How to Resolve Customer Issues in One Email

Serving customers by communicating through email is one of the most common channels for customer support today, as well as the generally preferred method of companies. While it is a great way to answer questions and solve issues, the nature of email requires a degree of strategy to be sure that your customers come away satisfied with the experience. Probably the most helpful skill for a CSR to have when utilizing email support is the ability to resolve someone’s issue in a single response. It’s Not Always Practical One-response email solutions can be tough, and sometimes they are just not practical or even possible. For one thing, we all know that the customer sending you the request might not understand what the problem is, how to write the request clearly, or they may not include sufficient information. In addition, solving their problem might require their active interaction to troubleshoot the …

Proactive vs. Reactive: Which Strategy is Better?

There are two kinds of people in this world. There are those who are perpetually motivated to act in real time as things happen to them; and there are those who pay attention to what’s coming and act accordingly. The consequences of this are far-reaching because it touches every aspect of how you do business. People who are not natural planners already know that it’s a disadvantage, so awareness is not the issue. They just might not believe that it’s worth the energy to change their behavior, which is what this post aims to persuade. Acting Only When Forced Generally speaking, people who stay ahead of the game are significantly more successful than those who don’t. Yes, it seems like an obvious point because we all understand that we’re better off if we see things coming than we are if we don’t even pay attention to what’s coming. Apparently though, …

Too Much, Not Enough: How to Manage Your Inventory

The problem business owners run into with inventory is simple: As the demand for each product rises and falls, it can be difficult to order just the right amount of product, especially if it’s perishable. This drives owners mad because it’s so easy to lose money on product. The obvious dilemma is that having an excess of product results in a loss because money was spent needlessly; not enough product means missing out on sales you would have made if there was sufficient product. There are techniques, however, which can help to minimize loss on both fronts. Simple, Accurate Tracking It doesn’t matter what tool or method you use to track your sales, so long as it is simple for you to use and produces accurate records that you can use for projections of future sales. It’s a given that if you’re running a business, or multiple businesses, you don’t …

Everything You Need for Professional Phone System

Everything You Need for a Professional Phone System

  Setting up the right phone system for your business does not have to be complicated, and it doesn’t have to be expensive. By utilizing and applying these key elements, you can set up a system that provides everything that is important to your callers.   Voicemail Greeting Most people buy a new phone and take 5 minutes out of their lives to record it quickly and never update it again until the next time they get a new phone. Instead of taking the haphazard approach, it will help to put a little effort into this, as it is a primary point of contact for calls that may be very important to you, professionally and personally. Read more: How to Record a Good Voicemail Greeting: What Your Callers Aren’t Telling You   Callers On Hold First and foremost, your caller will be much more comfortable on hold when they know …

5 Reasons Your Team Doesn’t Trust You

  Do you get the feeling that your team is murmuring behind your back and cursing the ground you walk on? Well, you might just be paranoid; but you also may be doing things that you’re not even aware of which are driving a wedge between you and your staff. Honestly, if they all love you, then you’re probably doing something wrong. Nevertheless, you at least need them to trust and respect your leadership, which is why it’s good to do a self-check and see if any of these conditions apply to you.   You’re a Micromanager It’s a challenge for most of us, when in a position of authority, to resist the urge to micromanage employees. A business owner naturally wants to be sure that everything is getting done the way that it is supposed to get done, and it can be difficult to put that responsibility in the …

How to Handle Your Toughest Business Decisions

We all dread it; that day when we’re forced to choose one of two paths that each might lead to an unforeseeable future. Those choices are especially scary when it applies to your business, but even so, you can prepare yourself to respond skillfully when faced with a difficult decision. Take a Step Back When you have a significant decision to make, the first thing you’ll want to do is to gain perspective on it and separate yourself from the problem. When you’re too close to the choice, it can be difficult to distinguish clearly between the options. Try to look at the “big picture”, so to speak, and consider how this will affect your business as a whole. Seek Counsel There are definitely two schools of thought on how to approach business decisions, one of which may be a little more old-fashioned than the other. Some business owners believe …

Do You Communicate as Well as You Think You Do?

  We stress the value of communication in this blog, and there is good reason for that. It is, first of all, something to which people normally don’t give much thought; and secondly, everyone thinks they are good at it. The truth is that a significant portion of professionals, if not most, cannot effectively communicate in a variety of areas. This article will attempt to persuade you that communication is paramount for running a business and to illustrate why it is so important.   Text Speak Bottom line: Just don’t use text speak, even when you’re texting. Of course, you can say whatever you like when you’re sending personal text messages, but if it’s work-related, you’re better off just writing messages as if it were an email. The first problem with using text speak for work-related messages is that it makes you look unprofessional; the second is that it makes …

Why it’s Better to Be an Imitator than an Innovator

There is a problem that business owners have to face when they start a new business, and the problem is that they have to decide if it is worthwhile to introduce a brand new product to the market. We all want to be the innovator, but that carries with it some serious disadvantages which are not immediately apparent. You’re probably better off imitating an already established product, and we’ll explore the reasons for that in this post. Innovators don’t usually reap the real benefits. There is kind of cruel irony about creating an original product and selling it. Due to a variety of factors, selling something that has never been thought of before, brilliant as it may be, tends to consume more of the originator’s resources than it returns. The imitators who take the original idea and make their own version of it, after the heavy lifting has already been …

Customers You Shouldn’t Listen To

Why There Are Some Customers You Shouldn’t Listen To

Any respectable business is driven to listen to its customers—all of its customers, if possible—because that’s how you know what you should change about your product or service and what the shortcomings are that you need to address. The flipside of that coin is that it’s important to know which ones represent your customer base as a whole, and those who just have a unique need that doesn’t apply to everyone else. Therefore, not all of your customers’ feedback is relevant, generally speaking. The Silent Majority The people whom you really want to listen to are the ones who aren’t talking. Unless your product is really bad, in which case you’ll hear from everybody pretty quickly, it will be radio silence from the vast majority of your customers most of the time. The first reason is that if what you’re producing is successful and worth buying, then there is no …