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Living on Australia’s Gold Coast the newspapers have been full of articles about poorly perceived customer service in restaurants. And unsurprisingly clients have also been talking about how to improve their customer service.

This article by Susan Oakes  (M4B Marketing) deals with the topic really well hence I have taken the liberty of posting it in full below:

We know customer service is important in marketing your small business. It is one of the key elements that can help you compete successfully against many larger businesses.

However, in certain circumstances it can be a big waste of your time and money.

Here is a story that shows how great customer service by itself can count for nothing in the end.

Within a few weeks of starting my business my computer decided to play up and I needed someone to fix it. I looked in the local paper and found a person who would come to your place of work. “John” turned up on time and fixed the problem quickly.

All in all I was very happy with the service, he appeared to know what he was doing and the customer service was very good.

Later more service was needed including transferring files etc to a new computer. Again the customer service was very good, however each service call took longer, the quality of the work was not always good and once he had to come back three times to sort out a simple problem.

He didn’t charge for all his time which was not good for his business and eventually shut his business down. Apparently others were experiencing the same service quality problems, which meant that he was not keeping his customers or gaining any referrals.

The point of this story is that we can sometimes neglect the very thing we are selling. It can be very tempting especially these days to overpromise on what we can really deliver to our customers to gain business.

To overcome this for products you could:

    * Actually “pull it apart” and see where you can improve the quality
    * See what the product is lacking versus competitors
    * Seek feedback and input from customers

This can be done gradually keeping in mind the costs that may be associated with any improvements.

To overcome this for services you could:

    * Drop those services that you are not great at and just specialise in the ones you doing extremely well
    * Update your skills as there are many courses available
    * Partner with another business to outsource those services where you skills and experience may be lacking

Again, don’t forget to check with your customers as they will provide feedback on what services are the most important.

Taking a moment to examine what you offer can lead to higher revenue, cash flow and happier customers, and your excellent customer service will not be in vain.

How do you improve your products or services?

 

 

Guest Post from M4B Marketing by Susan Oakes

You probably know this trap, you start with good intentions to become healthier, try eating better foods and when you don’t lose a lot of weight quickly you stop.

A  few months later, usually around spring you try one of latest fad diets to get in shape before summer, however in a couple of weeks you stop again.

With small business marketing it can be quite easy to fall into this trap. You decide you need to attract more customers so you try a few marketing tactics for a little while. When you don’t get the results you anticipated you stop, only to start using other marketing tactics a few weeks later.

Whether you want to become healthier or gain results from your marketing activities, choosing the right program to suit you and being consistent with your efforts is important.

Here are a few tips to help you avoid the marketing diet trap:

Make sure everything is in place before your start

This means check that your product or service is in good shape for the customers you want to attract or retain. Ensure what you are offering contains the features and benefits that they desire.

Set realistic objectives

Sure it would be great to increase sales 150% or gain 50 extra customers in a week, but it is unlikely to happen. Look at what you want to achieve with your customers over a period of time, say 6 months or a year.

Choose the right strategy and start slowly

Business success is not a sprint and the best marketers pace themselves as it is usually a long journey. For longer term success you need to have in place a solid marketing strategy first. Then you choose the marketing tactics to implement over the year.

Get support

This could be a business partner, your family or friends, business friends, coach etc who will encourage as you progress and help keep you on track. Let them know what you are striving to achieve and give them regular updates.

Reward yourself along the way

If your objectives are to be realised in 6 or 12 months then break them down in months or weeks so you can celebrate the wins as you progress. This will help you keep motivated and on track for success.

The main thing to remember is that if you keep going back to the marketing diet tap it will cost more time and money with little to show for your efforts.

How to you avoid the marketing diet trap? Please share your tips

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My recent postings ‘How to maximise your business exposure’ generated a lot of interest and emails asking for more examples of low to nil cost marketing strategies with high returns.

Before sharing 3 of my favourites I just want to remind everyone that like baking a cake you get out what you put in to these strategies i.e. time and enthusiasm combined with creativity.

Any marketing strategy relies on you knowing who your target customer is and where they can be found.

Those being said below are my 3 favourites, though not necessarily in order of preference:
1.    Networking – voted the top marketing activity by a recent small business survey. Now this isn’t turning up at an event, finding your mates and eating a soggy breakfast. This is ‘laser networking’ when you know exactly who or what types of people you want to meet and you set yourself a target of how many contacts you will make. Do you have an offer or call to action ready and have you rehearsed your ‘elevator pitch’? Well then you’re not networking! In one group I attend a gentleman always wears an orange suit , everyone knows Eddie at ‘Creative Copywriting’.
2.    Email signature – I am always amazed when I receive emails from business contacts lacking contact details, some call to action or link to their web pages. Every email sent is an opportunity to promote your services or products. Have you considered adding a testimonial to the bottom of your signature strip? I use a great piece of software by ‘Rocketseed’ that delivers a branded signature strip and banner with my emails along with links to my web sites. And email notification when a recipient clicks on one of my links (so I know who went where).
3.    Joint ventures – often overlooked and one of the most effective marketing techniques available. Develop strategic partnerships where you do not have the same product and where there is agreed course of action to promote each other to your shared target audience. Both parties have to be committed for this to work, but the results can be excellent.
And don’t forget to be measuring your responses to these marketing activities and changing the approach if they are not achieving results.

Hopefully these have sparked your imagination and helped to shift your perspective around the possibilities of improving your business marketing exposure.For more articles like this visit ‘Changing Times’, our blog or follow on ‘Twitter’ for updates.

It never ceases to amuse me when I engage with clients and find similar issues affecting more than one client. Recently I have been working with clients around their ‘Sacred Cows’.

Now for the uninitiated this is not the Hindu practice of worshipping ‘Sacred Cows’ but the corporate equivalent of creating and then following without question a procedure or policy as if it was written in stone!

Every business needs systems, procedures and policies if it is to produce consistent results. However there has to be someone who is prepared to challenge the status quo and champion change.

What may have seemed sensible, if not vitally important, at a time in the past can quickly become outdated and potentially ludicrous in today’s business climate?

I read recently of an experiment where scientists put 5 monkeys in a room and placed some bananas in a far corner. Obviously the monkeys wanted the banana’s but every time they went to get then just before they got to then a jet of cold water shot out and sprayed them!

The monkeys quickly learnt not to go near the Bananas and when the scientists replaced a monkey in the cage the old monkeys stopped the new one from getting the bananas and a potential drowning.

Within a week the scientists replaced all the monkeys but none went near the bananas. Even though they’d removed the water hose!
In effect the market conditions had changed but the team (monkeys) were unaware and maintained an inherited practice which had no practical purpose in their new conditions.

These ‘Sacred Cows’ likely exist throughout your business in your leadership, marketing and customer service practices. So what are your ‘Sacred Cows’? Are you prepared to look at your business and hunt these out?

Now I’m not proposing to massacre every ‘Sacred Cow’, merely that every business should be prepared to cull its herd occasionally.
How do you spot a ‘Sacred Cow’? Look for a policy or procedure that outdates the oldest employee and is slavishly followed without thought or question. Metaphorically these have a life of their own and had become a noun!

It is likely that the worship of ‘Sacred Cows’ is stopping many businesses from embracing the innovation at their disposal and improving their profitability and market position.

Take out sometime over the next 24 hours and start to question some of your ‘Sacred Cows’ – make sure you are running your business the most practical and effective way possible – not how it’s always been done because………..

For more articles like this check out ‘Changing Times’ or follow our updates on ‘Twitter’.

 

In the last article we examined the opportunities to maximise the exposure of your business thru use of PR. Too often businesses avoid this due to a lack of confidence or the conviction that someone else is already doing it!

No article on maximising your marketing exposure would be complete without some reference to ‘Guerrilla Marketing’ (first coined by Jay Levinson in 1982).

As a small business owner, it is impossible for you to match the marketing budget of a large company in the same business space as you. However if you can get creative and come up with a ‘Guerrilla marketing’ campaign, you may be able to make a bigger impact than you ever imagined. Simply putting your message in an unpredicted spot to make the public take notice really works.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but should serve as a spring board for further cost effective marketing strategies. There are cheap and easy alternatives that have been proven to work:

•    Viral emails are all popular and whilst dominated by slick ad agencies. You-tube videos – create an informative, outrageous or noteworthy video pertaining to your business and post it on You-tube, you never know, it might just become an internet classic.
•    Vehicle wraps are a great low cosy way to get your company name out to the public sometimes more effectively than a yellow pages ad! Think Truck advertising.
•    Advertising on coffee cup lids on napkins – a recent campaign in Canada started advertising on tissues.
•    Maybe you can’t create crowd stunts – but creating competitions for customers that will get press support or simply capture the customers imagination. Think ‘crab races’ in restaurants or inviting customers to name a new product.
•    Flyers can be produced on your home printer and placed under car window screen wipers.
•    Visit your local library and insert a business card in books about your business.
•    The famous red telephone box in London keeps many a ‘working girl’ busy due to the business cards posted in them.
•    Sponsoring local sports teams – maybe even school or university teams – can create massive local exposure and good will.
•    Putting enough stickers in noticeable places, like car bumpers and at busy subway stations, can create a buzz for your business while spreading awareness of your company brand.
•    Send a media kit to editors in some unique packaging or delivered by a show stopping character.
•    Open houses – invite your clients to an open house at your office; have them bring friends for the fun, great opportunity to introduce yourself and your business products and services.
•    Business partnerships – finding other businesses that offer related services to your services and feeding each other business is a great way to help market your business.
•    With blogs and social networking sites, there are opportunities to market your business in a different setting. Post blogs and comment on other postings about issues concerning your product.

Find something that your customer will enjoy receiving. Therefore, you are quadrupling your exposure to customers from complimentary businesses in exchange for giving your customers something that they perceive as a gift.

The great opportunity here is the use of your own time creatively is a free gift to yourself and can be a lot of fun. And it’s unlikely that your corporate big competition is thinking in the same ball park.

Check out articles like this at ‘Changing Times’ or follow for updates on ‘Twitter’. If you want to learn more about low cost ways to maximise your business exposure check out the ’.