If you haven’t figured it out by now, I think customer service is a huge part of a successful business. Many businesses lose sight of this as soon as they start to make money. Customers are the most important thing you have, without them you have no business.

One thing that many business owners have a difficult time doing is putting themselves in their customer’s shoes. A business owner needs to learn to  think about situations from a different perspective, other than their own. That’s a really tough thing for many to learn.
Try to put yourself in your customers shoes, better …read more

In a tough economy, it is much easier, and much cheaper to hold on to the customers you have, than it is to find new ones. If your small business isn’t trying to keep in touch with current or past customers, or working for repeat business, you’re missing out on sales.
In today’s economy you can’t have average or poor customer service and expect to get by, but many small businesses (and large businesses) have a hard time understanding that. If you get it you’re ahead of the competition.
Customer service is one of the things you can do better than the …read more

Newsletters are a good marketing tool for your business. But should you go with an electronic newsletter? Or should you stick with paper? The answer depends on your audience.
I just got a paper newsletter in the mail from our vet. And occasionally I get an electronic one from the eye doctor. While I may only skim both of them, I’m more likely to read the vet’s letter. Why?
While the eye doctor is a little more eco-friendly with her letter, she’s competing with a lot of other e-newsletters. I get so much email that I am now more likely to read …read more

One of my clients told me this story and asked for my advice.  The client is a doctor who has been in practice for several years.  Here is the story:
A  patient who is a travel agent had been coming to this doctor’s office for several months.  When  he asked how she was doing, she occasionally bemoaned the fact that her travel agency was not doing well.
The other day, he casually mentioned he was taking a cruise with his family and that he had booked it online to save money.  The patient was very upset and asked, “Why didn’t you book …read more

When you’re trying to explain the benefits of your product or service, what do you think about? Do you consider the best way to represent yourself or the points you feel are most important? Stop right there. The pivotal points you actually need to address are the ones your customer thinks are crucial.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Think about what problems they have and how your product can solve them. But not just solve them — how it does it better than any other product out there. Remember that money is tight for a lot of people. If they …read more

Customer testimonials are important to your business. You want your customers to talk about you in a positive way. With social media use on the rise, it is ever easier for your customers to let their friends know about their experiences. So the question is whether word of mouth marketing is helping or hurting you?
Recently I was witness to a perfect example of how word of mouth affects a business. A web hosting company, noticing a huge spike in traffic, temporarily shut down a web site — thinking the site was under a DOS or spam attack. That seems like …read more

Diets don’t work. Don’t you agree? The big weight loss companies have figured out that the way to get people to sign up for their diet programs is to get them committed. This same principle can work for your small business. Want to know more?
The principle here is “commitment and consistency.” If you once commit to something, the theory goes, even in a small way, you feel obliged to act consistently with your commitment.  The drive to be consistent can cause people to act in ways that are contrary to their best interest; it’s that powerful.  The keys to getting …read more

The basis of any PR campaign, no matter what tool you use, is to identify your target audience, right?
Then what the heck is going on with the folks on Facebook?
I don’t know if you are experiencing this, but I’m getting a lot of invites to events promoted on Facebook from my ‘friends.’ The problem is that they are just blindly emailing all their Facebook pals their promotion, whether they are in the target market or not.
For example, I’ve gotten invitations to events and classes where I will learn:

to find true love in 2009 (I’m happily married)
the strategies to keep the …read more

Sure, no airline is perfect. But I have to admit Southwest comes pretty darn close.
Why? They know that good PR comes down to one thing: happy customers. It’s a tough job, especially when you are an airline.

But when they do it, they do it well.
I just learned on Twitter, directly from Southwest (Yes, even they are on Twitter!) that they’ve teamed up with The Container Store to wrap passengers gifts at the Southwest Airline Gates in Dallas, Denver and Phoenix.
It may not seem like a big deal but think about it for a moment…
Thousands of passengers carry their gifts on …read more

You have to feel sorry for social media companies.
Take Obvious Corp., creators of the messaging/microblogging service Twitter.
The Little Service that Could grew quickly attracted millions of users, who all expected Twitter to be available, reliable and responsive to their needs. Instead, there have been regular outages, reduced features and occasional customer service lapses.
The more they succeed, they more pressure they face.
Inevitably, they can’t be everything to everyone. In some cases, they can’t even meet some basic expectations.
Success sucks, eh?
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