This is valuable information for a company and it shows that our customers are being helped and very QUICKLY!

A happy customer is a lasting customer.

There are quite a few ticket systems out there, you can do a search on a search engine and find a few, ask around and find out what your associates are using. The key is to find one and put it to use.

FORUMS - Customer Support

Another tool that is used for customer support are forums. Forums have a way to bring your customers together in one place where they can report or comment on issues, programs etc. All answers and questions are open to public to see and this may help another customer with their issue. By displaying comments, suggestions, etc in a forum, your customers have a tool they can search through and most likely find answer to their issue. By having a forum and letting your members access to it, this could slow down actual customer support your company deals with on a day to day basis.

There is a wide variety of forums that are available with unique and standard features. Search around, if you know of a company that uses a forum for customer support, find out where to purchase it from, how company likes it, pros & cons. We have seen quite a few companies with a forum that is provided by Gossamer-Threads http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/gforum/index.htm - it is loaded with features and pretty easy to setup.

Other companies that provide forum software:

http://forum.snitz.com/ http://www.usebb.net/ http://www.wowbb.com/

LIVE CHAT SUPPORT

Live chat support is another affordable and efficient tool for providing customer support and is integrated into your website pages through either java or pre-written HTML code provided to you. Usually how this works is a box or image is then displayed on your website that says Live Support, or something to that affect, when clicked, it will take your customer to your live chat support. Your potential customer can ask you questions right then and there. This may be very helpful in securing a potential sale, or from losing a customer.

Here are a few different companies that provide chat support software:

http://www.liveperson.com/ http://www.livechatnow.com http://www.websitealive.com/ http://www.realchat.com/ http://www.sightmax.com

There are a lot of choices for software and tools that will help you deal with customer support issues. The only bad choice that can be made is NOT to choose one and use it.

Ignore your customers, provide dishonest answers and take multiple days to answer; You may as well fold up shop now. Your customers will not be there tomorrow.

Your Customers IS your business and sooner you realize that, better off your customers and your company will be.

Make choice and prosper!

Be sure to check out Val's ebook Working From Home: Achieve Extreme Success Guide http://www.1-working-from-home.com

Direct Response Advertising In contrast Direct Response (DR) advertising is able to directly relate a specific advert to an increase in sales. Or alternatively highlight a problem ad that needs fixing. This type of advertising seeks to inform prospect as to how your product or service improves their life, rights a wrong or smoothes a problem. Additionally, DR advertising almost always asks for a response. Either to call in to buy immediately (unusual), to get a free sample, free report, free voucher, free experience or other intermediary step before buying target product.

Imagine calls, letters and emails you can get from advertising that encourage your prospects to take action to contact your company immediately. You get to see whether campaign is working. That means you can step in and tweak it if it’s not.

But it also allows you to test different aspects of your advert to try and increase response further. So for instance you could run two adverts with headline changed on one, or a different offer on one or a free-phone number against a geographic number.

You can see how every single word and picture in your advert performs. Doesn’t that just feel better? You’ve control over your spend and customers who are bought for your advertising dollar.

There are many people who would agree that DR advertising is right way to advertise. But they still don’t do it.

Why?

Usually reason is simply one of ego. Direct Response adverts don’t tend to be pretty or to win Cannes Marketing Lions awards. If you’re head of company or you’re director of sales imagine how tempting it is top run ads that might win awards…

You already have sales coming in. Running a BAP advert will still get sales coming in. And you might win that Lion at Cannes awards for best advertising.

You’re fooling yourself if you think it’s for any other reason. Because almost without exception Direct Response adverts will pull more sales than adverts.

Yet many advertisers don’t realise it. They’re convinced that an advert has to look “professional” to sell. WRONG!

Do you want more sales?

If you do, and I’m sure you do use following steps:

Step 1: Learn how your products relate to your users. Which emotions, feelings and beliefs does it generate or speak to? Step 2: Assess best way to convey that to your ultimate user. Step 3: Do newspapers/magazines/radio/tv channels you’ve chosen to advertise in get read by your preferred prospects? Step 4: Check and test each ad with a single entry in your chosen media. (Do not run ad series until you’ve tested pulling power) Step 5: Buy smallest display ad possible. Then each time it makes money buy next size up until it starts to lose money. Step 6: Continually run split tests to find best pulling direct response for your product Step 7: Use some of your advertising saved to buy other means of marketing