WorkAtHomeTruth

The Brutally Honest Truth About Working At Home (Helping People Stay Safe Since 2005)

What Makes Great Customer Service?

By Leave a Comment

A guide to keeping your customers on board by providing excellent standards of customer service.

In businesses of all shapes, sizes and types, providing great customer service is a must. From handymen to large business conglomerates, great customer service is generally at the top of the list of the reasons why they’d like to think their customers stick with them and, in most cases, it is.

If a customer considers the customer service of a company to be great, the likelihood of the customer returning increases greatly. It works the other way around too; if a customer considers the customer service of a company to be poor, the likelihood of the customer staying decreases greatly and forces them to run into the arms of one of the company’s many competitors who strive to provide great customer service.

So what makes great customer service?

It ultimately comes down to two things; the policies of the company and the individuals tasked with providing the customer service. The policies of the company cannot be affected too much, other than by the powers that be in the boardroom. The customer services representatives of the company can be affected though. Customer services representatives will likely have a few natural traits which will make them succeed in their roles but for those who are maybe not up to scratch just yet, these traits can be trained and developed.

But what are the important traits?

Firstly, just a general friendly aura is essential. There is nothing worse for a customer, whether they are aggrieved or not, having to speak to someone who displays behaviour to suggest that they have no interest in what the customer has to say. Being friendly, positive and attentive shows the customer that the company is genuinely concerned with what is important to the customer and will strive to cater to their needs. Great customer service.

Secondly, a customer service representative should ‘know their stuff’. Not only will customers get annoyed by speaking to someone who clearly has no idea what they are talking about, they will not consider the company being represented as a knowledgeable and reputable institution. If a customer is talking to someone who has all of the answers to all of the questions they can throw at them, they will feel safe in the knowledge they are dealing with experts. Great customer service.

Finally, being patient can be key in customer service, especially when dealing with ‘difficult’ customers. Every now and again, a customer will rightly or wrongly feel aggrieved in a situation. If the company’s representative merely shrugs off the problem or gets annoyed with a customer that is annoyed, the situation is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. However, a bit of patience and an empathetic ear can soothe a situation and set up a positive outcome which, once again, puts the company in the good books of the customer. Again, great customer service.

Julie Skote shares her interest on Customer Service on behalf of AER Training Ltd

If You're Struggling to Make Money Online Click Here to Get Answers to All of Your Questions About Making Money Online.

Growing Your Business with Customer Relationship Management Services

By Leave a Comment

It is a well-known fact that the CRM services are some great tools meant to assist businesses to get and manage leads. Business leads are very important for growing a business especially because they continue to bring new customers while generating more and more sales. But, from making this conceptual statement to implementing it is quite a long way to go. Thus, in order to help you to understand how to use CRM services to grow your business, this article presents multiple details that you need to know about the available customer relationship management solutions.

What Is So Great about the CRM Solutions?

Today, the CRM business solutions can help you to deliver personalized services, which leave your customers smiling. This is the very first aspect that you should remember whenever you have any doubts with regard to the importance of the available CRM solutions. But, although delivering personalized services is about to become a significant aspect for a business to become successful, it is not the only essential aspect that relates to the CRM services. You must also understand the mechanism that a CRM solution uses in order to deliver new leads.

If you succeed to integrate specific CRM solutions in your business structure, you will get new opportunities to grow your business. This is possible due to the following reasons:

  • CRM solutions are able to segment and choose leads based on your own customer preferences
  • CRM services can help you to develop automatic systems that locate the most appropriate leads based on captured information
  • A CRM system has the capability to develop and distribute information to potential customers at very low rates
  • CRM solutions transform the online lead generation process into a simple task; thus, growing an online business with the help of CRM solutions has become much easier than you can imagine

Today, you can find multiple CRM service. But, if you wish to reassure yourself that a particular solution is able to deliver the expected outcomes, you must select a comprehensive service.

How to Get Comprehensive CRM Solutions

The truth is that only a few customer relationship management services provide comprehensive solutions. If you wish to distinct these services from less complex options, you should know that all comprehensive alternatives provide an excellent tool, known as lead form. The lead form is usually linked to a specific service or product, requiring the customers to provide personal contact information, such as name, email address, address, telephone number, and country in exchange for that particular service or product. The information provided by the customer is uploaded into CRM database for tracking and retrieval when necessary.

A spectacular feature that characterizes the most comprehensive CRM services is fast lead generation. This feature is also based on the lead form, which makes the entire lead generation process very efficient. Some lead forms contain multiple questions, which play an essential role in gathering information that is essential for pre-qualifying customers. This thing permits businesses to determine if their clients are suitable for the services or products they offer. In some situations, the lead forms also allow customers to choose and purchase products. Thus, these forms help businesses to create accurate customer databases while completing certain up-selling tasks. Another important thing that you must know about these forms is that they are fully customizable, permitting users to change them based on particular criteria. As the process associated with lead forms is completely automated, it saves a lot of resources.

CRM Services Propose Targeted and Personalized Marketing

The CRM services enable you to use the information that you gather with the help of their tools in order to create memorable personalized experiences for your customers. With the help of various CRM tools, you can develop targeted views for customers and leads, classify customers based on specific criteria, such as age groups and location, and complete many other business projects. All these are very important especially because they can help you to develop appropriate marketing strategies based on your customers’ behavior. As a result, your marketing campaigns will be more relevant, meeting your business goals.

But, it is important to bear in mind that checking the lead form is not the only thing that you have to do when choosing a particular CRM service. As a matter of fact, a superior CRM solution should help users to convert information into certain mechanisms that engage customers and enhance their experiences. This aspect plays a significant role in generating more opportunities for growing your business.

By author Sonia Meehan, on behalf of Capita Customer Management. If you’re looking for call centre jobs, look no further!

If You're Struggling to Make Money Online Click Here to Get Answers to All of Your Questions About Making Money Online.

Handling Email Etiquettes Professionally

By Leave a Comment

The problem with the written word is that it is completely devoid of emotion. If you are looking for something that tells you what the writer was thinking when they wrote something, you would be left clasping at straws. The problem with emails is that it is used for all forms of communication and, in many cases, giving off a wrong impression is an extremely likely possibility. Keeping your communication neutral is what the world is moving towards and here’s a look at some of the problems you are likely to face when trying to keep things plain and simple.

Emphasis

It is widely understood that when someone wants to attract the reader’s attention to a particular point of the email, they may resort to using bold or upper case fonts. It is also understood, equally widely, that something like this usually means that the sender is shouting it out loudly.

There are no global standards for what pertains to a “highlight” or “important point” mark-up and, therefore, it is important to use something that everyone can understand without taking offense to it. Try using bullet points to mark out the important bits. If that isn’t possible, then you can also look at using italics or underline the text that you want should stand out. Basically, keep things as normal as possible without offending anyone else.

No Emoticons Please

This is the worst thing you can do – use those annoying little icons that are meant to denote emotions, but only end up denoting that you are an unprofessional and immature person with little sense of what is appropriate and what isn’t. The only time when you can use emoticons in emails is when you are sending out mails to your family or friends. When the setting isn’t related to business, you are welcome to use them as you wish.

Sure, you may argue that Microsoft Office, something that most of us use as an email client, automatically convert the smiley text into faces of images. Does that mean we are dependent on companies like Microsoft to make our choices for us, in life and in our work?

Images in Content

Something that really annoys people is when the email fails to load properly because images have been pasted into the content. If it is very important for someone to see an image alongside the content that they have to read, put it down in a word processing document and attach it to the email. Sending images in the middle of mails are a problem because most email clients do not allow images to be displayed automatically. That means, if you put the image in there, the email will not open up properly, causing plenty of annoyance.

Then there’s that logo in the signature. I am sure that you are sending an email out to someone who is probably expecting it or can read. If your company name is mentioned, in text, at the bottom, it will mean the same things as it being present in the form of a logo. Moreover, putting images with the text, and not attaching them on top, will also mean that the chances of your email ending in the junk mailbox are quite likely.

So keep things simple because, sometimes, the best way to ensure that your message goes through is to keep things as simple and steady as can be.

Jeremy McArthur – author

Jeremy began his career as an IT graduate, working in a software development company. Never really the career-minded type, Jeremy kept looking for something he would like to with computers and there was just one thing that kept popping into his mind, helping others understand it better. After a few short stints as a teacher, Jeremy saw successful companies like Evolve Computers in Kingston providing IT support services and decided to set-up a computer helpdesk for small business owners, where they could come in and ask for his advice, services and determine what kind of setup they might need. Along with this, Jeremy continues to write on a variety of topics pertaining to computers and their use.

If You're Struggling to Make Money Online Click Here to Get Answers to All of Your Questions About Making Money Online.