Archive for July, 2009
Quite a few organizations hire employees in internal positions such as human resources, marketing, sales, facilities, cafeteria, accounting or security without adequate training in customer service skills. Generally, unless a customer complains or compliments an employee their supervisor typically assumes that everything is being done well and provides positive feedback on their performance review.
Customer Services includes small and large details such as understanding the needs and purchasing habits of the customers, responding to all e-mail and phone inquiries, human contact and conversation, taking responsibility, to celebrate little triumphs with them, commiserate in their complaints and even get to know them. These customers once made will remain loyal customers forever.
By itself customer service is too vast to handle unless you are a large business with well defined sections in your office. Outsourcing customer service can allow a small or medium business to take care of its core competencies, while the customers are professionally and satisfactorily dealt with.
Online customer service is handled by quite a lot of call centers. The need for such service arises on two accounts.
First an online business is a 24*7 business. Your customers belong to the world and there are several time zones out there! Their hours and holidays are different from yours. Remember you lose a customer to your competitor if you do not respond to their calls.
Secondly, call response needs training and expertise handling. You cannot personally attend each call. So you need to hire employees. Each employee will need to be trained in your products, their handling and customer responses. So you will need to setup an entire process. The entire procedure is very time centric. If time is at premium (as it is for most of us) outsource it to the experts. Call center employees are trained in such procedures, responses come easier to them and they are trained to present a human face to the prospect.
Outsourcing customer service may have its pitfalls if the call center and business do not work closely in tandem with each other. The outsourcing company should work with the call center hand in hand to get customer feedback. The script flow must be based on previous experience of the company. The concept of personal attention to the customer is very important for closing a call. There some guidelines to be followed for ideal customer service assistance. Some of them are discussed here.
The customer must be put first as a person. The customer should be helped to make a decision and not pushed to buy. Respect him and he will respect you in turn and come back to you.
Listen to what the customer has to say. Clarify their doubts and answer the questions. The customer service employee should always have in-depth knowledge about the product or services. If unable to respond to a query immediately take the customers contact id and respond soon. Customers always have a tendency to look for a problem solver rather than an order taker
Learn about the customer in a casual way not as a marketing survey sort of thing. The easiest way to do this is to ask for them for feedback about their experience with the company or organization.
Respect the customers time. If a customer is in hurry be fast and friendly whatever the medium. In companies where the customer profile has senior citizens may want to talk a while. Give into them. They’ll come back to you for sure. It is also important to be fast and friendly.
If promises are made, should always be kept with the customers. If not, they should be compensated.
Lastly, review and feedback go a way in improving customer service. The staff can be asked about unusual requests or difficult situations. Reviews teach many important lessons.
In addition to the above points some do nots have to be kept in mind. Pitfalls such as incompetence, disorganization, unprofessional manners, lack of standard policy, delays and unreliability lose customers. It’s said that happy customers are the best and most effective way to find new customers. Let your prospects and leads rave about your customer services.
Historically, customer service was delivered over the phone or in person. Customers didn’t have many choices, and switching to competitors was cumbersome. Today, these methods are but two of the many possible touch points of entry for any given interaction. With all the options the Internet brings, competition is literally a click away. If, as has been reported, 65% of your business comes from current customers, then in order to stay in business, you best focus on winning the satisfaction and loyalty of those customers.
With continued attention on customer service, customer retention, and lifetime value of the customer, it is no surprise that contact center operations continue to increase in importance as the primary hub of a customer’s experience. The contact center is still the most common way that customers get in touch with businesses. In fact, Gartner reports 92% of all contact is through the center.
While much attention has been focused on the technology and benefits of providing multiple channels for customer contact, little consideration has been directed to handling the human part of the equation—training Customer and Technical Service Representatives to field more than just telephone communications. With the explosion of e-commerce, the need to reinforce keeping the human element in the equation is paramount. Certainly now more than ever before in history, customer-centric service is a necessity.
Twenty five years from now customers will still be human beings, still be driven by desires and needs. Virtual environments do not create virtual customers. Except for the simplest transactions, some customers still need to be connected with and nurtured by a live person. Amazon.com has learned this. They employ hundreds of traditional customer service representatives using phone lines to help customers with questions that cannot be dealt with online.
With the ability to handle simple transactions available by using sophisticated, self-service technology, customer calls, faxes, and/or e-mails are more complex, more complicated, sometime even escalated, heightening stress levels.
At the same time, research has identified the Customer Service and Technical Representative as one of the ten most stressful jobs in America today, with job stress costing employers an estimated $300+ billion yearly in absenteeism, lowered productivity, rising health insurance costs and other medical expenses (up from $200 + billion just ten years ago.) A recent NIOSH study reported that 50% of employees view job stress as a major problem in their lives–double from a decade ago.
Lines of demarcation have blurred and change is rampant in today’s center. Why? Because of our cell phones, voice mail, faxback, PDA’s, and e-mail. We are now more available and accessible than ever before. The lines are no longer clear as to where our jobs or projects begin and end—they can follow us home again and again.
In today’s competitive marketplace there is little difference between products and services. What makes the difference–what distinguishes one company from another–is its relationship with the customer. Who has the awesome responsibility for representing themselves, their companies, perhaps their industry in general? Front line representatives.
The ability of a company to provide human-to-human connections–back and forth live communication–continues to be critically important. The fact is voice is the most natural and powerful human interface, real time or otherwise. That isn’t going to change any time soon. To the customer, people are inseparable from the services they provide. Actually, the person on the other end of the phone is the company. It is no wonder, then, that companies with superior people management, invest heavily in training and retraining, reinforcing the human element.
Yet customers still leave. The latest statistics on why are:
45% because of poor service
20% because of lack of attention.
This means that 65% of your customers leave because of something your front line is, or is not, doing.
15% for a better product
15% for a cheaper product and
5% other
This is the good and the bad news. It’s bad news because that’s a high percentage. On the other hand, it’s good news because there is something you can do about it—it resides on the human side.
It is agreed that people, process, and ‘state of the art’ technology are what make companies work. For me, the people process is most important. After all, it’s the people who truly make the difference.
Never lose sight of the fact that we are human beings, not merely ‘human doings.’ The fact is 70% to 90% of what happens with customers is driven by human nature, having nothing to do with technology. Technology is meant to enable human endeavors, not to disable them.
Extraordinary service or lack thereof, separates the good from the great companies. As more and more organizations are turning to the contact center as a strategic player in the competitive landscape, it is in the throes of re-inventing itself to step up to the plate and become the heart of a company’s customer facing operations.
Empathetic Responsiveness
The ability to put yourself in another person’s shoes and see their point of view—not agree with them, not make them right and your company wrong—but hear what they are saying. After all, basic needs of all of us are to be heard and treated with dignity and respect.
I think of a call as an ABC process. ‘A’ represents the customer presenting their question, request, complaint or problem. ‘C’ is the ultimate resolution. Most times ‘B’ is either skipped or left out—because of metrics, calls in queue, or simply because you know the answer before the customer is even finished speaking. ‘B’ is where the agent acknowledges what they hear—be it upset, anger, frustration, or fear. Or, a simple ‘thank you for taking the time to call and bring this to our attention.’ After all, if a customer calls in to complain, you have the opportunity/challenge to turn them around. If they don’t call, and only complain to other people, you have no opportunity. Does going through ‘B’ take longer? Not at all. It allows you to move the customer to a more productive interaction and close the call. I’ve heard many customers repeat their opening paragraph (A) over and over, while at the same time the agent is trying to get them to resolution (C). Red alert! Red alert! Acknowledge what is behind the words and you will move them quickly to ‘C.’ I believe you can’t go from A to C without going through B.
If all customers wanted just the facts (and some do), they could ascertain the information online. Most customers (people) want the human interaction, someone to hear them, someone to care. A simple, “I’m so sorry that was your experience. My name is Rosanne and I’m going to do my best to help you right here and now.”
Self Service
When asked the question in a recent study, “What is the biggest barrier your company encounters to self-service effectiveness?” only 14% of the customers replied they don’t know about it.’ This means that the 86% who do know about it and attempt to use it (1) find it too hard to navigate, (2) can’t find the answers, and/or (3) don’t trust the system or the answers they do find.
Research shows that customers prefer to deal with companies who are the most consistently accessible. When customers experience a level of service from email and chat support, for instance, that equals or exceeds voice support, then and only then will they gladly migrate to those channels to resolve their problems and inquiries.
To increase customers’ satisfaction, be sure to:
1) Phone: Have a ‘zero out’ option on your system
2) Website: Have your phone number or a button to speak with a human
3) E-mail: Rephrase the issue in the opening paragraph.
Purchasing Process
In an interview with Delia Passi Smalter, the former publisher of Working Woman and Working Mother magazines, we found very interesting statistics regarding female demographics (Incentive Magazine, 2003). It seems that women are making over 85% of consumer purchases and influencing more than 95% of total goods and services. Smalter distinguishes the purchasing process women and men go through. The biggest one, she says, is that women need to feel more of a connection to the TSR; they need to trust the corporation and the brand. Price becomes secondary. Women take in a lot of information, including recommendations from friends and family, company and brand reputation, feelings about her contact person, and how the brand will impact her life. Not so for men. Men take a systematic approach, allowing outside influence to some degree, but mostly they are focused on price.
One of the most influential documents in the world, the U.S. Constitution, begins with “We, the people…” Yes, ‘we the people’ are what makes the difference.
What you have to remember when starting up your Ebay business is that it is no different from any other business venture. The business world is all about buying and selling and so is your Ebay project. Conduct all your business transactions in a professional manner then you your product or service will be taken seriously.
Running a business is not as big a mission that people make it out to be. However it can prove to be stressful at times – but you can change that by having an organised system. Organization should be one of the main priorities right from the start. Keeping on top is important – keep data up to date and file all files this will help your Ebay business to run smooth thus saving you time.
Most Ebay business`s are run from home so choose a room in the house that you can create as an office area to do business. An office type surrounding will encourage you more in your Ebay business. Everyone has a business plan structured up so why not you – remember you are in business for yourself now.
Write your Ebay plan accordingly to comply with Ebay`s rules and regulations. Jot down your goals you expect to achieve – profits from sales or whatever comes to mind to claim success. Go research on how other Ebay sellers are successful in their business.
Another vital addition is to have an Ebay business checklist drawn up and easily at hand – list all that you would need to start up – like organizing your products for auction, this will include itemized tasks like the photo shoot, writing out a description for the sale item and remember to answer all emails – we are looking to run this Ebay business professionally and prompt replies to questions or queries is where you will gain respect from your customers. Respect can bring repeat orders.
The product or service you choose to sell in your Ebay business is entirely up to you but please do a little research on this matter – the reason being is the greater the need for a certain item then the more chance you have of a guaranteed sale. Expenditure and costs should be limited at least till you have learnt a few tricks of the trade. Buying up front in large quantities is not a good idea – you maybe left with unwanted stock if the product you have chosen to sell for your Ebay business has a sell by date.
There should be no reason why your Ebay business can not be as successful just like the thousands of others who are making their fortune selling their wares.
In an Ebay business what are the tricks of the trade – how can you find out about the tricks of the trade – well let me tell you about a little trick picked up on the way and that is to learn from others. By doing this you can prevent yourself becoming involved in any tricky situations.
If you’ve found your way here to this article, chances are you’ve either got some money socked away or you’re planning to do so.
But first things first. Why is investing a smart idea?
Simply put, you want to invest in order to create wealth. It’s relatively painless, and the rewards are plentiful. By investing in the stock market, you’ll have a lot more money for things like retirement, education, recreation — or you could pass on your riches to the next generation so that you become your family’s Most Cherished Ancestor. Whether you’re starting from scratch or have a few thousand dollars saved, Investing Basics will help get you going on the road to financial (and Foolish!) well-being.
Know your goals
What are you saving for? Retirement? College for the kids? A new speaker system complete with woofers and tweeters? An exotic animal menagerie complete with Chihuahuas (woofers) and canaries (tweeters)? A retirement villa in the sun-baked hills of Tuscany?
Say you take $2,000 of your savings and put it into the stock market. If your money returned 10% a year (the S&P 500’s historical average), two grand would be worth $34,898.80 after 30 years. That might not get you the perfect retirement home, but it’ll at least give you a down payment.
Maybe you don’t have $2,000 burning a hole in your bank account, but perhaps you can afford to invest your lunch money. Brown-bag your lunch and sock away just $4 a day, 250 days a year. It’s not a lot, but if you’re in your early 20s, you’ve got the investor’s best ally on your side — time. If you invest $1,000 once a year in an investment that averages a 10% annual return — the average annual stock market return since 1926 — it’ll grow to more than $1 million after 46 years, which is right around the time you’ll be ready to retire.
Of course, as you get older and more financially stable, you should be able to put away more to invest. Upping the ante to just $166 a month — which is probably less than lunch money plus what you pay for cable TV — would put you at the million-dollar mark in just 39 years.
The power of compounding
The table below shows you how a single investment of $100 will grow at various rates of return. Five percent is about what you might get from a certificate of deposit (CD) or with a government bond over time, 10% is about the historical average stock market return, and 15% is what you might get if you decide to learn how to pick your own stocks and take advantage of some of our lessons in advanced investing techniques.
Growing At
Year 5% 10% 15% 20%
1 $100 $100 $100 $100
5 $128 $161 $201 $249
10 $163 $259 $405 $619
15 $208 $418 $814 $1,541
25 $339 $1,083 $3,292 $9,540
Why is the difference between a few percentage points of return so massive after long periods of time? You are witnessing the miracle of compounding. When your investment gains (returns) begin to earn money, and then those returns start to earn money, your investment can mushroom very quickly. Extend the time period or raise the rate of return, and your results increase exponentially. For instance, if you start young, say at 15 years of age, note how quickly a single $100 investment grows, especially in the later years.
Growing At
Age 5% 10% 15% 20%
15 $100 $100 $100 $100
20 $128 $161 $201 $249
25 $163 $259 $405 $619
30 $208 $418 $814 $1,541
40 $339 $1,083 $3,292 $9,540
50 $552 $2,810 $13,318 $59,067
60 $899 $7,298 $53,877 $365,726
65 $1,147 $11,739 $108,366 $910,044
Looking at it another way, let’s compare two teenagers and their lifetime savings habits. Bianca baby-sits a lot and spends most of her spare time reading. She saves $1,000 a year starting when she’s 15 and invests it in the stock market for 10 years earning 12% per year on average. After 10 years, she comes out of her shell, stops adding money to her nest egg, and spends every penny she earns club hopping and on trips to Cancun. But she keeps her nest egg in the market.
Compare her account to that of her friend Patrice, who squandered her early paychecks on youthful indiscretions. At age 40 Patrice gets a wake-up call when her parents retire on nothing but Social Security. She starts vigorously socking away $10,000 every year for the next 25 years. Guess who has more at age 65? That’s right, Bianca. (You figured it was a setup, didn’t you?) Her 10 years of saving $1,000 per year (just $10,000 total — the same amount Patrice put away in just one year) netted her $1.8 million by age 65. Patrice, on the other hand, scrimped for 25 years to invest a quarter million dollars out of her own pocket and ended up with just under $1.5 million. Neither will be going to the poorhouse, but you see our point: Bianca’s baby-sitting money grew for 50 years, twice as long as Patrice’s, and Bianca barely missed it.
(It’s almost not fair to mention this, but if Bianca put her money in a Roth IRA, that whole $1.8 million would be tax-free. On the other hand, Patrice couldn’t put her full $10,000 in a Roth, so Patrice will pay capital gains tax on a good deal of her gains.)
The power of compounding is the single most important reason for you to start investing right now. Every day you are invested is a day that your money is working for you, helping to ensure a financially secure and stable future.
Common pitfalls to avoid
Before you race off through the rest of Investing Basics, there are some cautionary points to consider before you proceed. These are common mistakes many people make when considering what to do about investing.
1. Doing nothing. There is no guarantee that the market will go up the first day, month, or even year that you invest in it. But there is one guarantee: Doing nothing at all will not provide for a comfortable retirement.
2. Starting late. Postponing your investing career is second only to not investing at all on the list of investment sins. You already know that the earlier you start the better off you are. (Take another look at the compound return example we gave above.) If you’re already past those formative twenties (you don’t look a day over 32 to us), we’ll reword this first pitfall to read: “Not starting now.”
3. Investing before paying down credit card debt. If you have money in your savings account and you have revolving debt on your credit card, pay it off. Many credit cards have an annual interest rate of 15% or more. Let’s say you have $5,000 to invest, but you also have $5,000 debt on your credit cards with an average annual interest rate of 18%. It doesn’t take an astrophysicist to figure out that you’re going to have to get an 18% return after you pay taxes just to break even on that $5,000. Pay the debt off first, then think about investing.
4. Investing for the short term. Only invest money for the short term that you’re actually going to need in the short term. Invest money in the stock market that you won’t need for at least three years, and preferably five years or longer. If you’ll need your cash next year for a down payment on a house or for the family Caribbean cruise, use one of the shorter term and safer havens for your cash, such as money market funds or CDs.
5. Turning down free money. You’d never turn down a dollar if it was offered with no strings attached. That’s what you’re doing if your company offers a 401(k) or similar retirement savings plan with an employer match and you’re not participating. Take advantage of all tax-advantaged, employer-matched savings programs.
6. Playing it safe. If you’re young, most of your investing dollars should be in the stock market. You have enough time to weather any dips in the market and to reap the rewards of long-term gains. Although you may want to transition into bonds later in life as you depend on your investments for income, stocks should make up a large portion of the portfolio of every investor.
7. Playing it scary. Not every investment is for everyone. Even if you’re a daredevil, you shouldn’t pour all of your money into something that could end up going down the drain.
8. Viewing collectibles or lottery tickets as investments. If old comic books, Barbie dolls, and abandoned exercise equipment could be used to fund retirements, do you think the stock market would exist? Probably not. Don’t make the mistake of thinking your jewelry, those Beanie Babies, or the lottery will provide for you in your latter years.
9. Trading in and out of the market. We believe the best approach to investing is the long-term one. Pick your investments well and you’ll reap greater rewards over the long term than you had ever dreamed possible. Trade in and out of the market and you’ll be saddled with fees that chip away at your returns, and you’ll potentially miss out on gains that long-term investors enjoy with much less effort.
Congratulations mate! You’ve made it through the first part of Investing Basics. (Bet you didn’t even break a sweat.) You’ve witnessed the power of compounding and you understand how some common pitfalls can ruin even the healthiest investing plan.
______________________________
Publish your articles at – iTechno Article Directory
Currently in your local bookstore are a number of newly released books that can provide rich insight and glorious financial understanding of a variety of hot business topics. From the stock market to the supermarket, these books have hit a vein in the American public by enlightening them to subjects that heretofore seemed elusive and confounding. Here are a few of these successful books, and a little bit about why you might want to pick them up when you have a little extra money.
Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets by William Bonner is a look at societal groupthink and why it’s so important to forge your own path when it comes to investing in the stock market. Taking a rather bold and unusual stance against such “safe” investments as mutual funds, Bonner and his coauthor take a look at mass thinking and why it so seldom resembles sound investment strategy.
Results That Last: Hardwiring Behaviors That Will Take Your Company to the Top by Quint Studer will be released sometime in October and promises an interesting look at what makes a business successful in the long run. Studer argues that a businesses success has little to do with products or service and everything to do with positive and exciting leadership. While a good product or innovative service may be the ticket to the top for a short while, it is Studer’s intention to demonstrate that the companies that last the longest and stay at the top do so through strong management and his book provides proven leadership strategies.
Your Portable Empire: How to Make Money Anywhere While Doing What You Love by Pat O’Bryan is a tome dedicated to showing the average everyman how to create an online business that requires little day to day work to produce a flow of passive income. Without reading the book, it seems to be mostly geared toward the production of a website and the sales of informational e-books, and the salesmanship and strategies toward making these e-book websites a success.
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss is a fascinating book by a Princeton lecturer who has found and put to use a number of secrets for living in the now, and not waiting for retirement to enjoy relaxation. Its strategies include how to retrain your supervisors into putting a higher value on results and production than actual presence, and how to trade a fulltime career for several short “work bursts” sprinkled with mini-retirements. A must have for those tired of living for the clock.
These are just a handful of the interesting books at the top of the bestseller’s lists. There are many more for those patient enough to peruse the stacks, read the reviews, and avoid judging a book by its cover. Read, and be filled up with knowledge.