhappy about a specific business if they were unsatisfied with the products or services given to them. If this is the reason why your customer is unhappy, provide a guarantee that your business will do better moving forward.
Stop Saying Sorry
You never want the customer to feel as if you’re arguing with them or pushing them to choose your company. This is why you should avoid saying “sorry”, and instead show sincerity by actively listening.
Statements like, “I’m sorry to hear that”, can sound like an excuse to customers. It’s also a bad idea to say sorry since you don’t know what the customer’s experience was yet.
One of the best ways to have difficult conversations with customers, is by asking open-ended questions. An open-ended question is one that you cannot answer by saying yes or no. Instead, open-ended questions cause people to think, speak, and reflect on how they’re feeling.
Ask Open-Ended Questions
After a customer tells you they might not be returning to your company, or they’re not coming back, politely ask them why they won’t be returning. You can say, “I don’t want to bother you, we pride ourselves on the experience. Please tell me, why wouldn’t you come back?”
The main idea here is to ask an open-ended question that will help reveal the full story of your customer’s experience. After the customer explains why they’re unsatisfied, make sure you reply with a real response, not something fake.
To keep it real, avoid having employees use scripted responses. Instead, summarize and speak back the story you just heard to the customer. Now, they’ll know you were listening, and they’ll be able to offer any details they may have left out.
Express Genuine Interest
Chances are you’re super excited about the product or service you have to offer customers. Your excitement is contagious and people want to know that you care about your brand and your products. When you’re interacting with your customers, listen more than you talk.
Focus on Customers Life
When you speak with customers, the majority of the conversation should focus on things that have to do with the customer on a personal level. Ask the customer how they are doing, how their family is, what life goals they’re achieving, and so on. If you’re providing a service for their business, find out how their company’s doing.
The more you can learn about your customers, the more you’ll be able to find ways to provide value to them in your relationship. Oftentimes, companies fall into the trap of promoting their specials or deals or packages to customers that don’t need it.
One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Actively listening to your customers will help you avoid suggesting products or services they don’t need. Sure, a company’s package deal may be great for somebody looking to get a bundle, but what if the customer just wants to buy one thing?
If employees try to push the package deal on them, the customer may leave upset, or worse buy the product and not get enough value. A customer that doesn’t feel heard, or doesn’t receive value from your company, isn’t going to come back.
Small Words Big Sales
Listen to your customers, the smallest things they say can sometimes lead to the biggest sales. Not only will you get sales opportunities, but you’ll also be building meaningful relationships.
Another benefit of listening closely is you’ll create a work culture that cares about the customer first. When new customers see the way you treat your existing customers, don’t want to be a part of it.
Strengthen Every Relationship
Now you know how to use expert customer service to build customer relations. Taking the time to listen to what people have to say, is one of the strongest ways to show you care.
Remember, customer relationships aren’t static, they’re always changing. For more ways to keep up with your customers in the ever-changing market, check out the rest of the site.
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Managing cash flow is so important in business, which is why unpaid invoices are such a huge problem. If you have a lot of customers that are not paying up on time, that will soon lead to cash flow issues and it could mean the end of your business if you are not careful. All businesses deal with a few tricky clients at some point, but if it is becoming a regular occurrence, you need to do something about it. The good news is, there are some simple ways that you can get your customers to pay up on time. These are some of the best ways to avoid unpaid invoices and improve your cash flow.
Senior Concierge businesses help senior citizens with some of their day to day tasks that are becoming difficult for them to accomplish alone. They aren’t home health aides or any other type of medical caregivers. Rather, they allow those who need 
Kelsey Simpson enjoys writing about things that can help others. She lives in South Jersey and is the proud companion to two German Shepherds and spends her free time volunteering in dog shelters.
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