Customer Service Training:
The Importance Of Staying Close To Your Customers
With all the things involved with a small business, it is easy to lost track of one of the most important things: your customers. From the repeat customers that sustain your business and the new customers that help a business to grow it is important to keep tabs on what your customers think, say and feel about your product. Whether you have a traditional storefront or an internet based business, staying in touch with customer buying trends and even their general feedback on your product and business is critical to the growth of your company.
What a Customer Can Tell You
Many business owners underestimate the importance of their satisfied customers. Bakeries that change the supplier of their chocolate will figure it out quickly as their products sit around and have to be thrown out while a clothing boutique will see their newest line getting dusty. Missing the mark with customer trends or changing something that brought customers through your door are definitely deal breakers for sales.
If you were looking to change suppliers of raw materials, you should be sure they don't critically impact your end product. It is also an option to note on your products something to the effect of "New Taste!" to alert customers and possibly generate feedback on whether the change has been bad, good or indifferent.
Staying Close When You Are Miles Away
Many business owners who are based on the internet wonder how they are suppose to stay in touch with their customers when they have very little verbal interaction. Generic ordering emails and automatic order confirmations don't generally offer the opportunity to ask how a customer thinks your business is doing. Enlisting the help of automatic surveys that pop up at the end of placing an order is one option for internet based businesses. Offering a discount on a return purchase for a survey response is also a two-fold way to generate more sales as well as get feedback.
The internet presents a level of trending data that can be more difficult to achieve with a storefront but can definitely help give you an idea of customer interest in your product. There are marketing and technology tools that can help you to monitor how many times customers have viewed your sites, which areas in your site customers have visited the most often and even demographic information a client fills out when placing an order such as geographic location for product shipment. There are even indicators that will tell you if your product is frequently used as a gift versus a self-purchase.
Staying in touch with how customers feel about your business can be as easy as word of mouth or as technical as online click counters. Additionally, data about trending, sales, preferences and the overall impression from customers about your product is great feedback for building the strategy of your business.
Melissa Evans:
http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Importance-of-Staying-Close-to-Your-Customers&id=2845248
Article Content: Customer Service Training
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