Turn Disgruntled Customer Loyal

4 Simple Steps to Turn a Disgruntled Customer into a Loyal One

  To pull a one-eighty with a customer who is already upset for one reason or another takes a measure of skill and a great deal of patience, but this is the epitome of truly taking care of a customer. We could break down the process into a semantic, long-winded sequence of steps, but to be effective, these 4 basic steps are really all you need.   1. Forget About Winning The first idea you have to expel from your mind, when you have a conflict with a customer, is winning. Every business owner understands this intellectually, but in that moment when someone is filling your ear with all the reasons that they’ve been wronged by the business, it can quickly become a useless battle of opposing arguments on either side. Those of us with strong personalities have a switch that gets flipped as soon as someone, even a customer, …

Managing Forwarding Phones

5 Steps for Managing Your Forwarding Phones

  The phones that you use to answer business calls are the most essential element and most valuable point-of-contact you have with your customers. Most of the time, you can pretty much set it and forget it, but then there are also those times when changes need to be made. That’s when you need a system that makes it easy to change up the configuration while keeping the calls coming in without interruption. These steps will give you a simple roadmap for managing your forwarding phones as part of a virtual phone system.   1. Make sure your phones are in excellent working order. Find out every person, or every phone that will be taking calls, and then do some testing. Go through each phone that will be on the forwarding list with your virtual system; then, do a series of tests to make sure there will be no conflicts …

4 Tips for Emergency Preparedness in Your Office

  The motto, “Be prepared for anything,” extends beyond writing everything you can think of into your bylaws. As a business owner, you also need to be ready for practical emergencies which have the potential to cause massive problems for your business if you’re not ready for them, not to mention the harm to your employees. Increase your emergency readiness with these practical suggestions.   1. First Aid Any office has to have a first aid kit somewhere in the facility, but it’s good to go even a step further and provide a first aid kit for each employee because you never know when mishaps will occur. It’s not just an act of goodwill for your staff; keeping sufficient first aid materials around for everybody might prevent the need for a trip to the ER or a Workman’s Comp claim.   2. Post Emergency Procedures & Contacts Of course this …

User Interface of Virtual Phone System

Is the User Interface of a Virtual Phone System Important?

The criteria you use to judge virtual phone systems may not include the user interface, or control panel—but it should. Your control panel, otherwise known as your “dashboard”, is how you interact with your business’ phone system and needs to be effective and easy to use. A Component that is Usually Overlooked When shopping around for a new phone system, you’re paying close attention to things like cost vs. value; included features; compatibility with your existing phones, which points are all important, but how easy will the whole thing actually be to setup, adjust as needed, and maintain? You can seek support from the company staff if you need it, but it’s far more painless if you can make changes to your system with a couple of quick clicks. That’s why the user interface has to be accessible to make immediate changes anytime, from an easy-to-use online dashboard. Managing Your …

Essential Strategies for Maximizing Your Workspace

  The physical space that you use daily to get all of your work done honestly cannot be overemphasized. This is where you spend most of your time, and it has to be conducive to comfort and productivity, among other things. It might be your desk at home or the office, your car, your work bench in a shop, or some other place, but that space is sacred no matter where it is because it’s where all the magic happens.   What Do You Need While You Work? There’s no standard architecture for setting up your workspace, except for the fact that it needs to have all the elements that put you in the “zone”. It should be a little microcosm where you are the king and the whole environment and everything in it are designed to serve you. You might need it to be ultra-minimal like an empty table; …

How to Get Employees to Do What You Want Them to Do

While it is paramount to let your employees be independent to get their best work out of them, you can also use conscientious strategy to encourage the results that you need. Take these suggestions under advisement. There is absolutely no reason to coax your staff into changing their work habits if they are producing great work. The following strategies can be used if you see a need to optimize your team’s use of time. Offer an Incentive It doesn’t have to be something as big as stock options; it can be as simple as a bonus for an individual when they hit a certain number of sales. And incentives don’t have to be monetary; in fact, the best incentives aren’t even tangible. You can suggest to your team members that when they fulfill their responsibilities early and fully, then you can fully rely on them. Earn Their Respect Quite honestly, …

Why Any Business Can Have Perfect Call Quality

  Connection quality and excellent phone reception is always a top concern for businesses of any size. Unfortunately, if you choose the wrong phone service provider, you may not enjoy the consistent quality that you need because not all providers can offer that. If you choose the right provider, though, this is not only possible but readily available.   How Do You Get Good Connection Quality? When choosing a phone system to manage your business calls, it’s important to know how your calls are being connected. There are 2 basic methods that providers use to connect calls. The first type of provider routes calls over the Internet, namely a VoIP system. The second kind of provider is a cloud-based PBX system that connects calls using the traditional phone network, and some service providers also use a mix of both.   Internet-Based Call Routing This type has been in use for …

How to Handle Losing an Employee

Whether it comes as a surprise, or you see it coming from a mile away, losing someone in your employ is a challenge. It can be disorienting, emotional, and stressful. How you deal with the change will determine how quickly your business recovers and how smooth that transition will be. Use the following points in your plan of action to deal with it in the most expedient way possible. Know the Reason for Separation It’s not just to satisfy your curiosity; understanding the reason why this person left the company, even if you fired them, is useful information that will help you to avoid it happening in the future. It may have been necessary that they leave, but the truth is that losing a member of your team costs valuable time, energy, and money. Not only that, but the reason might reveal shortcomings on your part, as well. Don’t Rush …

4 Tips to Maximize Your Business Voicemail

  Voicemail is pretty straightforward. Every business uses it because you just can’t get to every call, but is every business using voicemail to its full potential? Probably not. Put these 4 strategies into practice to get the most out of your business voicemail.   1. Voicemail-to-Email for Automated Ticketing Voicemail benefits from automation more than anything because not only can you use your virtual phone system to automatically route messages to the correct mailbox and receive notifications instantly, but voice mailboxes can be set to create a new ticket for each new message. Simply set the voice mailbox to forward new messages to the email address connected with your ticketing software. It’s a highly useful makeshift integration to help save you some time.   2. Route an Extension Straight to Voicemail There are a few reasons why you would want an extension or menu option that, when selected, routes …

Audio Prompts Should Never Say

4 Things Your Audio Prompts Should Never Say

  The messages and audio that people hear when they call into your phone system should be orchestrated in such a way that informs the caller while keeping them calm and interested. If the message goes off the program even just a little bit, people will notice, and it might leave a bad taste in their mouths. Here are a few old chestnuts that you may want to leave out of your audio prompts.   1. Your call is important to us. When you’re setting up your phone system, you’re going to be tempted to insert this famous little phrase into your on-hold program. Resist that temptation. It seems like such a great idea at first, but think about it. What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you call a business and hear a pleasant female voice say, “Your call is important to us,” as you …