Contributed Post | Mike McRitchie | Resume and LinkedIn Profile Writer | Telecom Marketing Content Writer

Improving Your Service To Develop A Loyal Customer Base

May 21, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

While you might think the most consumers value lower prices above anything else, superior customer service remains an important reason why people choose to shop with a particular retailer. Businesses that demonstrate excellent customer service stand a better chance of receiving positive reviews online and through social media, which helps to develop a loyal customer base that can make up a significant part of your profits.

Customer Service

Could your business improve its customer service? Take a look at some of the improvements you can make to ensure that customers keep coming back for more.

Establish customer service Twitter accounts

The number of people choosing to complain online compared to those who complain via phone is increasing. As a result, many businesses are establishing separate Twitter accounts to deal with customer complaints and keep their main feeds focused on promotion purposes. Understanding more about how people use Facebook and Twitter to complain to companies can help you work out the best strategy for handling this new age of complaints.

Offer better services than your rivals

Online businesses can suffer from a lot of competition, which means your business needs to have an edge to succeed. Offering consumers something extra such as increased security or free shipping charges can have a significant impact and whether a consumer chooses you or a rival. TicketOffices is a great case study of a business that’s gone the extra mile to improve the services it offers its customers. TicketOffices boosted their ticket sales security with a 100% guarantee on all resold tickets for events, giving them an edge over their rivals.

Ask for feedback

By asking your customers for feedback, you can determine real ways to improve your services. An email following a purchase can ask the customer questions about their experience of your business and help you improve areas that are causing concern. Offering your customers an incentive for providing you with feedback, such as a prize draw or discount coupon can help increase your response rate.

Make it faster

It’s no secret that people want a fast experience when browsing online. When a website is slow to load or has too many processes, people will give up and try elsewhere. Improve the speed of your website and cut the number of steps in the checkout process to help you increase your sales by turning leads into conversions.

Offer deals and promotions they’ll love

When businesses offer deals and promotions. it can help to ensure good relationships with both new and existing customers. Instead of offering deals that don’t provide much in the way of savings, become known for offering amazing promotions that will put your rivals in the dust. You might have to offer some significant discounts, but your increased sales will more than make-up for it.

Loyal customers are great for helping to spread the word about and making return purchases. When customers are happy, they’ll come back for more, but dissatisfied customers can cause a lot of damage through negative reviews and public complaints when your aim should be to reduce repeat support contact. Treat your customers right by improving your service and let the rewards speak for themselves.

Businesses- Here’s How You Can Keep Burglars at Bay

May 21, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

As a business owner, you really do have so many tasks to juggle. From keeping employees happy to ensure all jobs are being done to the right standard, to liaising with clients, making sure your business is moving with the times and so much more. There’s no doubt that your job is a busy one, but one thing you should never let slip is your security. Criminals either in person or online have the ability to completely destroy your business- from stealing equipment to stealing data, rising bank accounts and taking your money as well as damaging your reputation. Here’s what you can do to keep the burglars at bay from your company.

Business Burgler

Use a Good Office Security System

If you don’t own your office building and just rent a space inside a bigger office block, it can be easy to disregard security. However it’s important that you still take responsibility for your own company. Invest in a commercial burglar alarm and CCTV, these things will both help to both deter criminals but if they do still manage to get, in you have taped evidence to show to the police and use in court

Back Up To The Cloud

The cloud is becoming increasingly important in business and it’s your responsibility to ensure you’re keeping up with these advancements. From a security point of view, it’s far safer to have your information encrypted and kept on cloud based servers than it is to keep them on things like hard drives. If your office computer is stolen or damaged, the backup drive is likely to suffer the same fate. Using the cloud also allows workers to access the information they need from anywhere in the world in a safe and secure way, so you can have some employees working remotely if you choose to. Do your research and consider cloud migration as an essential aspect of improving and growing your business as well as keeping it more secure.

Be Aware of Passwords

We all know the importance of using complex passwords on our personal accounts, so don’t overlook this when setting up your business accounts too. Not only should you set ones that aren’t able to be guessed, but be careful about who knows them too. Since most business are largely run online these days, it’s essential that your accounts are secured. Cyber criminals who are looking to target enterprises remotely often gain access to sensitive information simply due to simple passwords, so this is one area not to disregard.

Invest in Proper Insurance

Finally, if the worst were to happen and something does happen to your business, having insurance means you won’t be left out of pocket. It could be the difference between a minor setback and full bankruptcy so do your research. If you own the building you work in, buildings insurance will protect you in the case of things like arson or natural disaster damaging the outer shell. Contents insurance will protect your possessions and everything inside again from accidental, natural or criminal damage. Public liability insurance and employer’s insurance are essential to have and will protect your workers and members of the public if any accident or injury were to occur as a result of your business. This could be anything from a defective product, or an incident happening on your premises.

Taking The Next Step To Business Success

May 21, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Organize your business

Every business needs to grow. If you keep things the way they are then you’ll eventually get left behind. Maybe something better will come along in the industry and your clients will lose interest in you. The point is that you need to stay on top of your game. You need to keep doing research and striving to be the best company in the market. Taking the next step to business success starts with the points raised in this article.

Optimize your operations.

The first way to make your business more successful is to optimize your operations. The more efficiently your business uses its time and money, the bigger your profit margins will be. Sometimes, you don’t even have to increase sales to increase profits. You just need to create a more productive and effective workplace. For example, you might want to automate certain tasks and processes. If your employees don’t have to focus on certain menial or administrative jobs then they can put their time to better use. In turn, your workforce will get more accomplished during the average workday.

Of course, technology is only one tool that can optimize operations. You should also motivate your workers to try harder by offering bonuses or promotions to the best employees. You might also want to look into some assistance with your own duties as the boss of your company. After all, you probably have quite a demanding workload. You should check out this article discussing the difference between a personal assistant and an executive assistant. It’s important that you hire the right kind of professional for the job role you have in mind. That takes us back to the whole point being made here: your business’ level of productivity depends on its team. You need to make sure that you hire people well and look after those employees to ensure optimal efficiency is maintained.

Engage with your audience.

An important way to progress your business onwards is to engage with your audience more effectively. Your company is most successful when it gives the customer what they want. If you’re not seeing the results that you feel you should be then there might simply be a disconnect between yourself and the target market. You need to know your customers if you’re going to deliver the products and services they want. You should use social media to help you in this regard. With polls on Facebook or Twitter, you could gain a better understanding of the things that please or displease clients. You should also invite people to post questions or concerns they might have. Build a good relationship with your customers. The more you engage, the more relevant your services will be. That’s how you create a more successful company.

Embrace online marketing.

You might already pay to advertise your business online, but there are smarter ways to increase brand awareness through the internet. A good online marketing strategy involves relevant content that’s designed to increase your ranking on search engines. If you create a professionally-designed website then you’ll not only increase traffic to your site (because you’ll be showing up at the top of search result pages) but also see a better conversion of visitors to paying customers. Your potential clients want to buy goods and services from well-designed websites with clear and concise content. That’s the key to a successful modern-day online marketing strategy.

The Challenges Facing A Growing Business

May 21, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Business Growth Chart

Beginning a business is difficult enough, and getting to the point of growth takes time and effort. When success does finally arrive, there is cause for much jubilation. That doesn’t mean life will get any easier, however. There are still challenges ahead to accommodate growth, and we will look at some of them in this article.

Challenge #1: Your competitors

When you are doing well in business, your competitors will sit up and take notice. They will take steps to edge you out, such as upping their marketing and undercutting your pricing. In some cases, they will struggle to make a dent in your armor, but as their efforts increase, so must your efforts to stay at the top of your game. You can do this by keeping an eye on the market, such as conducting research to ensure your relevancy. You can stay ahead by upping your marketing, using your brand in new ways, such as associating your image with being environmentally aware. You don’t want to crush your competitors (as so many businesses make a habit of), so you might also incorporate smaller business into your own. Better to make friends than enemies, right?

Challenge #2: Your business premises

It stands to reason that the bigger your business becomes, the smaller your premises will seem. This isn’t always the case – it depends on what your business is – but if you are in any way dependent on product storage, manufacturing, and a team of employees working with you, then you will need to make the move. Moving into a new office or factory space is the logical step; something that has the space to accommodate your growing needs. Bigger warehousing may also be necessary, and here are the top 5 tips for warehouse design when this is the case. It may also be time to open up extra business premises, extending your reach into new markets, be that locally or globally. Making the move is tough, but it is a sign you are doing something right.

Challenge #3: Security and protection

As your business grows, you will generate interest from those meaning to do you harm. No, we aren’t necessarily talking about your competitors again, but rather those malicious individuals who seek to profit from your misfortune. You have more to lose when you’re doing well, and you are at risk cyber attack, with the intent to blackmail you, and attack from those seeking to steal your IP and ideas. You need to take protection across the board, using some of these methods to help you. People do get jealous and people do take revenge, so as you grow, continue to barricade your defenses.

Challenge #4: Yourself

Why would you pose a challenge to your business? Simple, you may become complacent and big-headed. Your business has grown, after all, and some of that hard work will be down to you. However, you should never assume you have achieved full success. You should still focus on your learning, staying in touch with new trends in the market, and improving your skills in business. You have done well, but the moment you ‘stop trying,’ is the moment when you suddenly become outdated and irrelevant to the consumer market. This could cause a severe downturn to your profits. So, always seek to stay on top of every aspect of your business, and continue to push forward for further growth.

Finally

Growth is something to be congratulated, but follow our advice to stay on top of the increased demands to your business. Whoever said being at the top was easy?

The Proof Is In The Packing

May 21, 2018 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Packaging Your Products

Making your own product is an extremely exciting process, with loads of learning to do along the way, and the joy of seeing your ideas become a reality in front of your eyes. Going down a route like this is something which a lot of people dream about. While it will be hard, the rewards you will get for success will be far greater than the work being put in. Of course, though, there is a boring side of this, and this post is here to help you with it. To give you a head start, it will be exploring the importance of the packaging being used for your goods.

Graphic Design: This has become a very popular field in recent years, with loads of small businesses finally being able to match the larger ones at their own game. While this is good for customers, it can make it hard when you’re releasing your first product, as your packaging simply can’t be lacking in this area. To help you with this, websites like Freelancer can help you to get your hands on quality professionals without having to hire anyone directly or work with a large company.

Safety/Damage Prevention: A lot of modern products being shipped around the world are very fragile. From electronics to drinks bottles, it can be hard for couriers to keep these items safe, and it is down to the manufacturer to keep them under the right conditions. To help you out with this, companies like APPF can give you access to loads of high-tech examples of safe packaging. With a heavy focus on responsible materials, using businesses like this can give you additional selling points.

Security: People like to know that they are the very first person outside of the factory to touch the product they have bought, as this helps to avoid the risk of tampering. To help to make this possible, most companies will use seals on their packaging which prevent it from being opened without it being obvious to those thinking about buying it. Along with this, a lot of businesses are starting to supply codes with their goods which prove their authenticity. This helps to stop other companies selling clones.

Quality: Finally, as the last area to consider, quality is very important when you’re working on something like this. Customers will quickly catch wind of poorly printed boxes and cheap foam being used, and it is best to avoid this sort of issue from the very start. To help you out with this, there are loads of companies out there which are experts when it comes to packaging. Using their support will not only result in better designs, but could also give you the contacts you need to get everything made.

With all of this in mind, making the packaging for your first product should be nice and easy. For a lot of people working on this sort of area, it can be very hard to make sure that you’re putting the right kind of effort into it, even with all of the help you have available.