Related Articles

What Do They Want Anyway?
You want customers. I want customers.

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You MUST Sweat the Small Stuff
It's The Little Things That Make or Break a Small BusinessIf you make a poor impression in small things, why should customers trust you with larger ones like buying your product regularly or giving you a big order? In the last two days, I've seen this simple fact proved three times.I ordered software from Company A.

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CRM - Its Relevance
In today's demanding economy, the first line of any business during economic uncertainty is to get closer to the customer. Customers often want information along with a quote or invoice on the spot.

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Whats For Lunch?
As an entrepreneur, I'm always intrigued by small businesses, home-based or not, that exceed the expectations of their customers in a big way.Let me tell you about one of them.

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Dont Forget your Existing Clients
Quest for new clients shouldn't ignore those who pay the billsAcquisition. It's a big word in small business marketing.

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It Is All About Customer Service!
In this day of terrible customer service, it should come as no surprise that serving your customers, also known as visitors to your web site, must be a top priority. Forget about return on your investment, how your site looks, keywords, meta tags, and the like.

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Renewing Customer Loyalty
Every business loses customers, but not many do much about getting them back. And that is a big mistake.

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The History of CRM -- Moving Beyond the Customer Database
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one of those magnificent concepts that swept the business world in the 1990's with the promise of forever changing the way businesses small and large interacted with their customer bases. In the short term, however, it proved to be an unwieldy process that was better in theory than in practice for a variety of reasons.

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Be the Customer: See Yourself as Your Customers Do
What do your customers experience when they interact with your business? As a mystery shopper, I help businesses see themselves through the eyes of their customers by posing as a typical customer and evaluating their service, quality and cleanliness. Was it easy to find what I needed? Were the employees polite and helpful? Was everything neat and clean? Was I thanked for my business? What happened when I made a return?Whether your business is an international retailer or a small one-person shop, what you don't know about your customers' perceptions of your quality and service can hurt you.

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First Contact: The Source of Customer Loyalty
With customers being smarter, more cost conscious, more product knowledgeable and more demanding, improving customer service has become a major focus within many businesses. In Customer Satisfaction is Worthless; Customer Loyalty is Priceless, author Jeffrey Gitomer contends the real solution is shifting the paradigm away from customer service to customer loyalty.

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Customer Service and The Human Experience
Historically, customer service was delivered over the phone or in person. Customers didn't have many choices, and switching to competitors was cumbersome.

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Profit from a Customer Service Recovery Program
A client recently said to me: "Most days things seem to run smoothly; but whenever we have a customer complaint, we seem to collapse. Where are we going wrong?"How you handle and solve customer concerns and complaints is a measure of your standing in the "excellent", "bad", or "mediocre" category of customer service.

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What Every Employee Should Know About How to See Customers Problems from Their Creative Side
Customer Service is a blessing and a curse; a blessing to the customer and a curse to you, the employee. At least so it seems.

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Is Your Food Establishment Clean?
Is your restaurant, bar or hotel clean? I mean really clean. I don't mean "do you stick to all the rules and regulations?".

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Making The Most Of Newsletters
Newsletters can be wonderful tools for communicating with your customers or prospects. Because of their format, they're often infused with more credibility than traditional brochures.

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Customer Service, the Internets Primary Neglected Business Concern
Customer service is everything to a business. Just look at big, successful retail chains: They let you return perfectly good merchandise just because you changed your mind.

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Adjustment DENIED
It's just a simple thing - I bought a new set of shelves for my office. It wasn't a real problem, but when I got the shelves home, I found dents on the front of the shelves where the package had been leaned up on some other object, the shelves had been removed from the original box and put into another box.

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When the Customer Demands: Give a Discount or Lose the Order
Periodically every sales person encounters the customer who refuses to buy unless they receive a discount. Sometimes this is driven by the organization's culture or the buyer wanting to look good to their boss and sometimes it is simply the mindset of the individual buyer them self.

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Stand Out in Business the Write Way
When was the last time you received a handwritten note from a business associate? It may be that it was too long ago for you to remember. On the other hand, if you have gotten one lately, you know exactly who sent it and when.

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The Number 1 Rule for Businesses - Be Professional
Have you ever walked into a store and things looked sloppy? Stores should have nice neat displays, right? Normally, yes, but sometimes they get a bit messy on busy days and we all understand how that can happen.But what if you were to walk into a store as soon as it opened in the morning and the place looked liked it had been ransacked? What would you think?You'd probably think it wasn't very professional-looking.

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