How Organizations Deliver BAD Customer Service (And Strategies that Turn it Around!)

Publish tips, share your expertise through public speaking, even try pitching the media… make it super easy for people to associate you and your business with excellence and expertise in your field. Just remember not to get caught up in community drama as every post represents you and your business! Not all exposure is online. Make yourself the expert in your field in your local community as well.

Volunteer to teach seminars through your local Chamber of Commerce about your area of expertise. Your business will receive promotion through the event itself, as well as through all marketing for the event.

#1: How to Greet Your Customers via Live Chat

Ask your best, most powerful, most influential friends or business associates to introduce you to the five people they think you should meet to expand your business. Take each of the contacts out for coffee and get to know them. Discuss your plans and future goals, tell them about why your business is special and ask for their advice.

Twitter Giveaways Give away your product or promotional item on Twitter. Ask a question about a product on your website or blog. The first person to answer wins. Network Your Networks Network with friends who then network with their friends. Someone ultimately knows someone that can help you out…and believe it or not…will want to.

When networking, do NOT focus on getting a referral or lead. Instead, focus on helping others. Conversations are happening all around you — are you listening, are you participating? Are you a thought leader? Identify your ideal clients and find them on Twitter. Then start following them! Get a Twitter account in your business name. Post links to your articles educating people in your niche market. Also offer discount coupon codes to twitter members. This has worked very well for me.

Leverage Linked-In Join as many Linked-In groups as you can that are related to what you sell and post a question or tip on a regular basis.

25 Customer Service Scenarios (And How to Handle Them)

If you have a blog or e-newsletter, post an announcement to your Linked-In groups with a link whenever you release a new issue or blog posting. Your Facebook friends can be your greatest free marketing tools so enlist their help! A great offer goes a long way quickly…especially through our favorite social networking sites! Twitter is a great place to share photos TwitPic , host contests, shout out to loyal customers, have scavenger hunts, and promote events.

Think of ways you can incorporate Twitter into your promotions in a fun, engaging way. Thank loyal customers, retweet their tweets, and even host fundraisers. All the cool kids are doing it. Blog Tour Blog tours are like book tours, but without all the flying and cheap hotels and fast food temptations. Simply contact bloggers at any specific blog sites that fit your product and ship out a t-shirt, book or other product you offer and then also ask them to do a contest with their viewers. Point your readers to each blog site that reviews your product.

Readers at the blog tour site are told to go to your site to sign up for a free sample, or chance to win a free sample, as well. By having contest entrants choose among several products you get them familiar with your other products and get their email address too! Send a monthly postcard instead of a hard copy newsletter. List to reasons, including your skills, talents, and tasks. Give customers a coupon for a discount, or a free doughnut, or something fun to inspire them to call. Look for decision makers with events that are a match for your product or service.

Good fits mean quality networking opportunities. Make sure your gift bag offering has your website address, business card and additional offers that inspire recipients to follow up or at least check you out. Customers come to expect rewards when they are members of a program. Surprises always work to instill loyalty and retention. When given out with or in place of a business card at a lunch, a meeting or in passing, small promotional items become a gift.

Keep a small, branded and useful item with you. Tip calculator cards, tea bags, pens and pads, small flashlights or things very target specific to your industry, like small packets of flower seeds for a gardener or landscaper with their contact information on it. Donate several of your products or services to a non-profit organization that is sponsoring a live auction and the proceeds will be donated to the charity.

Your store name will be displayed on the products for the duration of the event and the donation is tax deductible. Low Hanging Fruit Turn to those in your field for the low hanging fruit. Find larger companies, or older, more experienced businesses and invite them to lunch. With every successful referral send them a hand written thank you card enclosing a Starbucks or their favorite restaurant gift card thanking them for their support.

This will help you build your customer or client base without having to spend a lot on advertising. At least it gets my attention. Combining your database with other businesses will expose you to an entirely different segment of people for a shoestring of the price. They got great results.

Make it fun and different. Help Other Employees Offer employee incentives to various big businesses, or to smaller businesses in your hometown. Call their HQs and ask how you can offer discounts to their employees. All you need to do is tell them what the discount is and they will post it on their website or post it in some other capacity. You can also print off coupons for their Human Resource department to distribute, or send them a digital coupon they can email to employees to print off.

Online-Map Listings Online map listings are essential for businesses with brick-and-mortar locations. They are the first thing people see on search engines. They offer a concise snapshot of business info so customers can easily contact you or visit your store. Small Groups It only takes one person to start a movement. For example, a monthly breakfast discussion on current news and events in the smart phone app industry, or manufacturing or outdoor gear retail industry. Leaders and business owners will come together in this informal, low-pressure situation, because keeping an eye on the state of the industry is their job.

Great Relevant Content We all know content rules, but what kind of content should you use? Relevant and related content the reader can use. Lots of people have the relevant content part down, but also create content areas, not just content.

The 50 Best Marketing Strategies For Small Business

These areas should be able to 1 attract users and 2 position you and your business as an expert in those areas. The content area should utilize your product if possible, but mostly it should have related content that attracts knife owners to your site. This may be content you have in some form on your website already, but having it in a trade magazine dresses it up and sort of puts a tuxedo on it.

I mean it makes you seem more credible because a publication is publishing your content. Demonstrate your expertise and position yourself as the go-to person for your product or service with this service. Here is a list of trade mags to help get you started. Memorable Stories A convincing and free marketing strategy you can use to sell your service or product is by telling true, credible stories hopefully that include awesome facts and incidents involving your product —give specific and practical examples of what you have accomplished for clients.

• A Rose By Any Other Name...: A collection of thoughts in verse..
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Use real-life examples of projects you completed, specific problems you solved or successes you achieved. Relate your story through articles, blog posts, public speaking or by publishing a special report. Offer your customers, potential customers, and visitors to your website a free resource, such as a guide or report that is packed full of solid information related to your product or services in exchange for their name and email address.

Write A Book Write a page business book and self publish it with on-demand printing. Heck, write a page book and self-publish it. The status of being a published author provides you with unprecedented access to media, speaking gigs, and other opportunities like nothing else can. Then write a white paper. Then write a series of short articles. Article marketing is a subtle way companies can gain exposure for their business by writing articles that provide information about news and trends occurring within their respective industries.

Companies that incorporate article marketing into their marketing campaign demonstrate their expertise in their respective industry while simultaneously attracting new customers. Other popular review sites include Yelp local businesses , TripAdvisor travel related items , and Viewpoints products. And you can use this strategy for getting countless, legit, reviews on Amazon. Get Endorsements If you are introducing a revolutionary new product, an endorsement from a top expert makes all the difference.

Read your trade magazines and write the expert. You will be surprised at how generous some of them are. Include their comments, or if you can snag an interview, put the highlights of that in your blog post as well. Teleseminars Host a one-hour tele-seminar with time for content, a specific offer and questions from people on the call. People are hungry for information and like to learn. Create a web page with a sign up form and use email and social media to announce the call.

Then make sure you have a really meaty, information dense, rocking teleseminar. Be awesome and attendees will return again and again. A web presence is more than just having a website. Heck, even the animals at the local animal shelter have websites, some of them better than mine! A web presence is how people find you as well as what they find.

To get found in good ways, like winning awards etc. To get found for the good stuff, do this:. Keywords Statistically, 3-out-of-4 Internet users live in North America, making exposure on the web critical. Even with all the changes to Google and to search algorithms, having a website that is keyword optimized is critical. You need to be SEO optimized for what your small business does and where you are located. Participate in Trade Associations Business-to-business professional service organizations get the most bang for their buck when they impress prospective referrers with their capabilities.

This participation enables them to a increase their visibility and b gain the opportunity for the consistent and frequent interactions it takes to build lasting relationships. Make the landing page a question survey. Enter a Business Award Competition There is nothing like entering a business award competition to strengthen the reputation of your small business. Winning an award can catapult your reputation within your industry and with the sales audience you aim to attract.

Many competitions cost nothing to enter — except for the time it takes to prepare your entry. Professional and trade organizations, chambers of commerce, Better Business Bureaus, universities — even churches are all organizations that host business competitions. Keep your eyes open for opportunities. The rewards for winning a business award can last seemingly forever. Brag about winning on your website; send a letter to clients; post the award in your office or store so whoever comes in will see it.

And of course, send out a press release and get your picture in the paper! Build your email list with quality names. Use opt in email marketing to talk to your best customers — this means the ones that want to hear from you and have signed up to receive your marketing messages and offers. Be sure to deliver relevant, unique and valuable messages to their inbox. This can build loyalty, drive sales and cut other costs. Short is under 3 Minutes MAX.

This can be done quickly and easily using a camera like a flip video. Post the video to your site and as many video sharing sites as possible. You can learn to love it too! Take your product or service and dramatize it through a simple, homemade YouTube movie. Go a step further and script out a four-part series that you can post on your website. Heck, run a loop of the videos in your business.

Virally spread your marketing message by making sure influential local bloggers see your video. There are hundreds of websites that people use to search out local businesses. Most are free to use and easy to find. Make sure your business is listed. Go the extra mile and upload pictures, menus, or something relevant for your service or product. Split the cost and the work that goes into creating the event, including inviting prospects and clients.

Start with Google — set a budget and bid, select your keywords and write a quick ad. Put it on all of your marketing materials including business cards, letterhead and even envelopes. Include it in your email signature, on your Web site and use it in all correspondence to reinforce your company and encourage repeat customers and referrals. Once you have a solid logo that makes an impact, it should be synonymous with your company name. Blog, blog, blog and blog some more. Take time to master the most important customer service skills. Never get caught off-guard with any customer service scenario again.

Download your own free copy of this full guide now! Send me the guide. You can also use many of these responses as live chat canned response examples! This would help by:. When opening a conversation with someone, you should always introduce yourself. Treat live chat the same way! Sometimes, we screw something up. However, you need to be transparent when making mistakes. By the way, sending them the peanut butter anyway would be an awesomely creative customer service idea.

If you did solve their problem: When it comes to an angry person, think of them as a soda bottle you just dropped. How do you do that? Be empathetic, apologize, show urgency , and use this as a guide:. You just helped them with their issue — this is an opportunity to go the extra mile! Keep in mind, however, it can take up to [number] days to process a refund request.

If your request is approved, you can expect the funds to hit your account within [number] days. If you have any other problems or requests, you can reach me at [your email]. Thanks for reaching out! Here at Formilla, we tend to take these requests case by case. Or, you can give them a discount on the spot. In the meantime, we recommend logging into the web dashboard at www.

Offer an alternative solution to help ease the pain in the meantime. Was there a problem with the product? Is the price too high? Customer feedback is one of the best ways to improve your customer service! Take advantage of every opportunity you have to get it. Let me start by saying: We really appreciate you bringing this to our attention! Hey, it happens to the best of us — sometimes, we accidentally reach out to the wrong company somehow. When that happens if? For example, if someone contacted us at Formilla thinking we were an art gallery or something for some strange reason , we would respond like this:.

We get it all the time, especially in such a crowded marketplace as live chat software. What makes you different? This is an excellent opportunity to get more customer feedback.

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Most live chat software is the same — but the small extras we offer like affordability, great customer service, simplicity, and reliability help us stand out from the crowd. Thanks for reaching out. What makes us different from our competitors is our absolute focus on customer service, reliability, and simplicity. We also happen to be more affordable than most of the other services out there.

Do you currently use [service you offer] on your website? This question is another opportunity to focus on your strengths particularly if you offer a service. For example, our strengths in this situation include not storing credit card information, not logging sensitive information, changing admin passwords every 90 days, and limiting access based on role. Remember the soda bottle! Feedback will help you improve everything about your business, from your service to your product and more. We typically ask for feedback during ongoing conversations with our customers.

Feedback is for your eyes only, to help you improve your product or service. Reviews are incredibly important! They provide social proof for your brand. Check out these stats:. Oh, and the best time to get a user to submit a review? If you feel we were helpful, would you mind leaving [your product or service] a 5-star review? You can leave a review by going to [link to review]. This is most easily accomplished with an auto-response message, if your live chat service has this feature Formilla live chat does! Something like this should do:. Avoid that with this saved reply:.

1. Jade and the Three Brothers?
2. !
3. The 50 Best Marketing Strategies For Small Business.
4. Stroke of Genius.

Google can decipher it. Then, type your response, and Google will spit out what you said in the language you need. You know what sucks? Telling someone they violated your terms of use ToU or policies.



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Were you intending to upgrade to one of our multi-site packages instead? But, with a little tact and some honey, instead of gaul, as Dale Carnegie would put it , you can get the majority of customers to make their payment. If you plan to continue your service, you can simply submit a new payment by logging in to your account. I have ensured it will remain active for another five days to give you extra time as well. If you plan to cancel your service, I can handle that for you as well.

It happens to the best of us — sometimes a raccoon chews through the chords powering your server and your service goes down. Ideally, when this happens, you should inform your customers of the outage before they ask you. If a customer does ask about the outage, just be transparent about the issue.