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7 Habits of Highly Successful Small Business Owners
Do you spend every waking minute in your business? Do you find it difficult to take time out for you? Are you constantly working in a mess?
Unfortunately there are far too many business owners working too long and too hard. They tend to be...
How To Handle Customer Billing Snafus
Q: I just discovered that for the past six months I have been billing a client half of what I should have been. Should I just include the total of the past due balance on his next bill or contact him first to let him know that it's coming? This...
What Are YOU Doing to Keep Your Customers?
Not too long ago I ran a survey on my site asking visitors what their main complaints were about shopping for or finding information online. An overwhelming number of people said: customer service. It appears that many online businesses are not...
What is an Investor Ready Business Plan
What is an Investor Ready Business Plan
A Business Plan, as all good entrepreneurs starting out in life should know is the foundation, or rather a springboard, towards the establishment and growth of a new business. A business plan is an...
Who Says the Customer is Always Right?
We all know the old adage, "The Customer is Always Right." If you are an online business owner or offline for that matter, you are on both sides of the subject almost everyday.
Before I started my online business, I was just on one side......
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Where have all the delighted customers gone?
WHERE ARE THE DELIGHTED CUSTOMERS?
QUESTION
If every company wants to delight its customers, then how come we don't spend most of our ‘customer days’ delighted?
THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES?
The so-called new economy and most new business have been built around a specific promise. This promise is that the 'customer is in charge’. The reality is that customer service has reached the pits. Call centres in the depths of the countryside leave us hanging on while we listen to more piped music.
As customers we feel betrayed. It seems remarkable that an entire business philosophy, a mantra chanted across the modern world is so obviously without substance. Many banks, universities, shops, restaurants, builders' merchants, and software companies patently fail to deliver. The customer is not king. The customer is left waiting to be heard (again!).
To reflect on what has happened, one of the promises of the new economy evangelists was that the customer would finally be in charge. We weren't supposed to need to call the customer care department because everything would be right first time!
The reality is somewhat different. How often does the call centre tell you 'We are experiencing higher than usual call volumes' or 'all our customer service
operatives are currently busy' or ‘you are in a queue’? This first statement is almost always followed by the second (incongruous) comment, 'We value you your call'.
Basically, the new economy was meant to make service better, quicker and more effective for customers. At the same time it was meant to make it easier and cheaper for the companies. So much for the theory.
Companies are starting to wake up to the fact that the customer is actually very angry with them. Customer service ratings are a nonsense - the average score is always 'above average'.
Most customers do not feel 'in charge'. So, see what happens if you do put them in charge…
About the author:
Robert Craven - author of business best-sellers ‘Kick-Start Your Business’ and ‘Customer Is King’ (foreword by Sir Richard Branson)... ‘one of the UK’s leading marketing specialists’... the ‘entrepreneurship guru’. He runs The Directors’ Centre (http://www.thedc.co.uk), helping growing businesses to grow.
Robert Craven
rc@thedc.co.uk
http://www.thedc.co.uk
http://www.kick-starters.com
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