All posts in Customer Service

It should be a priority to engage with your customers to maximise their value, which can lead to customers returning, referring through word of mouth and making a purchase.
Creating value can lead to customer retention, which is more important and cost effective than finding new customers.

The importance of status

It’s important to make your customers feel special. So find ways to make them feel important by giving them a status boost.
Offering exclusive items, access or features to select customers can help drive engagement.

Interact on a regular basis

It’s important for your brand to stay in the mind of your customers, which is why fan pages, newsletters and mobile messaging are popular marketing and relationship management tools. You can send them regular updates of new products, specials and more.

Keep it simple

Don’t go overboard with all the bells and whistles by trying to impress your customers. Simple strategies go a long way.

Cross posted from Harvard Business Review

It is often the case that small business owners are so focused on attracting new customers, that they forget about the customers that they already have. Neglected customers can easily jump ship to another brand.

Here are some tips for serving your loyal customers:

1. Offer trade-ins for a good cause. Have customers bring in goods in return for a discount and your company and they will be helping a good cause.

2. Loyalty cards. Rewarding people for being good customers is a great way to keep them coming back.

3. Keep in Touch. Making contact on their birthday, when their favourite products are in stock, etc is a great way to stay in touch with your customers. This can be done via an eNewsletter, sms, etc.

4. Follow up. It’s a great way to find out if your customers were unhappy with your service in anyway or if anything has gone wrong since the purchase/installation, etc.

5. Get their opinion. Conducting market research through surveys is an effective way to see how your company is viewed.

6. Engage with them online. Start a Facebook page or Twitter account and interact with your regular customers and fans.

7. Rewards for referrals. If a current customer recommends your business, reward them.

8. Target local companies. Offer discounts to local businesses and their employees.

9. Give products away. It’s great to receive something for free, give a gift to your customers every once in a while.

10. Be creative. All of these tips are great and work, but always try be creative and unique with your approach. You will stand out.

With my current mobile phone contract touching on its expiration date, I’ve started looking around for the next first-rate deal.

I walked into MTN after noticing all the hype about their new contract deals and I asked the salesperson one question, which was the brands key selling point in my opinion… she replied with the complete opposite to the correct answer.

The next sentence I heard was, “Welcome to Vodacom… How may I help you?”

#Solution: Know your products backwards, but not your answers…

It was a Saturday and the decision of the day was to go wine tasting in Stellenbosch – we jumped in a car and drove west. To our amazement, our friend Nikky dug up a dusty Stellenbosch wine route guide from the bottom of her seemingly bottomless Mary Poppins variety of a hand bag… we were set.

We nominated Dylan, as he is in advertising and assured us that marketers are not liars, to select from the wine guide, the best attempt at selling an experience – we found one, it sounded AMAZING, we drove on.
Upon arrival we were not let down by the books depiction and ventured into a picturesque estate.

It was when we sat down to eat lunch that the fun hit the fan.

With a hovering waiter who couldn’t resist from telling us that we needed to eat quickly, as he’d like to go home early, and on top of that we were told that we underpaid by a substantial amount (we were actually overcharged when they added an extra head by mistake). The food was not great.

After this we quickly forgot the great spontaneous day that got us there and left thinking that we had just been to a bad restaurant.

As a marketer they thrived, but as an experience they failed to live up to the expectations they fashioned.

It is very difficult to have a hand in ones staffs’ attitude towards customers, but it is extremely simple to make an effort as a manager/host to go the extra mile to make your customers feel special.

Dylan made a suggestion – our table was 10+ people generating over R1500 in revenue… a good idea would’ve have been to offer our table a complementary bottle of wine to try – costs the estate nothing… they make it, but this gesture would’ve saved the day when it came to customer service and measuring up to the promise that they created through their marketing.

Success is not in the marketing. It’s not in the customer service or from having beautiful location. It happens by combining everything to create an unforgettable experience and then some.