Are YOUR customers YOUR business?

Written by Val Burnett


Are YOUR customers YOUR business?

Customer support should be a high priority for any business, whether you are starting up or already established. At MBP Advertising, our motto is "Our business IS our Customers."

Daily, we strive to show our customers that their concerns, comments and their time is very valuable to us. By making customer support a high priority, it givesrepparttar customer a sense of trust in our company and they know that they can come to us with any question and we will answer it and usually pretty quickly.

You need to make sure your customers receiverepparttar 146789 same quick and efficient support. How you handle customer support can and will make or break a company. Too many companies now, concentrate onrepparttar 146790 front-end sale, but very rarely work at keeping that customer afterrepparttar 146791 sale has been established. If you have a website that focuses on "free" products or services, these customers should be treatedrepparttar 146792 same as if they were "paying" customers.

If you treat all customers, whether paid or free,repparttar 146793 same and with respect, you will find these customers will be there for years to come. It is these customers, that will help you establish your company and they will refer others to you and continue to purchase or use your services.

Without customers, where would your business be? Each and every customer support issue, you need to address promptly, honestly and in a professional manner.

How can you handle customer support issues?

There are quite a few tools, software or programs that will assist you with dealing with customer support. The most favorite now isrepparttar 146794 Help desk system. Many companies are integrating these support systems into their websites.

Help Desk Ticket System

This is one ofrepparttar 146795 more popular customer service systems being used now. With a help desk system, your customer can log a support ticket, they can trackrepparttar 146796 ticket and receiverepparttar 146797 response they need. With most ticket systems, they also include a knowledge database, this is a place where you can putrepparttar 146798 most frequent asked questions. By providing this, your customers may browserepparttar 146799 database and may very well findrepparttar 146800 answer to their question, before having to log a support ticket.

All tickets put in by a customer are logged and saved inrepparttar 146801 database. This is very beneficial, because you andrepparttar 146802 customer can track what was previously said, whatrepparttar 146803 issues were and just by saving it, it is a place where your customers can reference later.

A help desk system will also help you analyze your customer support promptness but also it allowsrepparttar 146804 customer to raterepparttar 146805 service they received. This is very valuable information and will show you if your customers are happy withrepparttar 146806 support responses andrepparttar 146807 time it took to receiverepparttar 146808 answers to their questions.

We use http://www.perldesk.com for our ticket system, it is affordable and is loaded with features. Liz Smith, handles our customer support and by logging intorepparttar 146809 ticket system, I can seerepparttar 146810 average response time as of May 2005 is 2 hr(s) 10 min(s) 35 seconds plus she has responded and closed over 5500 tickets since we installedrepparttar 146811 ticket system just over a year ago. Our customers have rated Liz's prompt and helpful responses 5 stars!

Don’t Waste My Time!

Written by Kelley Robertson


Many participants in my programs ask how to deal with people who appear to be seeking information and nothing more. In many environments these individual’s are called time wasters. Time wasters come in every shape and form but they usually possess a few consistent characteristics – they ask a continuing stream of questions, take up loads of our time, and seldom end up buying anything. What is particularly interesting about these situations is that many time wasters don’t set out to be that way. It is usually our fault that this happens because we don’t controlrepparttar sales process. And in many cases, we becomerepparttar 146288 time waster. Most sales professionals know they are supposed to ask questions to learn about their customer’s needs but I have learned thatrepparttar 146289 majority of sales people tend to be more comfortable responding to questions rather than asking them. Here is a simple fact…the person who asksrepparttar 146290 questions isrepparttar 146291 one in control ofrepparttar 146292 sales process. I have conducted hundreds of sales training workshops inrepparttar 146293 last ten years and I consistently have people tell me they knowrepparttar 146294 importance of asking questions. Asrepparttar 146295 discussion continues I usually discover that they do in fact ask questions – after they encounter objections or resistance fromrepparttar 146296 buyer or customer. But that means it’s too late. Now it will appear that you are trying to justify your product, service, price, etc. Sales people hear this, but it seldom sinks in. Here is a personal example. After reading one of my weekly sales tips a sales person emailed me (forrepparttar 146297 second or third time) and said he had been focusing on his needs rather than mine in his previous correspondence. He presented a couple of good points so I agreed to a telephone conversation. When we connected he immediately launched into a ten-minute monologue about his company and its services. At this point it still wasn’t clear what he wanted from me so I asked. He went on to say that he wanted me to endorse his product to my clients and newsletter subscribers. I then stated that my target market is mostly specialty retailers and asked how his product would help them. His reply, “Oh, it won’t.” He had now just wasted almost 15 minutes of my time – valuable time that could have been used to work on one ofrepparttar 146298 many projects on my desk. As a sales person, he had just become a time waster. If he had asked one simple question in his email he could have saved us both time because he would have learned that our companies were not compatible.

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