customer experience

The Worst Things Don’t Happen At Sea, They Happen Online!

/ nancyrubin

Sailors are wrong about the ocean, particularly if you are thinking regarding commercial prospects. Most people think that the idea of the worst things occurring at sea comes from issues like drowning, or boats overturning. Actually, it’s a business warning. It means the worst things that can happen to your company occur on the waters. In the past, this may have been true. After all, one bad storm could have wiped the entire trading prospects of a company. These days that’s not true, and businesses will have more than a few eggs in a variety of different baskets. Businesses are diversified as much as possible to guarantee that one bad problem won’t kill the company.

As true as this is, if you look at the business market it becomes clear that the danger hasn’t disappeared, it’s shifted to a new location. These days, the dangerous waters are actually in the online realm. So, let’s look at some of the problems you can encounter with your business online as well as the best ways to handle them.

When SEO Attacks

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There are a few issues you need to be aware of with SEO for your company. First, there’s the Google penalties. These little nuisances are a lot scarier than they seem, particularly when you discover they have names like Penguin and Panda. The penalties can actually cause your search ranking to plummet through the floor, and this will negatively impact the profitability of your business because no one will be able to find your site.

This is why you need to be careful about the type of SEO tactics that you use. SEO can be tricky, and it’s worth making sure that you don’t oversimplify it to the point where you start using blackhat forms of the service. An example of that would be stuffing content with keywords. Content, on the other hand, is a key way that you can build SEO and increase the ranking of your site the right way.

To do this, you just need to make sure that you are adding content that is relevant, targeted and written or produced to a high-quality level. This can be difficult, and that’s why a number of business owners now use professional writers for articles, video and infographics.

The other issue with SEO is a negative SEO attack. Here, a business that is competing with yours will use SEO to target your company and make sure that negative content surrounding your business appears when customers search your brand. It’s dangerous, it’s damaging, and it’s one of the reasons why you should always keep a check on the buzz around your business online.

This is just a couple of the issues you need to be aware of when marketing your business online Both are easily avoidable so let’s look at a problem that isn’t.

Hacks And Breaks

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In the past, the biggest security threat yo your business would be someone smashing a window in your office or cracking the lock on the door of your building. Today, a hacker can break into your business and take sensitive data or valuable information with just a laptop. They don’t even have to visit your business address to do this. Now, what does this mean for your company with regards to security?

Well first of, you need to make sure that you do have the right insurance services such as risk management. It is crucial that you know how much risk there could be surrounding your business. This will determine the coverage your company needs as well as the price or premium that you will need to pay. Be aware that there are a lot of insurance plans that will not cover loss from a data hack. That’s why you’re going to have to be careful about the type of company coverage that you choose.

Aside from this, you should be explore a few of the security possibilities for your business online. Start off by looking into https. You will notice that this site does use https. What does that mean? Basically, the site is operating with an SSL, and this ensures that all the data transferred through the site is secure. It makes the site far more secure and is recommended for any site that transfers data such as passwords which these days is every single site and blog.

If you don’t want to make this change to protect your company or the interests of your customers, do it to protect your profits. Studies show that 83 percent of users will leave your site if it is labelled as insecure which it will be without an SSL.

Aside from this, you should be using the services of an IT support team. They will make sure that your business is constantly monitored and checked to see if there is an issue with a hack. If there is an issue they will correct it as quickly as possible and make sure that if customer data is lost then at least, you will be aware of it.

Damage To The Brand

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You should also be concerned about the possibility of damaging your business brand online. A variety of issues can damage your business brand online and the first problem to think about is poor customer reviews. Everything these days is susceptible to reviews and if you have a string of bad reviews, slowly but surely your customers will begin to disappear.

As well as customer reviews you need to consider business interactions. These days there is just no excuse for a business not communicating or failing to stay in contact with customers. Using social media, this should be easy, and if it’s taking up too much time, a social media manager can handle this for you, guaranteeing that customers feel connected. If your customers don’t feel like part of your business, they will pursue a relationship with another organization, perhaps one of your main competitors.

We hope you see now that the worst things that impact businesses occur online, not at sea.

 

 

 

So, You Want to Be Your Own Boss? Take These Steps to Succeed

/ nancyrubin

It’s 2018, and the climate is perfect for entrepreneurs of all sorts, hence the growing number of people who are starting their own businesses, and successfully so. From stay-at-home parents, students, digital wizards, all the way to fully-developed remote companies, there’s a whole range of profitable careers you can tap into directly from your sofa.

And what makes it even more appealing is the fact that nothing prevents you from growing your business globally. However, as dreamy and perfect as all of this sounds, there are several key steps you need to take in order to make your way through the crowd of home-grown businesses.

Do what you love

And what you are brilliant at, since being average in this day and age will not get you too far, especially if you have to cover your own business expenses for the time being. The same goes for a business started out of passion, but without a clear idea of whether or not your product or services are actually needed, so you need to consider if there is a gap in the market for what you are offering.

Spend some time (but not forever) thinking about and brainstorming on everything you could see yourself doing for hours on end, with enthusiasm and vigor, and assess whether or not you are actually good at it enough to make your business attractive and stand out in the market. Love is where it starts, but skill and need are also essential.

Create a business plan

Now that you have established your ideal profession and analyzed the market to learn that it’s actually needed, you need to put it all in perspective. A business plan should include every single branding, marketing, communication, production, advertising strategy for the next year (or more), along with measurable metrics, milestones to track your progress and alternative routes for added flexibility.

A detailed business plan still makes room for adjustments on the go, because you can never fully anticipate market fluctuations or prevent slumps in your marketing campaign performance. You need contingency plans that will help you run your business even when things are slow or you come across an unexpected obstacle.

License and registration, please

Of course, before you start working on developing your business for the customer, you need to cover the legal bases that will make your company a recognizable legal entity in your country (or the entire world). From obtaining a federal tax number, completing company registration forms for your business, getting the needed licenses and certifications, to deciding on bookkeeping systems, it can take some time to make your company come to life from a legal perspective.

It’s unwise to do both the legal and the creative aspect simultaneously, since you might find yourself overwhelmed with work, and the complexity of each task may vary from one profession to another. Getting to know your country’s laws and regulations is a must for a business that wants to have a long and prosperous life.

Learn about your target customers

Who is your product or service intended for? How do you envision your ideal customer? Where can you find them, where do they spend their time? What sort of communication channels do they prefer and what language can they relate to? What’s their average age, most common occupations and anything else that makes them who they are?

Understanding your future clients means that you have shifted your view from your product itself to the person for whom you are creating the brand. This information and analysis of it may lead to adapting your product or its presentation to make it more appealing, or completely rethinking your brand identity to have a better chance at establishing trust and offering value to your customers.

Keep learning

Even if you are starting your business with a decade of experience in the field, it’s crucial that you stay open-minded to new ideas, concepts and discoveries emerging every day. As you develop your company, you will need to keep up with the trends in your profession, so that you can stay in the forefront and offer more quality than your competitors.

Do your best to take online seminars, attend networking events, take up additional courses and education whenever possible. These added skills and certificates will only add more value to your brand and give you more skills with which you can keep your company strong.

Control your environment

A seemingly insignificant factor that has brought many a home business to its knees is the mere atmosphere of where you do your work. Just like you put so much time into defining your talents and your business, you should adapt your home to have a designated work area.

It doesn’t have to be an entire room, as long as you know how to steer clear of distractions such as your TV, private social media profiles and other irrelevant notifications. Create a work area that will inspire you to work, create and devote yourself to your work, and be mindful of the time you spend growing your business – although it may be a pivotal segment of your life, don’t let it consume all of your time. Make sure you stay healthy, lead a social life and expand your horizons, because you never know from where your next favorite project may come!

 

Guest Author is Alex Williams is a journalism graduate, and a rookie blogger trying to find my luck. Blogs are the perfect opportunity for presenting yourself to wider audience, getting the chance to showcase my expertise and receiving recognition. Alex is a regular contributor at Bizzmark Blog

 

 

3 Things You Never Want to Experience With Customer Relations

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Nightmares can affect us in many different ways. A recurring nightmare can constantly pester us and force us to wake up worried and in cold sweats, and they can also become psychologically damaging at times. Luckily, this is rare and most of us experience nightmares because we’re worried about something. Whether it’s a phobia of losing your business or being embarrassed during a public appearance, here are some of the customer relations nightmares that you never want your business to go through, and also how to avoid them.

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  1. Injuring a Member of the Public, a Client or a Customer

All hell will break loose if you injure someone in your line of work. When it’s someone in your own company, then it can usually be handled in a professional manner. This is because the employee doesn’t want to lose their job and the employer doesn’t want to create a public outcry or draw attention from the media.

Injuries can happen in a number of different ways, and there’s a huge difference between physical and psychological injuries. For example, specialised services like Elan Law bed bug lawyer may be required if you operate a service such as a hotel or fashion store. Bed bugs can easily transfer between people on their clothes, and it can create widespread panic. No one wants to be told that a customer found a bedbug in one of their packages you sent overseas, and it will create a storm of negative publicity.

In order to prevent situations like this, it’s important to learn everything about your business and plan for any possible failures because there’s no coming back from it. Make one mistake, and you’ll likely lose a huge chunk of your business, if not the entire company.

  1. Going Viral in All the Wrong Ways on the Internet

Going viral on the internet can happen in a number of different ways, but you’ll ideally want it to happen in a positive way. Going viral for negative reasons will get you out there but, contrary to popular belief, not all publicity is positive. The internet is a ruthless and cutthroat place, so if you want to stand out it has to be for all the good reasons and you may even need to learn about how internet culture works if you want to take advantage of going viral. The last thing you want is to have your name associated with an internet meme that mocks your company, because you will forever be branded as a joke business that can’t be taken seriously.

  1. Being Ridiculed by Another Company With No Comeback

And lastly, on the topic of internet culture, it’s important to understand that other companies will try and take advantage of internet trends to bring your business down. For instance, Wendy’s started a social media stir when its Twitter operator started ridiculing other companies and people on Twitter. The Tweets went viral and boosted business for Wendy’s. Although it sounds ludicrous that negative comments directed at paying customers helped to boost their business, it’s one of the quirks of the internet and you need to be ready to appeal to the general audience of social media if you want to remain successful. If you’re on the receiving end of this type of ridiculing, then you need to prepare a comeback or else you’ll be shunned by many young and impressionable consumers.

Improve Customer Satisfaction With Better Communication

/ nancyrubin

Every brand wants to make sure they are keeping their customers as happy as possible. Happy customers are more likely to purchase again in the future, and will spread good reviews to friends and family (which are very likely to turn into highly qualified leads). Better communication can go far in helping improve the relationship between a company and its target audience. Here are a few reasons you should be using SMS mass text messaging to connect with your audience.

Get Real Opinions

Mobile polls and surveys are a great way to get a few quick opinions from your customers. Simply ask your customers what they love or don’t love about your brand. The more you know, the better you can serve them in the future. People are far more likely to complete a short mobile survey than a paper form or click-through to an email survey. Keep in mind that multiple choice (over open-ended) questions are the most likely to get a response and rewards are likely to entice more of your customers to actually complete your survey.

Improve Your Speed

Establishing automatic texts can help you respond to the activity of your customers quickly. People do not want to wait on a brand to respond, but taking too long also runs the risk of losing that customer’s attention. A customer can get a speedy text response when asking a question or a notification when they sign up for a rewards program with your brand. By providing timely interactions, you will help keep your customers better informed and less hassled with the process.

Use Reminders

You want customers to stay on top of their purchases and they won’t want to forget either. SMS marketing can be incredibly helpful for keeping everyone on track and in-the-know. Use quick, scheduled reminders to help customers remember their payment dates. Collections can be one of the most stressful parts of a business, so use your text messages to keep your numbers in the black with on time payments. If you are working with smaller purchases then you can use your SMS alerts to help customers remember their carts and not let a potential purchase go abandoned.

Respect Their Time

Show your customers just how important they are by keeping your messages brief, to-the-point and as non-invasive as possible. Text messages are naturally short, so a text can be less time-consuming than an email. They are often faster and less invasive than a phone call (most of your customers will not be interested in talking to a person unless they are the ones calling you). Cold calling typically annoys people more than it actually sells.

Reduce Effort and Cost

All companies are looking to get the best return on their investment (ROI) and effort (ROE). Reduce the amount of money and time you are spending in your marketing by using mass text services. Text messages are effective, yet they are quicker to write (less content) and require no design. Text messages are not expensive and are likely to be read. The more you can reduce the effort and cost of connecting with your audience, the better you are able to personalize their experience. Plus, you can always pass your savings down to your customer with a lower price point or better rewards to increase satisfaction.

Texting will help you connect with your customer in a way that emails or mail won’t. The large majority of texts are opened, while many emails and mailers are ignored. So, use text messaging to ensure you aren’t fighting for the customer’s attention and you are keeping them in the loop.

For more information on how integrating an SMS software can improve customer satisfaction with better communication, click here!

Author Biography: Ken Rhie is the CEO of Trumpia, which earned a reputation as the most complete SMS solution including user-friendly user interface and API for mobile engagement, Smart Targeting, advanced automation, enterprise, and cross-channel features for both mass texting and landline texting use cases. Mr. Rhie holds an MBA degree from Harvard Business School. He has over 30 years of experience in the software, internet, and mobile communications industries.

Don’t Burn Your Business in Hot Water

/ nancyrubin

Being in hot water with the authorities can leave lasting burn marks on a business even when it manages to pull itself out of the pool. It can taint it in regards to the law, in regards to its customers and in regards to its brand. Because of this it is best to avoid being in hot water altogether. Below you can find a few ways how you, as a business owner, can keep your business out of hot water.

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First and foremost you should never make yourself an enemy — to anyone. You shouldn’t depict yourself as tough and mean person to do business with to your potential clients and customers. You shouldn’t paint yourself as horrible boss to our employees. In doing so you could very quickly find yourself in the midst of a lawsuit. If you are ever accused of misconduct in the workplace by an employee, for example, you are then in hot water. Even if you manage to come out of the embroilment without charge, being in the hot water in the first place is not going to do you any favours for your brand image. And misconduct is just one reason why an employee may take to suing you. Because of this you have to constantly be in control of your actions and should never let emotions drive you to make decisions or act in a certain way.

You also need to be in control of all the legal boundaries that are in place on you and your business. It is very important that you never overstep these boundaries and that you work towards remaining in them at all times. One such legal boundary that can sometimes be passed by without knowing is the Know Your Customer (KYC) requirement. This is a regulation put in place by the authorities to prevent identity theft and other fraudulent activities. As a business owner you simply must comply to it. If you don’t know where to start in doing so, however, then rest assured that there is assistance out there. Identify verification solution for businesses is on offer for you to implement in yours so you can always be sure exactly who it is that you’re doing business with. Knowing who it is on the other end of a transaction is hugely important. If a customer of yours has their identity stolen on your watch you are never going to come out of the situation smelling of roses, regardless of if you were legally punished for it or not.

And you can also find yourself in hot water online if you aren’t careful. When using SEO to grow your business it is possible for you to end up in hot water with Google, and other search engines, if you start ‘keyword stuffing’. By this it is meant that you stuff in too many keywords in the hope of getting higher in the search engine’s rankings. However, by doing so you will just find yourself being pushed to the back of the queue by the search engine.

So, if you don’t want your business to be burned by hot water then don’t get it in hot water in the first place.

 

 

The Patients First Approach To Making Your Practice Excel

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Even in industries as essential to our civilization as health care is, you can never neglect the image of the business. Private practices have their competitors, which means they have as much need to assure that not only are their services on point but that their patients are happy. Yet in the straight-laced world of medicine, too many people forget that.

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RiverEdge Dental

Best face forward

One of the most obvious ways that a lot of practices fail is one of the very first ways that many patients will form an opinion of them. People expect that your premises themselves are going to have a certain standard to them. Besides crafting the kind of curb appeal that stands out from the stress, you need to make sure that your lobby and reception area are both professional and welcoming. Make sure that you have a pristine standard of cleanliness and organization, as well as some investment in the right furniture and décor to make it as pleasant a place to wait as possible.

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Vlastimil

Where have all the bedside manners gone?

The ornery receptionist and careless nurse might be something of a stereotype, but there’s no doubt that the human interaction in a practice is essential to crafting the patient experience. So, if you’re seeing a lack of healthy, happy interaction, how do the fix it? The answer might not be in the employees, but in the morale the workplace creates. Make sure that you’re working to keep people engaged and motivated. This means being open to criticism and changing employment policies.

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Intel Free Press

Get more convenient

Businesses rarely inhabit solely a physical space in the modern world. Nowadays, they cross dimensions into the internet. If people aren’t able to find details about your business on the internet, expect that they’re going to come to some bad impressions about your professionalism and prestige. But you want more than a website and social media presence to build the brand. You can even use it to pair patient marketing and telemedicine together, making it easier to see patients from afar, offering them a level of convenience and accessibility they might not be able to get from other practices.

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Ilmicrofono Oggiono

Extending a helpful hand

It’s not all about how patients find and form impressions of the practice, either. You should also think about how you reach out to them to continuously retain that relationship. The personal touch helps forge a lasting trust that professional treatment initiates. Consider using email to keep patients informed of checkups, new services, or simply to thank them for their visit. Just make sure that you’re aware of maintaining patient confidentiality when emailing. Including too many details could put the practice in a bit of legal trouble.

Putting your patients first is going to make it a lot easier not only to attract more customers but to retain those existing customers for even longer. Start forgetting that your patients have needs to have their time and feelings treated as important and you’ll have a hard time keeping hold of them.

 

Customer Experience: Go Above and Beyond

/ nancyrubin

Going above and beyond for your customers should always be a main staple of your business.

For some business owners, they do in fact go out of their way to meet their customers’ needs. Others, however, do not make that extra effort, sometimes ultimately losing those customers in the process.

While there are myriad of ways you can make customers feel especially wanted, you have to do it without the suggestion of you simply wanting a sale and their money when all is said and done.

Being kind to customers, helping them when they least expect it, and doing all you can to make their experience with you one of their best, those are things you simply need to do.

So, how do you go above and beyond for customers?

Making the Extra Efforts Oftentimes Leads to Rewards

So that you can do everything possible for your customers, here are a few tips to help you along the way:

  1. Customer service – Above all else, be sure that your customer service initiatives are second to none. As an example, a customer contacts your office after having trouble making an online purchase through your eCommerce store. Instead of leaving them on hold for many minutes, giving them the run-around, or not responding to their initial request for help at all, make sure you address the matter immediately. If a customer goes to make a purchase with you, be it in-person or via your online store, he or she wants a simple credit card processing What customers do not want is feeling like you’re putting them on the backburner, doing things in the meantime that seem more important to you. Remember, customers should always be the top priority when running a business;
  2. Rewards for the best customers – Many companies have come up with rewards programs for some of their top customers. Whether this means discounts on certain products or services, perhaps a pre-sale to these individuals before items go on sale to the general public, or rewards for those customers who end up renewing with you for another year of service etc. make those who invest rather regularly in your business feel special. If customers feel like they are truly being taken care of, they are more apt to let their family and friends know about it, thereby leading to you possibly picking up some new business along the way;
  3. Reviewing your website regularly – Yes, you’re a busy individual running a business, but you can’t use that as an excuse to have a limp website. Always keep in mind that your website is essentially your online business card to the world. As a result of this, it needs to be functioning properly on a regular basis. Pages that take forever to upload, broken links, making it difficult to find contact information on your site, these are all glitches that can ultimately lead customers elsewhere. Be sure to regularly review your website, looking to see if there are any notable hiccups on there. Put yourself in the customer’s seat for a moment. If you go on a site prepared to make a purchase, isn’t it frustrating to get all the way to the checkout stage, only to have it not work? Make sure your site is not the one that has this scenario occurring on a regular basis. Also check your site to make sure it is providing worthwhile information to your customers, including blog articles. Your articles should focus specifically on your industry, along with how you are making things better for customers and improving their buying experiences.

If your business has been lagging a bit in going out of the way for customers, you still have time to change that.

From making their credit card purchases with you fast and secure to rewarding them for being devoted customers, there is so much you can do on a daily basis to treat your customers the right way.

In turn, many of them will continue doing business with you moving forward.

If that sounds like a prescription for success, it surely is. 

About the Author: Dave Thomas covers business topics on the web.