customer service

The Impact of Customer Service on Your Company’s Bottom Line

It’s important to organize and run an efficient business in which the customer remains first. In doing so, the bottom line could become stronger on its own.

What is a more important factor to the business: customer service or price? One might think that cost is the number one factor and that everything else takes a second seat. In reality, that isn’t always true. Many shoppers are willing to spend a bit more for improved attention and courtesy. Why is that? You might think the pocketbook drives decisions. While people don’t want to overspend, they often prefer to collaborate with an institution that is trustworthy and kind. The financial output often comes in second.

It’s important to organize and run an efficient business in which the customer remains first. In doing so, the bottom line could become stronger on its own.

What Do the Numbers Show?

What is the impact of treating the client right? Is it really worth the investment or time? Isn’t a sale a better gimmick? As owners, the object is to strengthen your position in the industry, gain loyal customers, develop a solid reputation and make money. It’s a tall order, and many of these qualities rely on your patrons speaking well of your organization.

Research in this area reveals a strong correlation between client happiness and sales. A recent Forbes article on customer experience points out that revenue increases anywhere between 4-8% compared to similar businesses when an establishment prioritizes the buyer’s encounter. In addition, statistics show that over 80% of operations that concentrate on enhancing customer service saw profit increases. The data seems to indicate customer service could lead to better financial benefits for the company.

Why Might This Relationship Be So Important?

In further interviews and studies, Forbes reports that consumers believe that their loyalty is tied to how they felt about the interaction. Over 90% of people say they return because the experience was good. Furthermore, approximately 70% of shoppers indicate they are less likely to buy again if the connection was poor. Encounters, therefore, should be a major consideration for management.

Look at communication. Responding to questions, complaints and concerns is a tedious process, demanding either an owner stopping current work to provide a thoughtful and timely response or hiring someone who can manage the situation. For some, the right decision may seem to be delaying the call until after the project is complete. That choice allows for consistent attention to one thing at a time.

The problem with prolonging contact, though, is that it diminishes the client’s need for an answer. In fact, it exacerbates negative feelings and worries. By the time you get in touch with the customer, it’s likely to take a great deal of talking and effort to appease the rising emotions. Battle this by being a proactive communication establishment. Teams with virtual phone systems like a ninja number may take calls from various places. The virtual system permits multi-tasking. Stop, listen and respond. Keeping buyers happy is vital.

How Do You Create This Solid Connection?

The golden rule may work in the business world. Treat others how you want to be treated. Start by telling staff members to emphasize manners and pleasantries. Greet people with a nice welcome. Learn names, especially of long-term clients. Write out protocols for how you want people to represent your brand and what they shouldn’t do. Be specific. Should workers wipe off shoes before going into a residence? Should booties be put on to prevent dirt? Are there forms of conversation that should be off the table? It’s best to be explicit than hope your workers know how to act.

Next, establish return contact timelines, so you get back to the customer as soon as possible. Also, leave cheerful or humorous voicemail greetings to combat negativity.

Also, acknowledge and compensate for your errors. A task done wrong is infuriating, and it makes for a poor reputation with few recommending you for more work. Own up to a mistake. Offer a discount. Look for a way to get people to see you care.

At the end of the job, ensure that customers are smiling. Happiness is a good sign that a return may be in the future. Even if they don’t need you again, it’s more likely that your name will be passed one; thus, stay focused on superior service and kindness.

How an answering service can help your customer service

Let’s go over how hiring a quality answering service can help your business.

No matter what type of company you run, you likely provide a contact number where customers or clients can get in touch when necessary. Part of your job is to make sure that when they call for support regarding your product or service, you always have someone there to answer who can get them what they need — both quickly and in a professional manner.

Here is where answering services are meant to help; even though you’ll pay a fee for the service, it won’t be costs that are going up. Rather, you’ll discover that you may actually save money and incrementally grow your profits over time if you choose to go this route. Let’s go over how hiring a quality answering service can help your business.

Increase Customer Satisfaction

When you enlist the help of an answering service, you can expect to greatly enhance customer experience almost immediately. In fact, callers will start to get a taste of what a representative should ideally be like the first time someone from the professional answering service team gets on the line.

These should already be highly trained individuals so you will not have to worry about wasting time teaching them how to act on the phone with a customer. If you’ve hired a professional answering service, their people will already know the best practices for dealing with your client base. You can trust them to embody the epitome of resourceful and personable consumer interactions.

Aside from just the demeanour on the receiving end of the phone call, your callers will appreciate the shorter wait times they’ll experience due to having a fully-staffed customer service department. No one likes to call a number seeking assistance only to get an unhelpful bot or be met with frustrating, endless wait music.

Increasing Productivity

What if you could free up time, energy, and resources by having someone else handle incoming calls? With the proper answering service, you can. That is practically the whole point! Having others there (or, virtually) to answer questions or respond to feedback will give you and your staff a significant amount of time back to your already tightly packed schedules. This is perfect for fields where time is of the essence, and one reason so many people are turning to answering services for doctors, dentist and clinics, is that the medical industry is often already stretched to its limit, in terms of staff. Bringing on an experienced answering service so you can refocus on other things that need to get done is a great way to boost business productivity.

This is the most efficient solution!

Increase Employee Satisfaction

Not only will management and customers be thrilled with the improved experience, but employees will too. When staff isn’t bogged down by so many different things at once, they are less likely to get burnt out.

This will help you in the long haul, as well, because if your company goes through high turnover you will likely end up paying more and using up other resources in trying to hire new talent. Not only that but employees who feel fried and like you didn’t bother to onboard enough help may vent their negative experiences on employer review sites. Keep your reputation intact on both the staff and client sides when you have an answering service in your corner, making everyone’s lives easier.

Think an Answering Service Could Be the Key to Solving Some of Your Business Challenges?

Don’t delay—start researching answering services and you’ll see in what other ways they can impact your business, for the better. Stay ahead of your competition by joining up with the right business partner to upgrade your customer service.

Reasons why your business needs subscription payment software

Using subscription payment software will allow the provider to deliver exceptional customer service and increase its retention rate instantly. Thus, more businesses have been convinced that investing in reliable software is indeed worth every penny.

One of the important elements in business is to maintain or improve the client’s retention rate. Prioritising convenience and enhancing customer experience are the fastest ways to achieve such objectives.

A Brief Definition

The introduction of subscription payment software is a useful technological innovation that has helped both businesses and consumers. This helps in managing subscription plans and keeping track of the incoming revenue for the company. It simplifies the entire procedure through an automated system using the client’s subscription data.

Efficiently Tracks the Client’s Subscription Data

In a subscription-based firm, it is imperative to maintain flexibility in their operation. Any change made by the client on his or her subscription account, from its credit card expiry to its contact info, should be accounted for. Through subscription payment software, all these details can be recorded and tracked, allowing the provider to make the needed changes in their plan.

It can also effectively keep track of the changes in the kind of subscription he or she has and the modification he or she has made. All these are essential info to maintain the flexibility within the business operation. The provider can seamlessly and proactively make the adjustments in their billing procedures, marketing ads, and all other relevant departments.

Improved Customer Experience

Another feature of subscription payment software is that they have user-friendly portals that allow the clients to access their account data. These portals present comprehensive subscription information to easily add in or make changes if they like to do so. Allowing the clients to modify their plans through the portal is much more convenient than calling the customer support hotline, which generally takes some time before being attended by an agent.

Enhanced Communication Among Clients

Reaching out to clients is critical in any business, regardless of its industry. With subscription-based companies, one way to interact with customers is through the use of subscription payment software. Through these programs, the interaction is continuous instead of a one-time thing. Using client data gathered by the software, these can also be utilised to prepare emails and other forms of marketing activities to reach out to them.

Maintain Accuracy

When the accounting department does its bookkeeping, everything has to be accurate. This software will help provide the correct billing records for accounting purposes. All the payments made by every client, their outstanding dues, the revenue predictability, and other relevant data will be generated quickly for bookkeeping.

The program can also initiate simplified integration among other platforms that are critical to the business like customer relationship management application. It can synch all information they require for the app to run its program.

The trend in subscription-based business models is here to stay because of the many benefits it offers businesses. It may cost a bit to invest in these subscription payment softwares, but the revenue generated will be more than the cost incurred.

How to improve customer experience for your business

There are multiple ways to improve the customer experience as this depends a lot on what kind of business you run. But there are a few general techniques you can bear in mind to improve in this area.

It is no secret that when it comes to business success, customer service is king. It doesn’t matter if you have the best products in the world; without an excellent customer journey, your business will find it difficult to reach its intended pinnacle of achievement.

There are multiple ways to improve the customer experience as this depends a lot on what kind of business you run. But there are a few general techniques you can bear in mind to improve in this area. Read on for more info.

Streamline Cross-Channel Interaction

Your business will undoubtedly have multiple touchpoints for customer interaction. If one of these fails anywhere in the chain, you could lose a customer forever. One way around this is to ensure that certain channels are used for specifics purposes.

For example, many businesses use chatbots for general customer queries. These bots can then refer the customer to a live agent if the query is more specific. This helps streamline the customer experience because their query is addressed in multiple ways. Also, with the shift to remote working, you may want to invest in VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) services as it allows your employees to answer telephone queries from home. If you’re new to this technology, experts at outsourceIT can help you set this up.

Invoke Curiosity

Being curious essentially means learning about your customer. What are they interested in? What makes them tick? What do they want? While this seems like an obvious point, many businesses spend too much time on product delivery and less on what their customers truly want. By being curious, you open a dialogue to learn more about their spending habits, preferences, and desires. If customers know you care about them, they will be more likely to buy your products.

Become Obsessive

It’s all well and good to care about customer service, but the businesses that truly reign on top are obsessive about it. Apple and Amazon, for example, can credit their enormous success on this very premise. A sift through interviews with Jeff Bezos or Steve Jobs on YouTube will likely bring up a conversation about their undying commitment to the customer experience. If you can become obsessive about delivering top service to your customers, you will help your brand stand out in today’s heavily saturated and competitive market.

Personalize

Consumers nowadays want to be treated like people, not like numbers in a box. But personalization can be a tricky one to get right since your customers want individual attention, but without it being stalky or creepy. When done correctly, though, personalization can go a long way to boosting your sales. Userlike.com suggests that you implement ways that make personalization less dependent on gathering consumer data and more on actual conversations.

Audit

Auditing can be essential for learning whether your customer experience is hitting the mark. Whether it’s sending out surveys, chatting with customers, or analyzing analytics, you’ll want to audit your customer service experience and continuously improve on it. A detailed look into your marketing (i.e., what content your customers are visiting most) and sales can reveal a lot about how well you’re performing. But perhaps best of all is asking for direct feedback from your customers to find out how satisfied they are with the experience.

No matter what industry you may be in, customer experience is vital for the lifeblood of your business. Heed the above tips and ensure that your customers keep coming back for more.

Outsource Your Customer Services

If you are a small business that doesn’t have all the resources to streamline your customer service operation, why not consider outsourcing the whole process? There are lots of affordable answering services available for businesses of sizes. They can provide inbound, outbound, and sales services for a variety of different industries.”

4 Tricks to make a positive impression as a company

When it comes to building a reputation for a company and its brand, decisive actions must be taken that cause others to view a company in a positive light. The last thing a business wants is for people to have a negative opinion of it. Once that happens, it can be difficult to regain the trust of the general public. The following are four ways a company can generate a positive impression on others.

Crank Out Awesome Products and Services

People expect quality in return for their money. When they do not get that from a company’s products and services, their overall impression can go way down about such a business. Consequently, a business must provide quality products and services to keep consumers both satisfied and positively engaged.

Excellent Customer Service

If there is one reason people will either love or hate a company, opinions will generally correlate well to the quality of that company’s customer service department. It is no mystery that customers want to have a good experience when dealing with customer service. So, every effort should be made to ensure that customer service treats customers extremely well.

Let Customers Know You Care

Huge mistake companies make is that they fail to contact customers to let them know they care and are thinking about them. It is this lack of engagement that causes the relationship between a company and its customers to dwindle and eventually go cold. It may seem like a simple gesture of kindness, but it is these small details that add up to people developing a positive impression about a company with which they do business. This in turn will lead to customer loyalty and repeat sales.

Taking Care Of Public Affairs

Looking good in the public eye is no easy feat. For companies, this can require more than simply being a quality business. Sometimes companies will hire a public affairs firm to help shape public opinion about that company and its brand. In many cases, people who are not directly related to a company saying good things about that company in public can do wonders for helping the public gain a positive impression of that business.

Once a business has created a positive impression in the minds of consumers, it is important not to lose the public’s faith in that company. The reality is that people want to do business with companies they feel good about, and this is one of the greatest marketing secrets of all time. So, never forget that everything a company does in the public’s eye is an opportunity to boost consumer morale and keep the masses upbeat about the work that company is doing.

E-commerce marketing and sales strategies your business should be using

our goal should be to sell more and capitalize on customer acquisition as well as customer retention.

In the world of e-commerce, sales and marketing should be the most important departments that you should constantly strive to improve and take to that next level – next to running an efficient and effective customer service department as well. Your goal should be to sell more and capitalize on customer acquisition as well as customer retention, but in order to generate quality leads that you’re going to convert into paying customers, you have to invest time and money in your digital marketing efforts as well.

With that in mind, today we are taking a look at some of the sales and marketing strategies that you should be using in order to build a more successful e-commerce business. Here’s what you should do.

Build an amazing e-commerce brand

Before you can start optimizing your marketing and sales strategies, you have to create a solid foundation for all of your campaigns – your brand. E-commerce is a highly-saturated industry, filled to the brim with uniform brands that all look alike, sound alike, and sell similar or even identical products – and so none of them truly stand out, and none of them are able to retain their customers over the long term.

Keep in mind that your customers won’t have a single problem replacing you for another online store with a better discount, so you have to make them stay by selling your brand first. Be sure to build a unique brand identity and to weave your core business values into your website. Next, create a distinct brand style and a website design that will set you apart from the competition, and make sure that all of your content uses a unique tone of voice that will truly resonate with your target demographic. This will enhance loyalty and will help you generate leads.

Optimize the entire checkout process

One of the best sales tactics that you can implement is to simply optimize your checkout process, and tidy up your entire website structure while you’re at it. The key here is to make shopping a fun and rewarding experience, to enhance UX across the board and make your store easy and intuitive to navigate – this will inspire shoppers to put something in their carts and actually complete the purchase.

Be sure to stick to a simple website structure with main and sub-categories, add functional tools like quick filters and a search bar, and then optimize the checkout process by eliminating unnecessary steps. Don’t make your visitors fill out sign-in forms but ask for their essential info instead. Provide all relevant purchase information on a single page, and don’t make them click more than three times to complete their purchase.

Focus more on local SEO

Too many business leaders in the e-commerce industry focus predominantly on paid advertising when they should be putting effort into search engine optimization. After all, your goal should be to build a recognizable and trustworthy brand, and one of the best ways to do that is to rank higher on Google and all other relevant search engines. Most importantly, though, you shouldn’t forget to optimize your site for the local search results. This is especially important if you operate in a highly-competitive region such as Hong Kong that’s bursting with potential but is also saturated with other stores

This is why growth-oriented e-commerce stores will work with a reliable SEO company in Hong Kong that can help them rank higher in the local market, in order to capitalize on the gargantuan e-commerce industry in the region. After that, you can easily start optimizing for the general search result, and refocus your strategy on building a global presence.

Optimize your site for Mcommerce

Of course, you have to stay on top of the latest developments in the industry and capitalize on them as soon as possible before your competitors do. For example, Mcommerce is currently on the rise, as more and more companies are optimizing their online stores for seamless online shopping and browsing on mobile devices. Be sure to use accelerated mobile pages to optimize your website for the mobile audience, and help it rank even higher in the search results.

Don’t forget about paid ads

Lastly, SEO and paid ads work great individually, but combined they can truly take your business to the next level. There are numerous marketing tactics you should employ in order to generate quality leads and boost your sales, and paid advertising should definitely be one of them because they allow you to improve your brand’s visibility, and to bring quality traffic to your site quickly.

Wrapping up

Sales and marketing are the most important department in any growing e-commerce business. Be sure to use these strategies to take these departments forward and set the stage for another successful year in the e-commerce industry.

Word of Mouth Marketing: 5 Tips for Improving Your Online Reputation

Word of mouth marketing is still crucial today.

Word of mouth marketing is still crucial today. The internet connects people from all over the world, allowing them to talk, and may mean it’s possible for a business’s customers to have an impact on sales based on what they say to others about the business. When an online reputation is poor or it’s not enough to help the business, there are a few things the business can do to boost their reputation.

Use a Review Management Platform

Reviews are the main way for customers to let others know what they think about the business. While it’s not possible to get perfect reviews all of the time, the more reviews a business has, the more positive reviews potential customers can see. It’s also a good idea to respond to reviews, which means there needs to be a way to track the reviews as they’re posted. A good review management platform can help businesses get more reviews to help their reputation improve, visit this site.

Improve Customer Service

Customer service is crucial. When customers have a poor experience, they’re going to leave reviews talking about it. Instead, make sure everyone has a great experience with the business and go above and beyond the minimum needed to make the business look good. Listen to any complaints that customers may have and work on improving the business so those issues don’t occur again.

Target Influencers

Influencers can encourage others to try out a business and can help boost the business’s reputation quickly by talking to their followers about how great the business is. To take advantage of this, identify and target influencers who may be interested in talking about the business online. This can also help boost branding awareness and help bring in new customers. However, make sure you keep away from influencer databases and instead learn to get straight to the good stuff.

Give Lessons Online

Consumers love to learn new things and maybe willing to check out online lessons offered by a business if it’s something they’re interested in. This helps encourage new customers, but it can also impact the business’s reputation online. Stick with something that’s short and that customers will be interested in and they’ll help generate good publicity when they’re done with the lessons. This is an excellent way to give back and to encourage customers to talk about the business.

Contribute to the Community

Businesses can help get the word out about their business and improve their reputation online by giving back to their local community. When a business helps the community, it can generate a lot of good publicity and will help make it look like the business is charitable. Customers notice when businesses help their community and will generally talk favorably about the business to others or when they write reviews for the business.

The internet has made it possible for many more businesses to be created, which can mean a lot more competition for a small business. However, word of mouth marketing online can help boost the business above their competition and help them gain a better reputation with their customers. To do this, the business must use some strategies to boost their reputation and get more customers talking about them. If you’re looking for ways to boost your business’s reputation online, try out these ideas today. They could have a huge impact and lead to a better reputation and more business.