Posted by Sean Cohen

The future of customer service is here. Technology has made seeking out support faster and easier than ever. But, has your digital age company sacrificed true service in the name of automation?

Today, finding customer support is as simple as writing an e-mail or picking up the phone. But, even though you’re not face-to-face with your customers, you still leave a lasting impression. Do you come across as caring and competent, or menacing and mechanical?

Offering stand-out service on the Internet isn’t as hard as it is rare. Take these simple steps towards old-style service in the digital age:

1. Be Clear, But Sincere
2. Offer Live Customer Support
3. Make Sure Your Support Reps Have All the Answers

Give Each Customer a Personal Response

 When a customer sits down to e-mail your company, it’s because he needs help. He chooses e-mail because it’s quick, but his request still warrants a satisfying and personal response!

Companies eager to save time and money often take automation too far in their customer support. Each customer has a unique question, and deserves a unique answer. Even if you save time by copying and pasting stock replies, change the opening and closing to make the message sound less robotic.

Be Clear, But Sincere

When responding to customers’ e-mail, be sincere and to the point. Before sending a message, try turning the tables. Ask yourself, “Would this answer satisfy me if I were the customer?”

Take that extra moment to give your customer the help he deserves. It might mean the difference between a satisfied customer and a credit card chargeback!

Offer Live Customer Support

E-mail has become an acceptable form of communication. But, live customer support is still necessary. The plethora of information available online can be overwhelming to customers, especially those new to the Internet!

Single your company out from the crowd by providing customers with a real person to talk to. Live phone support is an invaluable way to foster trust. When your customer has reached the end of his Internet rope, and just needs help, your toll free number is the answer he’s looking for.

Make Sure Your Support Reps Have All The Answers

The presence of phone support will do no good if your staff doesn’t know your product! Customer support reps should be warm and friendly, and willing to help with any aspect of your product.

What a good feeling it is to talk to someone who feels confident in his product. It’s even better if he’s knowledgeable enough to solve your problem without transferring you all around the company!

Provide Stand-Out Service; Gain Lifelong Customers

Too many e-businesses skimp on customer service, hiding behind web sites and message boards. Customer support is an integral part of every company, even those operating solely online. Be one of the few to offer stellar service, and gain customers for life! To give your business the edge in top quality customer support check out this great tool now!

Popularity: 57% [?]

Did you know that just by providing exceptional customer service and support you could actually triple - or quadruple your sales without spending a single extra cent? It’s easy when you know how.

Conventional customer support - when you have an offline business -would involve your customer either dropping by your office or calling you on the phone, or even having your representative dropping by their office. But with the emergence of e commerce, flourishing businesses have taken their services online successfully. Practically everyone has access to the Internet, and it makes sense to provide customer service as part of the online sales experience. This can be made effective in a number of ways - saving time, resources, improving customer satisfaction, minimizes spam and - brings in huge profits through sales - and repeat sales. Let us now look at how online customer support can be high quality:

Live Chat:

This is easily the best option for all online businesses. You can actually give your customers real-time help and deal with several customers at the same time when your customer support people are geared to handle it. Most websites indicate the timings during which customers can use chat so that they get in touch during that time. There are many businesses that offer around-the-clock support.

Live chat is like instant messaging and once you install it, all your customers need to do is click on a link and start chatting via a small browser window.

Order Tracking:

A lot of customers want to know the status of their orders. You probably receive them all the time. The process of order tracking can be automated, thereby saving you a lot of time to handle other priorities. If you have a shopping cart program you probably have an integrated order tracking facility. This will substantially reduce the amount of email you receive and have to respond to, from customers wanting to know about their order.

After the order is shipped, the tracking info is fed into the shopping cart application. Many shopping carts generate automated email messages to let the customer know their tracking info - telling them whether the order is pending, shipped or delivered. All this minimizes your effort, speeds up communication and brings in repeat orders from happy customers.

After sales support begins after your order is shipped. Sometimes you might have to handle product returns due to damages or deal with other issues. There’s something called the support ticket process that can greatly help in dealing with these issues. These are simple to implement. When customers visit your site, they click a link and submit order information. The program forwards this to you and you respond. It is ideal for a big customer base.

Telephone Support

Sometimes you might be able to sort something out far more quickly on the phone with an irate customer. Some people just prefer to pick up the phone and talk rather than go through technology.

See - it all boils down to showing that you care for your customer - whether it is offline or online. It keeps them coming back. It triples your sales by just keeping a good system for customer support.

Popularity: 79% [?]

Delegation is a critical skill you must develop. The process involves working with an employee to establish specific goals and giving them the necessary authority and responsibility to accomplish them. You continue to keep the overall responsibility and stay in charge.

People often find delegation a big challenge. They fear handing over certain tasks for various reasons. Some believe no one can do it better, some do not have enough confidence in someone else’s abilities.

But as your business grows, it is inevitable that you hire people to handle various tasks. There’s no reason for you to work crazy hours all seven days a week. It is easy to delegate, once you find good people and train them. Unless you delegate certain tasks you cannot succeed or achieve your goals. Delegation helps you achieve things you would have never managed to achieve alone. So lets look at the practical aspects of delegation:

• What can you delegate?
  Rather than work hard, you need to work smart. Focus on what you do best and delegate everything else. Delegate jobs you don’t enjoy doing.
• What if you have a problem letting go?
  Remember we said NO micromanagement? Don’t turn into a control freak. Trust others, save time, conserve your energy to plan, grow and enjoy your life.
• It is easy to find good help
  There are several trustworthy websites online through which you can hire help. You can also talk to people you trust or request referrals.

Now lets look at specific jobs you can easily delegate:

• Email management - you can delegate checking email and responding to it.
• Managing the phone - you can get someone to receive, respond to and redirect phone calls
• You can delegate routine customer rather than talk to each customer yourself.
• Scheduling and confirming your business appointments and travel management
• Direct mailing to customers
• Bookkeeping and accounting
• Data entry
• Managing bills receivable and payable
• Web design and monitoring
• Search engine optimization
• Link management - link exchange, one-way link generation
• Affiliate program management

The above is not a comprehensive list, but you can see the potential of delegating tasks to people qualified to handle them. Now look at what you must remember when you delegate:

• Be clear about the task to be delegated
• Delegate it to the appropriate individual
• Set a time frame for each task
• Get progress reports from time to time
• Make sure you provide the necessary authority with the delegated task
• Praise a job well done
• Avoid being a perfectionist

What if you are a one-man operation, though? There are many Internet entrepreneurs who run a home based business and make a fortune. But as the business grows, you too need to share or outsource your routine work. That’s what I’ll discuss in an upcoming article.

Popularity: 55% [?]

The only way to survive and flourish in business is to provide outstanding customer support. This brings us to the leading question - are your customers satisfied? By the end of this article, you should be able to confidently say - Yes.

Customer dissatisfaction usually arises from a host of simple things - failure to reply to an email promptly, availability of insufficient information about your products resulting in losing the customer to the competition, being left hanging on the phone to boring music when you called that toll free number - all these create annoyance, and leads to unhappy prospects and customers. And when this becomes a habit, the business simply ceases to exist. End of story.

But that’s not what I’m here for. I’m here to see how you can stay ahead of your competition by taking care of all those multiple things that help you commit to customer service. There are some rules that are worthwhile to print and keep:

• The first step is getting everyone in your organization together and collectively committing yourself to doing everything possible to ensure customer satisfaction. Customer service is not the sole domain of the marketing or customer service department. It involves every single person in the company.
• Make sure that everyone is familiar with your product range and company return policies. Brainstorm about the kind of questions you can expect and prepare a ‘frequently answered questions’ document that is accessible to everyone and save time. Preferably upload this on your website.
• Get to know your customers. Communicate with them regularly to know their buying habits and their specific needs. Pay attention to their complaints. Learn about their experience with your business. Did you know that good experiences could be turned into customer testimonials, which in turn can do a great job of endorsing your business? This means free advertising and more sales.
• Remember to treat a customer with respect at all times, regardless of whether you interact with them via email, phone, snail mail or meet them face to face. Everyone likes to be treated with courtesy. Thank them for orders placed, and show them you care. Phrases like “thank you for your patience” ” sorry to have kept you waiting’ ‘ we really appreciate your feedback’ makes a customer feel great about dealing with you.
• Arguing with a customer is a no-no. The customer is always right. Empathize. Do not take it personally. Focus on finding the solution to the issue. 80% of your customers will become loyal customers and give you repeat business when you solve the complaint in their favor.
• Prompt responses are the foundation of great customer service. So if you keep your customers hanging - they are not going to love you. Find ways to resolve complaints promptly and keep in touch with your customers - show a sense of urgency in your willingness to resolve the problem. This is another surefire way to get repeat business.
• Only promise what you can deliver. In fact, most gurus will tell you to under-promise and over-deliver. When expectations are exceeded, everyone is happy and you enjoy the fruits of this through sales. Over promising and under delivering on the other hand will make you lose your credibility and customers will lose trust.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Success in life comes through time management. Time is money. Once you believe this, your planning efforts will be more focused. You probably started out that way, but someone got bogged down with your growing responsibilities. Now it is time to protect your time, conserve your energy. Use these three precious resources only on things that take you nearer to your goals. Determine what your time is worth, and only do things that meet this value. By doing this, you will also be able to decide on which tasks you should take on and which ones to outsource or delegate to others.

What is your financial goal for this year? Let’s say you want to make one million dollars this year. Every one is blessed with twenty-four hours in a day of which we should be working ideally for 8 hours. Out of the 365 days a year, discounting weekends and holiday makes it 220 working days. Converted into hours you’ve got 1760 hours. So how much is your one hour worth?

If you look categorize your time into productive and unproductive you can probably classify what you do as follows:

Non productive time is chatting with friends, aimless internet browsing, checking and answering mails too frequently, attending the phone, learning time, monitoring your website stats, clearing up your desk, cleaning up your office and so on.

Productive time would be the time you spend on product development, promoting your products, tweaking your marketing process to improve it, managing projects that make money, initiating and setting up joint ventures and looking for ways to automate your business.

It follows from the above that you must look for a return on the time you invest, based on your financial goal. Let’s look at some proven time management rules:

• Prioritize - first things first
• Create a to-do list
• Set aside specific time to do things
• No frequent email checks
• Learn to say no
• Become computer savvy
• Make your work environment conducive to your productivity
• Maintain focus
• Be busy and show it.

It might be worthwhile to keep this in view where you can look at it from time to time.

To manage your time and get more out of it, do the following:

• Make a goal statement of what you want to achieve
• Remove yourself from the routine day-to-day involvement
• Set up a system with well designed procedures for specific tasks
• Provide your employees with the requisite training to use the system
• Make it so that your employees cooperate with and support the system
• Make a detailed operations manual for reference

These steps will help you have your business going the way you want, freeing up your unproductive time. To sum up, don’t micromanage your business. Delegate routine tasks for a start.

Popularity: 27% [?]

First thing’s first, let’s take a look at the big picture and take a reality check before we look at the strategies. You’ve got a successful business. You are happier than you ever imagined. You are busier than ever. But what happened to all that enthusiasm and excitement you started out with?

Your business has grown, your capital has grown; yet you can’t figure out why you don’t feel as happy as you expected. Don’t worry. You are not alone. This sort of situation is something a lot of highly successful businessmen find themselves in, where they realize at some point that it is not they who are running the business - it is the business that’s running their lives.

Now, ask yourself the following questions and consider the answers:

1. Can you actually take a couple of weeks off, go away on holiday and come back to find your business running smoothly and profitably?
2. Can your business run smoothly regardless of whether you are in the ‘office’?
3. Is your business system-dependant or owner-dependent?

If you answered ‘no’ to questions 1 and 2 and of your business is owner-dependent then you are in serious danger of getting totally stressed out. It’s time to take action and make time to enjoy yourself. What’s more, it is very easy to do.

Through the techniques that we’ll look at in detail in this article, you will be able to enjoy the “Internet lifestyle” which was your aim in the first place. You will be able to work less, get more and feel free to do whatever you want. You will have more quality time to spend with your family. After all, why should you do work on things that you don’t enjoy doing, or not good at? You really ought to be doing what you do best - enjoy the monetary security you’ve built.

To do what we’ve described above, you must first have an effective business system in place. Let’s look at two concepts here: Outsourcing and Delegation. For any well-managed profitable online business to achieve its goals, outsourcing and delegation must be an integral part of the business.

Outsourcing can help handle various aspects of your business in such a way that you have more free time to go after your core responsibilities.

Delegation involves the transfer of authority and responsibility to an employee for specific goals to be achieved by them.

How do you know whether you should handle a job yourself? Answer these questions:

• Can it be done cheaper? - Why would you do something that can be outsourced at $ 10 an hour when you could be making $ 500 an hour developing your business?
• Can it be done faster? - Why would you struggle with knowing how to do something you are not familiar with when someone else could do it a lot faster and you could be doing something you are great at?
• Can it be done better? - Why would you waste time with something that someone else can do a lot better?
• Can it be done by someone who likes it more than you do? - Why would you do something you don’t enjoy doing when there’s someone eager to do it?

Popularity: 20% [?]

What’s the one thing that can make or break your business? You probably have every ingredient in place to make your business a roaring success - you have the product, your website is up and your marketing strategies are in place. But are you equipped to deal with your customers? You see - it is not enough to generate hordes of traffic to buy your products. It goes far beyond that.

Every business aims at repeat sales. This means you want your customer to come back often. Now, what is it that will tempt them to return to you for more of what you have to offer? Great customer service. When you have a strong customer support system, it leads to customer loyalty. Not only will these happy customers keep buying from you, but also recommend you to others because they have a positive experience with you and want to share it with everyone they know. Does that sound good to you?

We cannot over-emphasize how vital it is for your business to have an efficient and effective customer service system in place. Just some of the benefits you can expect through keeping our customers happy are:

• Save time
• Increase sales
• Increase profits
• Better exposure
• Brand building for your business
• Happy customers

When your customers have quick access to support from you, they feel more confident about buying from you. We’ve all experienced lousy service at some point or other in our lives - can you remember how you felt? Interestingly, we all tend to have a long memory when it comes to bad experiences and we probably thought to warn our friends by telling them about it.

Thus, to keep your business going great, you have absolutely no option but to provide world-class customer service - all the time. Think about this - for every satisfied customer, you’ll have created an advertisement for your business, and a very powerful one. As a first step, look at the following questions and see if you can answer with an enthusiastic ‘Yes’

• Are you easy to find?
• Are you easy to contact?
• Can you customer understand exactly what you deal with or sell?
• Is it easy to select your product?
• Do you have a simple to use payment system?
• Do you have an easy product return policy?
• Is it easy to get prompt answers to queries from you?

If you put yourself in your customer’s shoes, you’ll probably come with a lot more questions to deal with. It is easy to turn any ‘no’s that you may have answered to the above questions. And here are some tips that will help you improve your customer satisfaction program:

• Have a customer feedback system to show you care
• Provide a lifetime refund guarantee where feasible
• Be easy to contact - in fact, put your email address and phone numbers on each web page of your website. You’ll be surprised at how many people actually pick up the phone and call.
• Ensure that you have an FAQ page - answers to frequently asked questions. This is a quick way to minimize queries

Exceptional customer service is the one thing that can make or break your business - and you can easily ensure that you have a great support system in place.

Popularity: 23% [?]