Category: Run a Home Business

Do You Want To Start A Home Business In Your Community

November 14, 2017

Today we’re going to be talking about some of the things you have to think about when you’re before you start your business. And some of the actual research you have to do before you start your business. So first off we’ll be talking about starting a home business and picking a business. And today it’s all about offline. So we’re going to be talking about local business and working out if your home office and there are many ways you can do that.

There are some restrictions obviously to what you can do from your own home office. You can check with your local authority on what kind of businesses are allowed as a home business in your community. For example we don’t really have hairdressers. We don’t have car shops. We don’t have you know auto body shops. We don’t have various other ones basically things that make noise and smells because of course you have to think about your neighbors which we’ll talk about another time when it comes to offline.

But in terms of home businesses and what one you might be interested in, one of the recommendations I would say is that try to do something that you already know about and that’s something you’ve been working in. Whether it’s the food industry (that would be a concern in terms of doing it at home) or if you were to had an internship as a bookkeeper or you were working in marketing or your writing business and you were writing for business or you were an office administrator for business. These are skills that you could do from your home in terms of a local home business.

You just have to decide if there’s a market out there for you. So you have to decide how to figure out if there’s a local market for your business. So they see the first things that we would do, which we did a long time ago in the 1990s, was have a look and see who else was out there in the local community who was doing the same business.

I think there was only one Engineer near us at the time so we had not too much competition in our local area and then of course we had to look at the kind of work that’s out there for us in terms of being able to have a steady flow of business. So you want to research at what is selling in your community whether it’s a product or service.

How many people or how many businesses are out there?

For example, if there are five to 10 home cleaning businesses in your community and your community is only 5000 then you might want to consider a different business.

But one of the things I want you to think about if there are other businesses out there doing the same service then most likely there is a demand for that business especially if they are in the business for at least five years or more than they have enough clients to keep them busy. So you’ll probably find enough clients to keep you busy. And of course there’s always people moving into your community and it is always growing. Assuming your population will grow enough to support five or six of what you do as your product or service then you might want to consider putting some tentative idea out there that you’re in business. See if you get some interest in people wanting to know what your business is and whether or not they could use your business.

If you have no idea, my first recommendation would be to decide on a business.

Don’t forget that you pick the wrong business just pick something and then get an internship or part time job in that type of business to see what it’s like to see if there’s certain skills or knowledge that you don’t have for that you might need in order to do that same business. Then you’ll need some experience to learn about it and see how the business sells its products because that’s one of the important things to learn if you want to sell your products. So be in the market similar to your business product or service and then you have to allocate a few five to 10 hours on learning about your type of business part time outside your day job in order to get some of the skills you need to be in business.

We’ll talk about that on Thursday when we’re talking about running your own business and some of the skills that you need as an entrepreneur. Then once you have a primary a pretty solid understanding of what the business entails and what kind of requirements are needed. You can certainly have a tentative look at maybe starting selling a bit of what you’re doing part time.

Now I forgot to mention that there are a lot of good government Web sites which have information on starting your own business and how to do it and some other requirements that are required for by the government So go and just do a search for starting a home business and add your country and you’ll probably find a great many places on Google where you can learn more about what their requirements are for starting a business.

Say you’d like to start so what you need to do is to do research and maybe gain a bit of knowledge about your business that you want to be and is probably recommending that you already know something about the business that you want to go into and then make some kind of decision on what you think you could do day to day and be useful in your business.

For example I think I mentioned yesterday that I don’t think even though I have the skills to be a bookkeeper I would be happier as a bookkeeper. So I’m not going to have a bookkeeping business. Whereas I love being an artist and I’d love to have an artist business and that would keep me going day to day even though the sales might be less than in a bookkeeping business.

So it’s something for you to think about is are you willing to challenge yourself to do that you have the passion to do that you want to know the things that you need to know to do the business. Don’t go into something that people are just saying “go into it because it’ll make you rich.” It won’t make you rich because you don’t have the passion for it.

So we’re going to be talking about some of the practical ideas next time where you can do your research for offline and starting your local business. Obviously, anyone can go get their computer out and start an online business from their home office without really any requirements from the local authority.So we will talk about online research next week and it will be for offline and online.

So let’s hope the you got some information out of that and we’ll go out and research your local community and see what’s out there and whether they need another dog walking service or whether they need another cleaning service or whether they need another bookkeeper or another accountant or another.

You know there’s lots of business that you can do out of your home that are not required to go out and be in a rental office in your hometown. ‘

So go out and have a look and see if you have enough passion in order to do business.

Categories: Run a Home Business Tags: Tags: offline business, online business, run a home business

To Run a Home Business

October 26, 2017

This is Thursday so we’re going to be talking about running a business. Today is the first one so we’re going to be just talking briefly about some of the things that we’ll be talking about in terms of running your home business. I know that you may be just starting a home business but you may also be running a home business and later we will talk about growing your home business. I think I should talk to you about running your home business just so that you know in case you’re new at this, some of the challenges ,and of course, some of the pleasures of being able to run your home business.

So I’m Jane Gardner and as I mentioned before, we have a structural engineering firm that we have had for 20 years out of our home and our home office. We’ve earned a certain reputation and I would expect in our local community as an offline home business and ,to be honest, most people don’t know that we’re here in business because usually they only find us when they need us. But that’s what’s called “word of mouth”. So if you can develop word of mouth in your community about your home business then you don’t have to pay anything for advertising. We do have our ad obviously in the Yellow Pages. We keep that in there for those who are interested in just finding a local engineer. We do have a Web site and that now is being used more often by people to find us. We have a lot of local referrals from business people who do business with us before.

So I think we can say that in running a business, one of the most important things for you is your reputation and we will certainly be talking about that.

I usually do the organization and productivity for home business so I keep all the files and government taxes and keep the deadlines for our insurance and and all these other things so we’ll be talking about how to organize your home business so you don’t get overwhelmed by all that. All the paperwork and the work that you have to do that isn’t even part of your actual business but is actually something you need to do to run your home business. We’ll be talking about maybe some tips on organizing your business so that it’s much easier to do. Also that you will be able to be more productive so that you’re out there promoting or selling your home business or getting more clients instead of having to always be running around doing your bookkeeping or doing your filing etc.. So of course that means also we will be talking about outsourcing and hopefully at one point be able to afford to hire a few employees.

We’ll be talking about that and we’ll be talking about cash flow. Cash flow is one of the most important things in your business in terms of making your business successful and how you can try to keep the cash flow going. Even though you of course you’re having to do all these different things in your business like your filing, your organizing and you’re selling it and actually producing whatever it is you’re selling. We’ll also talk about some of the skills that you need as a solopreneur or maybe some of the mindset you might need to do every day in some of the meditation or the calming influences or the time you need for your health as well as some of the technical skills you’ll need in a home business. Unfortunately whether you like it or not as a solopreneur, you have to at least be aware of certain technology and certain skills so that you can be quicker and produce things much easier and not be stuck by either not knowing how to do something maybe on your Web site or at least having a web developer who is slow and slowing you down because they’re not getting something done for you. Well you should learn how to do it yourself. So there’s always I think we talked about a lot of that is being Jack Jill or jack of all trades.

We talked about that in our season one, we went over some of the skills you might need running your home business. We’ll be talking a lot about how to make your home business more productive, more organized, save you time and save you money so that you can go out there and sell more and not have to be working in your business. But in terms of actually producing whatever it is you’re selling in your business or just getting more clients whatever it is you have to be able to be organized enough to be getting that going and running your whole business in the most efficient way for you. With of course the Internet there’s lots of plenty of ways that you can save time and money. So I’ll be going over some of those and maybe some of the technology that might be worth you getting especially if it’s free in order to help you and your business.
So we will be talking about the nitty gritty and the down and dirty as we like to say on running your own business on Thursdays.

Hopefully you’ll find this very useful. Every week, I will try to make sure that I have at least three tips for you on that you can take away. Three questions for you to think about every week about how to organize your produce or make your business run more efficiently.
But for today I just wanted to mention that there’s a few things and we’ve talked about quite a few ways to make your business more efficient, run better and easier and save you time and money because saving you time will make it possible for you to go out there and either make more sales or maybe have more time for your family whichever is more important to you. =
So we’ll do that next week. We’ll start talking about some of the things that we can do to make you a jill or jack of all trades so that you aren’t always having to wait for others instead of you can take control of your own business.
. I just thought I’d introduce the ideas and go or some of the ideas that I’ve had and helped in my business as well.
[7:17.3]

Categories: Run a Home Business, Solopreneur Success Strategies podcast Tags: Tags: run a home business, solopreneur success strategies

Selling Sales You and Your Customer

October 25, 2017

Well today is Wednesday and it’s all going to be about selling sales and your customers.

Today, I wanted to start off by talking about how you don’t have to be salesy in order to sell as a human being.

You sell yourself all the time and you sell ideas that you have all the time.

When you were a baby, you would always try to persuade your mother or father that you wanted a certain food or that you would could see that either doing a tantrum or you would smile and be happy and you could make them understand that you wanted something. As you got older we were always putting our “best face forward” as they call it to people in your school. You wanted to have friends so you always either went with the crowd or you persuaded others you were someone to meet. You’re always persuading other people to do what you were interested in.
So, it comes to reason that “To Sell is Human.”

Of course, there’s a book called “To Sell is Human” by Daniel Pink that I’ll go into it further another time but I just want to say you don’t have to be intimidated by the idea of selling because you’re doing it every day;

you’re giving a first impression to someone new that you meet;
you’re showing people you’re interested in what they have to say or you’re ordering people around
always whatever you’re always selling and always having a certain face that you put forward to other people.

So, what we’re going to be talking about is first how we’re always selling anyway so it shouldn’t be foreign to you and to not be intimidated by the idea of selling but I’m going to be talking sort of backwards in terms of we’ll be talking about because we are talking about the customer first because really “it’s not what you’re selling as much as what your customers want.”

Of course, first you have to define who you think your customers are and what they want before you can approach them.
Give them a solution to what they want to buy and what their pain is or what they desire to have.
So we’re really actually not going to be talking about selling so much as trying to understand who your customer is and what they want what they want to experience with you and what they enjoy and all those kind of things. So, first of all, we’ll probably be talking about the actual process of selling itself and we will be talking about how you can give a good impression to others in terms of selling and how you can be more human in your selling and use your human skills as you are.
Now you don’t have to become that enthusiastic loud salesmen of the old days because with (of course) podcasting as we have now and being on video, you can still be human and connect with others and be engaged by these type of media.

So, in Season 1, I talked about first defining who your customer is and how you can do that as well as researching what they want and where they hang out so that you can find out where they hang out and connect with them there and obviously figuring out what they actually want rather than what you think they want and then selling them the solution to what they want.
Then after that develop the relationship such that you can also then give them what they need in terms of what they want as well.
So as long as you can learn how to define what they want and give them that solution then you will be able to sell very easily to them in terms of having a transaction of money for what the solution is that they want to have from you.
Of course, we’ll be talking about my business and with my husband as well as other businesses and how they work and how they sell and how they market and also offline as well as online. A lot of offline businesses can go online and become more internationally known so that’s awesome. We’ll be talking a lot about how to market yourself and probably growing your business because we’ll be talking more about the internet. But today I just wanted to mention to you that first.

It’s about your potential customers and do you know what they really want.
You don’t have to sell or be salesy.
You can just be human and use the way you are.

We’ll be talking about that further in a later episode. Use the way that your personality is and you can then match it or change it to match your customers personalities such that they feel that you’re an old friend and that it’s not a matter of selling.
It’s just a matter of being human to human and realizing that you have the solution to what they want.

So I know that sounds all very confusing but I certainly thought I would start out with an introduction to selling and then we’ll be going on to understanding that selling is not about you, it’s about your customers of course.
First you have to figure out who your customers are.
So we’ll see you next week and will be starting on finding out who your customer is and what do they want.
So ask your questions or ask yourself that question over the next week and maybe you’ll find out that the people that you thought were your customers aren’t actually and other people and others who actually want your solution that you hadn’t thought about selling to ..so see you next week. Subscribe on Itunes.
[7:12.2]

Categories: Run a Home Business, Solopreneur Success Strategies podcast Tags: Tags: customer, run a home business, sales, selling, solopreneur success strategies

Mindset of the Entrepreneur

October 23, 2017

Welcome. I’m Jane Gardner. And today on Mindset Monday, we’re going to talk about being an entrepreneur and what a mindset of an entrepreneur is and whether you are capable of being an entrepreneur due to your mindset. Over the next few weeks we’ll be talking about some of the ways you can be challenged as an entrepreneur in terms of your mindset and how you can conquer those challenges. You do not have to be born an entrepreneur and you can actually learn to be an entrepreneur. You can also train your mind to have the mindset of an entrepreneur.

Unlike what some people say that you have to come from an entrepreneurial family, over 50 percent of successful business owners come from the middle class and 35 percent were either poor or working class. So you don’t have to be a family member of an entrepreneur.

You can change your mind in order to be an entrepreneur. So don’t let that stop you. The idea that you don’t know what it is to be an entrepreneur should not stop you because we can talk about changing your mindset as we go along.

Ask yourself these questions because I believe that you shouldn’t quit your day job as I mentioned in order to be an entrepreneur that you should be at least thoughtful about your process etc.

So let’s ask these questions of yourself.

How many of you would you agree that.

“I don’t like to risk my money.” Not at all.

“I would never think of quitting my job and risking my life savings.

“I like the idea of being my own boss. I’m not sure I would be good at it.

“I’m willing to take responsibility for my actions but I still don’t want anyone to find out about my mistakes.

I sometimes have good ideas but often have no idea of what to do.

Well, if you agree with any of those statements you are a reluctant entrepreneur at heart.I invite you to join our ranks because you don’t have to be a risk taker in order to be an entrepreneur.

As I mentioned yesterday, one of the books I highly recommend is “The Reluctant Entrepreneur” by Michael Masterson and read through that and start learning how to train your brain to be the successful entrepreneur.

So for today I want you to think about who you think is a successful entrepreneur. Next time, we’ll be talking about some of the entrepreneurs you may not know of who have conquered their inability or their fears. Being an entrepreneur and becoming a successful entrepreneur is regardless of being a risk taker or trying something without even thinking beforehand because you or anyone else can be an entrepreneur. All you have to do is try to have a positive, committed attitude and have a natural love of a challenge and the ability to manage a lot of stress and work at a high level and the willingness to take responsibility.

These are some of the ideas of having the mindset of the entrepreneur and if you don’t have them now you can certainly learn how to train your brain in order to be challenged as an entrepreneur.

My husband and I have been entrepreneurs for 20 years we work on our own. Every day is a challenge and every day is a pleasure. Every day is a day where we don’t know what the next day will bring, what work will come but we accept that work will come and we continue on. We will also have a huge pile of work for the day and know that there’s a huge pile the next day and we have to get through it.

So , you have to have a few traits of the entrepreneur to succeed. In season one, I talked to you about some of the traits of an entrepreneur. I’ll go into more detail in the second season on what the traits of the entrepreneur is and some of the ways you yourself can learn some of these traits and train your brain to have the mindset of the entrepreneur.

So I hope you’ll come along with me on the challenge and the triumph of being an entrepreneur on Mindset Monday. We’ll see you next week.

Just have a think about “are you an entrepreneur now” or “do you want to be an entrepreneur in the future.

Do you want to take action and get control of your life or at least make some extra money too as a business person so that you can have a more successful life and that you can have the things that you want and you can help your family and you can help yourself and you can control your life. So we’ll see you next week. Subscribe to the podcast on Itunes.

Categories: Run a Home Business, Solopreneur Success Strategies podcast Tags: Tags: entrepreneur, grow a home business, mindset mindset monday, run a home business, solopreneur success strategies

Season 2 of Solopreneur Success Strategies is coming!

October 22, 2017

Season Two of Solopreneur Success Strategies is arrived over on iTunes or Soundcloud or iHeartRadio.

Jane Gardner will be talking about Home Business Startup.

We’re going to be talking about starting, running and growing your own home business whether online or offline. Monday is all about mindset, of course!

Tuesday is all about starting a home based business,

Wednesday is all about selling, sales and your customer.

Thursday is all about running a home business,

Friday will be all about growing your home business,

Saturday is all about putting systems in your business and

Sunday is all about strategy.

So you’ll be able to listen to this daily podcast to help you get in motion and implement ideas to start run and grow your own homebiz

Subscribe on Itunes

Categories: Run a Home Business, Solopreneur Success Strategies podcast Tags: Tags: run a home business, solopreneur success strategies

Babyboomers will rule the world!

September 20, 2017

Categories: Run a Home Business Tags: Tags: babyboomer, homebiz, run, run a home business

Good Customer Service could keep your Customers loving you!

April 15, 2017

In today’s world of smartphones and social media, companies have to be aware that good customer service is critical.

When United Airlines created a social media storm about removing a passenger this week–

A man was forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Louisville, Ky., on Sunday, after the flight was overbooked and the passenger refused to adhere to the airline’s decision to randomly remove four passengers. by United Airlines forcibly removes passenger from overbooked flight

United Airlines stock plunged during the week and it has lawsuits pending due to the incident.

Make me Feel Important

Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics said about customer service once, “Imagine that every customer is holding up a sign that says, Make me feel important.“ When you get that this is all a customer wants, you can create a customer friendly environment.

According to The US Department of Commerce, the main reason customers leave a business, after poor product quality, is due to poor customer service.

That says it all.

The truth is, every customer is always at risk of leaving you. It’s like a middle school romance. Any little thing can cause you to break up.

What are a few steps to stop your customer from leaving you?

Apologize
- Even if you don’t think it’s your company’s fault, it’s important to apologize to the client anyway. “I’m so sorry you feel this way,” is a good way to apologize without taking the blame. However, if it was truly your fault, own up to it and apologize profusely.

Empathize
- Put yourself in their shoes. Try stating, “I certainly understand; that would upset me too.” Then, move on toward getting answers that can help you solve the customer’s complaint to their satisfaction. You can empathize without being emotional. While it is personal to them, or they would not be irate, this is business and you should not take anything they say personally.

Listen
- Even if you’re reading a complaint rather than listening on the telephone, take special care to really hear what the customer is saying between the negative words. If you have to, cut and paste what they are saying in a separate document, add in appropriate spaces, take out curse words, and find out what is really the issue by eliminating the extraneous information. If you need to, escalate the issue and call the customer. Phones can be very humanizing.

Start Small
- Once you’ve determined the root problems, take small steps toward rectifying the problems one at a time. If you have to, ask the customer what you can do to make it better. If it’s possible to solve the problem in the manner the customer desires, do it. If not, offer to meet in the middle.

Draw the Line
- Know when to give up. Yes, there are times with some customers that it’s better to simply give up. If you’ve done all the things that you can above, and they’re still irate and have not calmed down, it’s time to consider letting the customer go. Not every customer is going to fit with your vision and that is okay. Calmly return their money, and send them on their way.

Providing Excellent Customer Service to Increase Sales by Jane Gardner on Scribd

Categories: Customer Service Tags: Tags: customer, customer engagement, customer service, make me important, united airlines

How the Emotions of the Customer can affect the relationship with your business

February 6, 2017

The old way at looking at the customer business relationship was that the customer made the decision on whether they bought your product or service based on cold hard facts, features and benefits.

The emotions of the customer are playing in as a greater factor in purchase decision making than previously thought.

Behavioral economics has shown that rational decision-making accounts for approximately one-third of people’s decisions and behavior. Feelings influence engagement and engagement boosts sales, as engaged customers buy 90% more frequently and spend 60% more per transaction. by Unlock the Key to Customer Engagement with Virtual Reality

As new technology and our use of the internet is making how we connect more intimate with a business (or more anonymous as “Fake News” and social media have no accountability for slander or negative reviews). A customer can instantly register a review on your business positive or negative depending on their experience in all of the social media platforms. They don’t have to pick up the phone to complain to an agent. A negative review can be spread 10x faster than a positive.

According to Jay Baer in Forbes article, a business should respond to any complaint on social media whether true or untrue.

As (Jay) Baer puts it, “A lack of response is a response. It’s a response that says, ‘We don’t care about you very much.’ from the Forbes article Top 3 tips for acing customer service in the age of social media.

So what is a business to do to create the engagement and emotional connection that the customer wants?

A few ways to engage and connect with your customer include:

1/ Connecting your business with an Influencer that your customer follows

An oldie but a goodie is that we, as customers, pay attention to the hero’s or heroines that we admire who tell us how wonderful is a new detergent soap or insurance company.

Today, we have new influencers we follow and some of them are celebrities but more often now, it can be influential people on social media that we follow and we pay attention to their recommendations. There are brands who pay celebrities to use and post an Instagram picture using the product now. There are brands who see the large engaged followers of a celebrity in the media and they offer a product line to them to create in that celebrity’s style.

The new pet lifestyle brand taps Ellen’s distinctive design sensibility and PetSmart’s pet know-how to create exciting new products for pet parents everywhere. by PetSmart Gets Big Customer Engagement Assist from Ellen DeGeneres

2/ Connect with their customers on social media

Public Domain from pixabay

All you have to do is have a look at the Instagram accounts for Levi’s, Mercedes Benz with 8.1 million followers or Levi’s with 9.1 million followers or Ben and Jerry’s (benandjerry’s) with 600,000 followers and you can see how simple photos can still be engaging for any business.

If you can humanize your brand and products, and provide something for your customers to identify with, you are likely to build loyal fans. by How Customer Engagement Can Benefit Your Business – Due

3/ Have great responsive customer service

Even a small business should have great customer service. A loyal customer will buy from you again and again if you provide a great experience. Just something as simple as support@yourwebsite.com can be an easy way for a customer to connect to you on a personal level. I have discussed great customer service over on my youtube channel Solopreneur Success Strategies channel at http://jgtips.com/youtube if you want to get a few ideas.

4/Keep up to date on the new technology coming for customer business relationship

For example, Virtual Reality technology is coming to the customer purchase experience according to this article (well worth looking at what is enterprise VR) as soon you’ll be able to view a product in a catalogue from all three sides, flip it over and measure it to see if it will fit etc. to answer all your questions on whether you need it. It is coming!

Enterprise VR empowers customers to interact with products and content in virtual reality and preview in 3D, touch, flip, and customize the products they are interested in. by Unlock the Key to Customer Engagement with Virtual Reality

As well, how a business will communicate with a customer may change as text messaging becomes more acceptable as communication link to get questions answered or specials broadcast for the business.

An eWeek study revealed that 52% of consumers would be likely to exchange text with a live customer service agent and that the same number would actually prefer it to their existing channel of communication. by Increase Customer Engagement by Delivering Text-Generation Customer Service

To keep up to date on trends follow The Business of At Home Business

Categories: Customer Engagement Tags: Tags: customer, customer engagement, customer service

Customer Service Trends Predictions

January 24, 2017

Gartner Research predicts that customers will handle 85% of their relationships with a company without ever interacting with another human by the year 2020 from 8 Mega Customer Service Trends for 2016

This year it will be more important than ever for your customer service teams to provide quality support. At the end of the day, it’s all about understanding the customer and predicting what they will want next from 8 Mega Customer Service Trends for 2016

As a result savvy retailers will be switching to mobile formats, with AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) tipped to be the system of choice for the future from Top eCommerce trends for customer experience – Fourth Source

In 2016 forward-thinking online retailers, particularly in the fashion space, will make more use of augmented reality to successfully redress the balance and eliminate the likelihood of missed sales and abandoned baskets from Top eCommerce trends for customer experience – Fourth Source

A big focus for Google and one which will become even more prevalent amongst retailers this year is to champion a personalised approach that takes an individual user view to secure not just repeat custom, but incresed purchase volumes. Maintaining relevance means having a broad awareness of past purchases and personal preferences to win the hearts, mind and wallets of shoppers from Top eCommerce trends for customer experience – Fourth Source

Categories: Customer Acquistion Tags: Tags: customer

Do you have a customer service plan in your business?

February 18, 2016

3d Group of customer service related words

When you started your business, did you have a plan for setting up customer service policies in your business plan? Is there customer service policies and trainings for when you hire and train new employees? Is customer service even in your mind when you are designing your business plan?

No!

Then you’d better start thinking about policies to create good customer service in your business because the customer experience is becoming crucial for a brick and mortar business and internet businesses.

According to Desk.com, 82% of people say they’ve stopped doing business with a company because of poor customer service. What’s worse is that 39% of those lost customers will avoid you for two years or more after that experience. As you can see, customer adoption and retention relies heavily on great customer service from Best practices for customer service training.

Just look at this article about Time Warner Cable and how their customer service rating has dropped critically for some simple customer service which they could easily improve.

Time Warner Cable had the lowest customer service rating of all cable companies in 2015, according to Consumer Reports, and lowest of all U.S. companies, according to another consumer agency from Calling all Time Warner customers to unite against its dreadful customer service

Word of mouth

What is the most effective and cheapest form of marketing for your business? Word of mouth by your customers can increase or quickly decrease the revenue for your company. People who have a bad experience will 10 times more other people about that bad experience than someone who has had a good experience.

In 2012, the President of The Cheesecake Factory shared that his company’s marketing expenses are less than 20% of the industry average due to great WOM (Word of Mouth) from How Customer Service Interactions Foster Word of Mouth

Customer Experience

Since the customer experience is the relationship between your company and your customer, you need to identify what kind of relationship this would be. Some things to ask yourself include:

The image you want to have in your customers’ minds.

The emotions you want interactions with your company to spark in customers.

The culture of your company that you want to convey to your customers.

Your company’s personality and how your customers see it.

Good customer service is ensuring that during every stage of this journey your client is taken care of, including, of course, providing an excellent product at the end of the journey from Make Your Clients Ambassadors For Your Business With Good Customer Service.

Now, with customers willing to sign up with their email, address and answer surveys or contests or be willing to give feedback on a company just for a company, there is plenty of statistics and data on the internet to learn about your customers. Google Search and Bing and Yahoo are providing search engines so they can collect information about what people want so they can sell ads etc.

According to Forbes

Software can track how you like to buy how long you stay on reviews, the amount of time you spend comparing other products and more. With this data, you can customize your customer’s buying experience. For example, if your customer loves reading reviews, the next time they come to your website, the reviews may be at the top from The Year Of The Customer: 16 Customer Service And Experience (CX) Trends For 2016

Customer Culture

Consumers may want to purchase a product, but they want to do it in an atmosphere, online or in-store, that makes them feel something positive from Why You Should Think Less About Sales and More About the Customer Experience.
Just look at Starbucks where the coffee is distinct and “hanging out” in Starbucks is an event. “Going for coffee” has become part of the North American culture in less than 20 years.

coffee Compare your business to Starbucks and ask yourself:

Is visiting your business an experience?

Is your website easy to navigate?

Is your website easy to find your contact information?

Do you have friendly, timely answers for anyone asking for help?

Is a plan for customer service in your business plan? No. Then come join us at the business of at home business newsletter to learn more about customer service!

Categories: Run a Home Business Tags: Tags: customer service, home business