Posts Tagged ‘customer service’
Customer Relationship Management: Weathering the Economic Storm
Thursday, March 25th, 2010
Use CRM to Weather the Economic Storm
How can you keep the customers you have? You can and must deliver the best products available. You must deliver the best and most complete services and solutions available, but how can you do that? Start with Customer Service Software that helps you build relationships in ways that are convenient for your customers. For those under age 40 that would be using internet and e-mail solutions including web-based knowledge bases and internet chats and forums. For those over 40 it includes telephone calls with knowledgeable agents who have answers at their fingertips. A keyworded, searchable knowledge base will benefit both your customers and your help desk agents. The use of multiple channels to deliver information and help will appeal to a broad customer base.
How can you gain the confidence of prospective customers? First, you have to find prospective customers. This is the job of lead generation software. Then you have to keep them interested and you have to prove that you are trustworthy and understand their problems. One of the oldest tricks is through reliable information delivered piece by piece over a period of time. This is the function of a good e-mail strategy that is built into CRM software. By building a relationship with each prospect and delivering useful information related to their issues and problems, you will be assured of a long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationship.
A great and ongoing relationship with a customer will yield benefits in further sales and in recommendations for years to come. This type of relationship weathers economic storms.
Part 1: Getting Customers Back
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
We all know that the cost of acquiring new customers can be very expensive. Depending of course on the product you are selling, the cost of getting a new customer can be as high as $1,200 or more. I have a client that sells medical equipment, and he told me the cost of landing a new prospect and converting them into a client is a minimum of $1,200 per, and that figure is low compared to some of the other equipment that they manufacture and sell. Conversely, the cost of losing that client due to poor customer support runs into the tens of thousands over the course of a year or more, thus they spend a great deal of time and money to insure that the event does not happen. But, sometimes it does, no matter how hard we try. And if you lose the customer, and don’t learn from it and make improvements, shame on you as a manager/owner. I have always said, it’s not so bad that an employee makes mistakes, as long as they learn from them. But if they continue to make the same mistake over and over, something needs to change.
One way to “learn” from losing a client is what we call the “Lost Client Survey”. And this generally involves a phone call to the lost client to find out where you went wrong. Unfortunately, most people don’t want to go through this much pain for what they may not perceive as gain. Since you have already lost the client, you figure, why rub salt in the wound, or give them a chance to rub it in. However, as I have discovered when conducting this activity for clients, on more than one occasion, we were able to rescue the client. And because we cared enough to follow up and show the lost customer that we cared, on several occasions, that same client was unhappy with the service they received from the new vendor, and came back to us to give us another chance. Thus a win/win situation evolved. We obtained a lost customer back, and sharpened our customer service as a result, which may have saved others.
The Lost Client Survey should always be conducted over the phone, or even better, in person when possible. If after the third attempt, the client will not respond, then send them a questionnaire form by snail mail and enclose a five dollar coupon for Starbucks or Panera Bread. It is rare that they will throw away the questionnaire and keep the coupon, but if they do, it will have a lasting effect on them nonetheless. If it doesn’t, you are better off not doing business with them anyway. And the coupon sends them a strong message, you care about their business.
Begin the survey with an apology for whatever you have done to lose their business. Interview your people to attempt to understand the issue, but do not describe it to the customer. Allow them to tell you. I know it’s hard to believe, but your folks don’t always shoot you straight anyway. And do not pawn this practice off on the person that dealt with them. They are the worst person you want doing this. If you were the reason they left, and you are the boss, eat your crow and apologize and conduct the survey. Write the survey questions out, write the answers, and file it away or post it for other people in your organization to see. If your people can see that you are serious about customer service, they will be too.
In part 2 of this series, we’ll develop some suggestions for survey structures that may be helpful to you.
Customer Service Can Be Costly
Friday, January 15th, 2010Customer Service Can Be Costly
A recent study conducted by Genesys in collaboration with leading industry analysts at Datamonitor/Ovum shows that poor customer service is costing US businesses $83 billion annually! Most businesses are aware that excellent customer service positively impacts their bottom line, but fewer than one third of businesses have any way of tracking or measuring revenue per call or how much revenue is lost with an unhappy customer.
Almost two thirds of customers end a relationship with one company and deflect to another company within the same industry, causing individual companies to lose $50.6 billion each year. Not accounted for in the survey is the high cost of another company in the industry to gain that customer.
However, about a third abandon the relationship altogether, causing the entire industry to lose $32.4 billion annually. While some industries are essential to the well-being of the consumer, others become “unneeded” if the consumer is upset with the level of service.
For every 10 interactions, the customer will end a relationship with a company! The average value of each lost relationship is $289 per year.
Two amazing numbers from this study:
- 40% of consumers said it is critical to provide more intelligent self-service to reach a human so they are not trapped in automated systems.
- 90.5% of consumers would welcome proactive engagement to improve their experience through extended offers or help during self-service transactions.
Conversely, 78% of American consumers say their most satisfying experience occurred because of a capable and competent customer service representative.
These numbers are staggering, but what do they mean to your business on a day-to-day basis? How can you improve? How can you keep satisfied customers?
Most people are happy with their experiences with live agents, Web chat, and Web self-service. Therefore, those are areas in which the current products and practices are working.
Consumers want consistency and continuity. Those are easily achievable with good customer service software.
Consumers want improved personalization. That includes proactivity and outreach. For example, if they are stuck in automated service for a specified period, they would love to have an agent break in and assist them or for there to be a “chat” button to click to talk with an agent. It would be even better if that agent already had whatever information they had inputted into the system so they would not have to repeat it.
Consumers want to be valued. They want their time respected and they want their issues resolved politely in a short amount of time. This might mean submitting a “help ticket” and receiving an e-mail with instructions. Or it might include being able to schedule a time with an agent.
Customer Service Experience
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010The Customer Service Experience
The customer service experience should be positive and consistent across multiple channels. Many businesses are not able to provide a truly consistent experience across multiple channels during any given inquiry process.
Customers should be able to seamlessly transition between online (self-service) and offline (assisted service) channels.Organizations should provide consistent and integrated views of their companies and products across a variety of self-service and assisted channels.
Defining the key elements of an effective customer interaction ecosystem may help bring some clarity to the situation. Most customer interaction platforms require the capability to manage customer queries across two primary sub-categories: Assisted Service and Self-Service.
Assisted Service provides or enables human interaction with customers via phone or face-to-face interaction as well as the Internet through e-mail, chat, or click-to-call. This type of service is best suited to complex, multi-faceted interaction which requires a trained customer service agent.
Self-Service solutions offer support via electronic means and allow customers to access information quickly or to perform simple transactions, usually via the Internet. They include signing up for a variety of status quo offerings, searching for answers, gaining information, or perusing FAQs. They also include next generation solutions such as virtual assistants and instant answer agents.
Effective Self-Service transitions qualified sales and service leads to the most appropriate assisted-service channels. The Assisted Service agents must be able to access the same information the customer does and must be able to see the information entered by the customer.
A positive cross-channel experience increases the ability to achieve first contact resolution. Today’s businesses must deploy the software and train their agents in order to:
- identify the customer goal or need
- enable the customer to access consistent information quickly
- connect the customer to the best service channels for the identified need or goal
- provide clear, consistent answers
Knowledge Management for Customer Service
Monday, December 14th, 2009Knowledge Management for Customer Service
Is your Knowledge Management system working for your customers? Or do your customers spend a great deal of time searching through keywords and documents trying to find answers to their question? Do they become so frustrated they use more expensive channels or go to the competition’s web site?
In your effort to deliver self-service, you might have forced the customer to search so many documents for the answers that he sees your customer service as being content-centered rather than customer-centered.
Your customer is focused on his question, not on finding the most complete and detailed answer. He will search on keywords in his question, not in the answer! Your customer cannot find his tree in your forest.
In your Knowledge Base there may be over 10,000 pages. Some industries have more than 60,000 customer facing pages. Imagine trying to find the answer to a question in that forest! Can you imagine asking the Knowledge Base a question and getting 50 or more results, none of which appropriately answers the question? This is counterproductive, frustrating, and non-productive. It makes your company look downright inefficient.
Don’t let your document database bury your customers. Likewise, don’t let the plethora of documents bury your call center agents and make them ineffective.
- - Instead of 40,000 to 60,000 pieces of content, consider culling the useless documents.
- - List the 30-50 most common questions.
- - Write concise answers.
- - Post each question with its answer as its own document.
- - Use your CRM Knowledge Management system to categorize and index the questions.
- - Continue to monitor questions and add questions and their answers to a maximum of 300-500.
Each piece of information needs to be optimized for the channel through which it is delivered. Remember that a customer may not want as much detail as the call center agent may need. Give them access to different answers. You may even need a third set of answers which are shorter for use on mobile and social media. No customer wants to read five pages to answer his question, especially if he is reading it on his iPhone.
What Can CRM Software Do To Help My Company?
Friday, December 4th, 2009Companies need to increase customer loyalty and boost profitability. However, customers are more informed, more demanding, and less willing to release their cash.
The businesses of customer relationship management and marketing have historically based decisions on what the manager thinks the customer or market is going to do or what the company management feels will happen. They are slow to embrace the new technological methods of actually assessing trends and competing based on intelligence and analytics.
The time has come to change, to understand and be responsive to customers’ needs and market forces. The CRM solutions are readily available to help organizations improve their understanding of customers and realize the full revenue potential of their leads.
Three key obstacles stand in the way of turning leads into customers: (1) the lack of real-time data and analytics that capture insights from multiple customer touch points, (2) information that is selectively gathered, inaccurate, or incomplete, and (3) date being siloed and its use restricted across the organization. As a result, critical business decisions are made based on conjecture and partial data rather than on empirical data and intelligence.
Managers need to see their company from the eyes of their potential and current customers. That means thinking like a customer seeking information. They (and perhaps a friend who is not in the same type of business so he has fresh eyes and mind) need to become customers. Start with a question and navigate the company web site to see how much has to be done to answer the question – or if the answer even exists there. E-mail the support department with a request or question. Make a purchase to see how well that process works and how aggravating or simple it is. If you have stores, walk into one or more and ask questions a customer would ask. Request a demonstration. Purchase something. Return your purchase to see how that process works. Take notes on all the processes. Where are the glitches, the frustrations, and the hang-ups? What is going well?
When you pose the question to customer support, it is very important to note the follow-up. This is an area where many companies lose their customers’ future purchases and recommendations. Get together with key players from marketing, customer service, and sales and brainstorm ways to improve the various ways in which a customer can access and interact with the organization.
Select a CRM system that enables an organization to run campaigns that align with its customers’ preferences, tightly integrate marketing across all inbound and outbound channels, increase sales productivity by providing customer insight, manage marketing and sales resources more efficiently, and turn contact centers into profit centers.
Have you ever considered that help desk calls have the potential to become sales opportunities? By having a CRM software that includes a real-time data miner, call center agents can get a recommendation of a customer-appropriate prequalified sales offer while on every call.
The use of support tickets that are tracked can increase retention rates by as much as 40 percent. Good customer follow-up using CRM software can improve service renewals by over 100 percent in the first 18 months.
Customer promotional campaigns can be executed within hours instead of days. And 100 percent of the campaign offers will be followed up. Did you know it takes at least five contacts with a customer to actually engage the customer in talking about a sale? How many of your sales reps stay engages with potential customers through five or more contacts?
Implementing the right CRM solution makes the business of customer relationship management easier and provides economic value and a competitive edge to the company. It turns your sales reps into trusted advisers who can make appropriate, targeted offers to customers. It enables support personnel to shorten call times, resolve issues quickly, and engage in seamless conversations. The right solution delivers personalized, customer-focused interactions which result in more frequent revenue opportunities and satisfied customers.
Black Friday: Put Your Business in the Black Now
Friday, November 27th, 2009Why is today called Black Friday? That’s simple. Retailers sell so much stuff the day after Thanksgiving that their businesses start running in the black instead of the red!
What about your business? Is it running in the black or in the red? What are you doing to put it into the black? Will it be operating in the black by the end of the year?
What will help your business operate in the black?
- Improved lead generation
- Better lead follow-up
- Improved customer care
- Efficient help desk
- Cost effective customer service
Customers are the heart of every business. It is imperative that you find, follow up and care for your customers.
Encourage your present customers to recommend your company. Ask for referrals you can follow up! Then follow up with helpful information and ask if you can call or e-mail again.
Ask present and prospective customers about their needs. Even if your company cannot fulfill their needs, find a company that can . . . and ask them to remember your company to their colleagues (and ask for a referral you can follow up).
Health Care We Can All Use
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Are you as tired as I am of hearing about Obama-Care and Pelosi-Care and all the issues with the Health Care Bill? Of course, you are! But you are also worried about what will pass and what it will mean to you (and your parents and your children) in terms of taxes and items the government will cover.
But there is another area of health care you need to be concerned about – the care of the health of your customers and prospects! What are their needs and how are you responding? Whether you sell a product or a service, you must be concerned about your customers’ concerns.
Assume that same-old, same-old is not working effectively and look for more effective and efficient sales strategies. Try white papers and case studies to give away, use Twitter and Facebook, or try Pay-Per-Click on the internet.
Put yourself in the shoes of your customer or prospect. You need to ask some of them what keeps them awake at night. Find out their needs. Learn what is affecting their health and the health of their businesses. Think about how their problems can be solved by your company.
Speak to the needs of your customers and prospects. Don’t worry about flashing lists of features and benefits. Instead, tell them the value of your product or service. Explain how it solves the problem that is keeping them awake at night!
If your customers are not staying up at night worrying, their health will be better. If they are able to improve their businesses, the health of the businesses will be better. Therefore, you have the power to improve health care!
4 Ways to Sell More Merchandise During a Slump
Monday, November 9th, 2009This recession is a real bad deal for those businesses that sell to consumers. Instead of refusing to acknowledge that we are in a recession and saying, “business will pick up soon,” you need to take action and learn how to find prospects and turn them into customers. Here are 4 ways to do that:
1. Interact with customers. Managers need to be on the sales floor or wherever there are customers. Be helpful. Ask questions. Don’t be afraid of the answers. Find out what they like about your business, what they don’t like, what they wish they could find, etc.
2. Create buzz by leveraging your present customers. Invite your present customers to give a testimonial to post on your web site. If you have a retail store, invite customers to act as pseudo-salespeople on a Saturday. Advertise it as a “talk to our customers day.”
3. Keep sales people selling and customer service people doing customer service. Sure, a customer service person can sell or upsell or cross-sell, but your best sales person is someone who loves to sell – all the time. Take advantage of those people.
4. Help all your employees to leverage their networks. Everyone knows someone who knows someone. Teach your employees to network. Ask them to tell 3-5 people they know about an upcoming sale and encourage them to ask those people to each tell 3-5 more people. If you only have 10 employees and each tells 5 people who each tell 5 people, that will be 250 people who get a personal invitation to your sale!
Using just these four strategies to change the way you do business will increase your business. At the same time, your present customers will love you and become more loyal. And, at the same time, they will become sales people for you wherever they go. The best advertisement is an excited customer!
3 Keys to Better Customer Service
Thursday, November 5th, 2009Do you have good customer service? Do you feel simply changing customer service software could improve your customer service? In most cases, customer service can be improved. Here are three keys to better customer service:
1. Be Proactive rather than Reactive.
Sears has not achieved their success by doing the exact same thing for the last 30 years or by simply reacting when a customer complains. What does the front of the catalog emphasize? Customer service! How do you know that? Because the front of the catalog always says “We’re always open. Prices guaranteed until . . . Our phone number is . . . ” Customer service is in the forefront.
2. Listen to your customers.
Guessing what your customers need or want will not satisfy your customers. Only when you start asking them and actively listening to their responses will you begin to understand what they want and need. Then you will be better able to supply them with what they are looking for.
3. Know what makes your company different from your competitors.
Research your competitors. Understand what they offer. Learn what their customers like. Figure out what you do or have that is different . . . and better. Know why it is better and more desirable. Which points are simply features and which are truly benefits. For example, lower prices are not better customer service – they are simply better prices. However, calling a customer to see what problems or questions they have is better customer service if nobody in your industry except you does that.
And always use a software that offers the kinds of features and benefits that your company needs. Never pay for features that are of no use to your company. Realize true value for the money you pay and give your customers value for their time and effort.