Are You Connecting With Your Customers?

/in /by

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Customer Service|Are You Connecting With Your Customers?There are so many things that go into making any kind of business truly successful in the modern age. The truth is that trying to keep up with all of the things that you have to deal with as a business owner can actually be somewhat overwhelming. The main issue is trying to figure out what needs to be at the top of the list of your priorities. A lot of different people will give you different answers to this question. They will say that you need to focus on marketing your business. Others will insist that you need to pay attention to your bottom line above all things. Others will say that keeping up with the times should be your number one priority. However, the truth is that the thing that you should really be paying the most attention to combines all of these things together. The truth is that the one thing that you need to be focusing on more than anything else is your customer base. Your customers are the only reason that your business is something real and not just another pipe dream and you need to make sure that you’re connecting with them properly. However, that can often be something of a challenge. With that in mind, here are some things that you can do to connect more effectively with your customers.

Understanding them

The first thing that you have to understand when it comes to making sure that you’re connecting with your customers is that you have to understand who your customers actually are. There are plenty of great businesses that come up with incredibly effective marketing techniques that still end up failing because they haven’t actually figured out their demographic. This isn’t just a matter of knowing the vague age groups or gender of your target audience. You need to be able to understand your target customers well enough that you can create a clear and detailed profile of them. That way you can not only tailor your marketing to them but you can tailor all aspects of your business in such a way that it is going to be as appealing to them as possible.

Understanding the modern landscape

Of course, it’s not just your customers you need to understand, you also need to understand the context that both you and they are in. The most important change that has come about in terms of how businesses and customers relate to one another is that people generally aren’t as receptive to traditional advertising as they might once have been. Not only that but they often actually find more overt and traditional forms of advertising frustrating and distasteful. Ads are skipped at the start of Youtube videos and pop-ups are closed almost instantly. Customers are interested in content in the modern era and you need to be sure that you’re providing them with just that. Just look at the way that a lot of brands are using social media these days. They’re not just advertising their products. They’re talking to people, making jokes, creating an emotional connection that is essential to building a relationship with customers in the modern era.

Embracing new technology

Technology has also played a major part in the way that businesses connect with their customers. The internet and social media are obvious examples of this but there are ways to go beyond that in how you embrace modern technology. Something that allows you to queue up social media posts on sites like Twitter or your business’s blog means that you’re able to keep up with a clear upload schedule while still focusing on other elements of your business. A few weeks is a lifetime online so a service like that is incredibly valuable. A chatbot on your website is also incredibly useful since it lets you automate a degree of your customer service and remove any barrier between your customers and the information and support they need. Check out this bot building resource page for information how to really get the most out of your website. These might not be the biggest changes in the world, but they’re the kinds of things that can make a huge difference.

Going beyond marketing

The idea of the chatbot raises an interesting point in terms of how you might need to change the way that you’re thinking about connecting with your customers. Most of the time this idea is focussed around marketing, which is certainly important. However, it’s also important to understand that your relationship with your customers goes way beyond marketing. You also need to think about the support and customer service that you’re offering at every stage of your customer’s interaction with your business. Otherwise, you’re going to be putting in plenty of effort into bringing in customers, but no effort into keeping them.

Putting in the effort

Speaking of effort. It’s essential to understand that if you want to connect with your customers in a meaningful way, you have to be willing to put the work in. This is not a part of your business that you can set aside until it’s convenient. It’s an integral part of your business from the very start and if you’re not paying it enough attention, you’re going to end up in trouble.

Of course, it’s essential to understand that this is far from the only thing that you have to worry about when it comes to trying to really make your business the best it can possibly be. The reality is that you need to give the same level of care and attention to every single part of your business because if you don’t then you’re going to end up dropping the ball. It can often feel like you’re spinning plates and keeping them all level can be an exhausting challenge. But that’s just the nature of the beast when it comes to running your own business. It’s the choice that you need to be sure of before you dive in for good. You need to be sure that you’re the kind of person who can handle the pressure and challenge that comes with running any kind of business at all.

 

Key Steps to Improving Your Business Customer Service

/in /by

If you want to improve the success of your business, then first and foremost, you need to think of your customers. They are the ones that are going to make the difference between the business being a success or not. Because without any customers, there is no business. So what are the things that you can be doing to improve the relationships that you have with your customers? The answer is an obvious one, but it is often overlooked: improve customer service. No matter how great your team are, how good your business idea is and what you do or sell is, one of the things that customers are likely to remember is what the interaction with your business is like; both negative or positive, it will be remembered.

A strong company will want to have, and hopefully, already strive to have, great customer relationships. But a smart company will be looking for ways to improve and really getting down to the bottom of what good customer service is. It is all about listening carefully to your customers’ needs and wants. You need to make sure that you’re able to keep up, otherwise, they are likely to take their business elsewhere. So here are some ideas to help.

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article | Key Steps to Improving Your Business Customer Service
 
Strengthen Your Customer Service Skills

First, it is a good idea to make sure that your customer service team, if you have one, has the right skills for your managing the needs of your customers. They are what customers will have first contact with, so it needs to be a good experience, even if the outcome isn’t necessarily positive. customers’ needs. No amount of software or things like CRM can compensate for any shortcomings with your team’s customer service.

Improve Customer Service Strategy

You and your team may have the skills to provide some good customer service, and have no problems with customers interactions. But what strategies can you start to implement to please your customers even more? You don’t want customers to come to you with problems, if they can be dealt with ahead of time.

Getting personal with customers can be a good idea, as it can allow you to have another level of interaction, through sites like Twitter or Facebook. You can also look to improve how you do certain things, such as your logistics or supply chain. If you are noticing that there are things going wrong, then look to do something about them, such as looking into semi truck leasing or other ways to improve deliveries, before big issues come up and people then demand more from you. If you deal with things before they’re an issue, then it really does provide a good customer service experience.

All Customers to Provide Feedback

No matter how proactive you are in the things that you do, there will always be one issue or another that you never manage to get on top of. So to make sure that you learn about all sides of the experience that your customers have with your business, then it can help you to create a simple way for them to provide you with feedback.

Pronto Payments: Get Clients To Cough Up Quicker With These Tips

/in /by

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Payments| Pronto Payments: Get Clients To Cough Up Quicker With These TipsDo you have a problem with clients and customers not paying their bills and invoices on time? Not only can this be very annoying, but it can pose a more practical problem for your business when it starts to affect your cash flow. If the majority of invoices aren’t paid on time, you could find that the amount of cash in your bank starts to dwindle and you might even struggle to pay your own bills as a result. But you shouldn’t let it get that far! There are a few ways you can encourage your customers to pay on time and, in some cases, even early. Read on to find out more!

Offer A Range Of Payment Options

Firstly, it’s now necessary to offer your customers and clients numerous ways they can pay you. Even though most people will go online and do a bank transfer using their online bank account, there will still be some people who would prefer not to. So, you need to make sure they can just as easily pay you. You could give customers the chance to ring your office or headquarters so that they can pay with their credit card over the phone. Another option is to accept checks. Even though these are seen as quite an old-fashioned method of payment these days, most of the older generations who aren’t so tech-savvy still prefer to pay this way.

Ensure Payment Processes Are Secure

No matter what kind of payment methods you offer to your customers, you need to make sure that they are all safe and secure. The general public is now very aware of the various ways their sensitive data could end up lost or stolen, and one of the most common reasons for stolen bank details is using unsecured methods of payment. Ivrnet offers secure solutions for over the phone payments, so it’s worth contacting them if you want to continue to offer phone payments that your customers can trust. Make sure that you also use an ecommerce platform that is known for their tight security as well so that your online customers can shop with plenty of peace of mind.

Send Out Invoices On Time

Some companies wait until the very end of the month to carry out their invoicing for work that they have completed over the month. However, this means that you will be invoicing for projects that you did at the start of the month quite late. It’s a much better strategy to send out your invoices and bills as soon as the work has been completed. Your clients will then have a month to pay up from the end date of the work.

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article |Payments| Pronto Payments: Get Clients To Cough Up Quicker With These TipsDon’t Leave Any Information Off An Invoice

One of the main reasons some clients will give for not paying on time is because they were unable to. There are a few different reasons why they might have been unable to pay on time, but sometimes it is all down to not having enough information to do so. This could be because you have missed off some information from the invoice you sent them. The client will need more than just your bank details to pay. For accounting purposes, they will also need a date on the invoice, your company address, and also the address of your bank. It’s always worth asking them what information they need on your invoice when you first create one for them so that you don’t miss anything that could be important.

Chase Up Payments As Soon As They Are Overdue

Have you just noticed that one of your invoices hasn’t been paid and is now overdue? You need to chase it up right away. It’s worth sending a polite email to remind the client as they might have simply forgotten. It’s a good idea to direct this to their accounts payables department so that it goes straight to the individual who has the responsibility of paying it. If no one responds to that and the invoice continues to be unpaid, you might want to send a more formal demand for payment.

Add Late-Payment Fees And Interest To Overdue Invoices

It’s also important to add some late-payment fees and interest on invoices that are overdue by more than a week. You should calculate a new invoice that includes the original fee and these additions added on. Hopefully, these extra charges will prompt your client to cough up finally!

Follow these tips and your clients should start paying a lot quicker in the future!

The Trust Issue

/in /by

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship management Article |Consumer Relationship| The Trust IssueBusinesses want to have strong and long-lasting relationships with their consumers. That relationship is built on trust, but in a post-truth world brands are faced with a serious challenge: so much of modern life is defined by mistrust.

I believe that for brands, trust and truth are the most important games in town.

The ‘trust issue’ is a central theme for organisations in any sector, and it’s one in which I’ve conducted a mass of research into how a post-truth culture is impacting brands, across an array of business sectors, on a global basis. To quote The Economist “consumer trust is the basis of all brand values, and therefore brands have an immense incentive to retain it”.

Why is this so important? Because, if a brand isn’t seen as credible and trustworthy, then when choice is available it’ll be rejected in favour of one that is – by those who view themselves as being ‘informed’ as opposed to ‘passive’ consumers.

This is due to a weakening of the vital trust connection between brands and consumers and is causing enormous problems for businesses. The ramifications for brands in sectors of all description are deeply serious, when ‘reputation capital’ is of such immense importance, regarding our belief in those core questions of ‘is a business honest, competent and reliable?’

But just running an advertising campaign stating that a brand is trustworthy isn’t good enough. This isn’t a marketing issue, this is a business-wide issue, involving every facet of the organisation, hence leadership being so important.

Companies have to be consistent in their behaviour, from top to bottom, and right along the supply chain, from the ‘first hand of production to the final hand of the consumer’.

And this genuinely has to go all the way. Make no mistake, organisations and brands that want to earn and keep our trust have to ‘live it like they say it’. Business has to be about more than just profit. ‘People plus Planet’ and to quote a much-derided word ‘Purpose’ have to be in there too.

The ‘actual’ difference between ethical brands with a moral code and those exposed as being without one, is increasingly a key factor in consumer brand adoption or rejection. This approach very much links to social innovation and indeed conspicuous altruism.

‘Social Purpose’ is a phrase used obsessively by modern, forward-thinking leaders, and links directly to joint value creation where both shareholders and society benefit from business. Yet many still attempt to portray, or indeed dismiss, the demographic most associated with this ideal as being one where, as The Guardian newspaper put it recently “the idea that market activity should have a purpose other than purely profit is roughly where it always was on the spectrum, somewhere between Marx and Jesus – one for the rioters, the subversives, the people with beards, unsuited to mainstream discourse.”

To illustrate that this thinking goes right to the top of hard-headed business thinking, in their ‘Reflections from Davos’ report regarding the meeting of the World Economic Forum, the managing partner of McKinsey was quoted as saying “the next innovation imperative will be social innovation – business’s role will be critical here.” The report went on to note “society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose”.

This is set against research from those such as Deloitte who show how millennials are fast losing faith in business; and against a backdrop where people are scrambling to find solid ground in an era when we’re told that the very notion of truth is subjective, and indeed much of public discourse has become increasingly anti-fact and anti-expert.

Fortunately there are numerous shining examples of organisations that are showing us all ‘how to do it better’ ranging across the business spectrum, in sectors ranging from beauty to finance, and from fashion to beverages.

With good leadership at the core of these businesses, all members of the organisation are enabled to understand and demonstrate ‘why they do it, what they do and how they do it’. And this means leaders of companies taking deliberate and definitive action to ensure that their businesses demonstrate ‘corporate social leadership’.

This will also enable the truism that ‘good business is good business’.

About the Author

Sean Pillot de Chenecey, author of The Post-Truth Business: How to Rebuild Brand Authenticity in a Distrusting World, has over 20 years’ experience as a brand expert, combining marketing consultancy with ethnographic activity and trend research around the world. His clients have included Unilever, Swatch, Heineken, Diageo, General Motors, Beiersdorf, AXA, Costa, Vodafone, Kerrygold and Starwood. He’s collaborated with numerous international advertising, branding, design, media and PR agencies. He is a lecturer at the University of the Arts London, and has written for Dazed, Admap, Brand Strategy, Marketing and Contagious. A public speaker, he’s given speeches for over a decade in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and North America. For more information, please visit www.koganpage.com/post-truth-business

Ways to Impress a Client On a Business Trip

/in /by

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article | Customer Relationships | Ways to Impress a Client On a Business TripHeavy luggage, lost at reception and boozy business dinners are all regular features of hosting a client who has traveled on business. One of the most important features of impressing a client while they’ve made the effort to travel is to keep them entertained while you get to know them. Spending some time talking over a few beers is great for understanding them on a personal level, but wowing them while they’re visiting can also be hugely beneficial to your company.

Don’t just take them to the local bar

If your client would really just prefer to sit in a comfy chair and drink a few beers, then perhaps take them to a quiet bar downtown. However, if they’re really interested in seeing what your town or city has to offer, take them to a restaurant that will show them you’re keen to offer them a high-quality experience. Something such as a Japanese Teppanyaki restaurant will not only offer them some impressive cuisine, but also show them a good time too.

Show them the sights of the city

Does your city have an infamous opera house? A beautiful set of gardens? Changing up where you chat to your clients about business not only gives them some mental respite, but also shows them that you hope they come and visit you again. You want them to get the sense you’re proud to have them in your home city. This also offers another chance to entertain your guests for the evening and make their work vacation have a greater focus on the vacation part.

Show them the best of your country

Some clients haven’t just traveled from one state to the other, they may have traveled from Europe or Asia, and they might be hoping to see a little more of the United States than just your board room. If you’re desperate to win this client’s approval, then showing them the best the US has to offer is a flashy way of keeping them impressed. Taking them to see the all American sights of Texas, by using a specialized transport service, can be key.

You can do this by searching for private jet charters Dallas. This will bring your company one step closer to impressing your international client, and the client one step closer to seeing a real cowboy. It’s even said that doing something silly or fun will lighten the mood and make everyone feel that little bit closer to their colleagues.

Offer them a souvenir to remind them of the trip

At the end of Local Hero, the most poignant moment is when the American lead character takes out a handful of sea shells that remind him of Scotland. Leaving them with something small and significant to place in their luggage that will hopefully remind them of the good time spent with your company, and leave them wanting more.

Clients on executive travel might be keen to be impressed, but they’re also a tired traveler. Finding activities that bring out the human and less of the business person will make the trip not only memorable for them, but also for your team.