How many times have you heard that the customer is king?
Countless, no doubt.
At the risk of continuing with platitudes, it is also often said
that a business's customer relationships are the only thing that a
competitor cannot replicate. So why then, if this is given wisdom,
do so many businesses not only treat their customers so poorly but
also not appreciate the extent to which they can make their lives
so much easier by implementing a few simple tools?
When I first started my own small business I was concerned only
about profit and loss and how best to market my business. To me a
website was a tool to drive awareness and sales of products and I
never considered that it could actually become a reason why a
consumer might not buy a service.
Even now I see examples of SMBs that think e-commerce customer
service begins and ends with a basic website. Often these websites
will have no hosting partner to ensure the site is up 24 hours a
day, no online
customer relationship management (CRM) in place, a lack of
disaster recovery support, no e-mail facility, and offer non-secure
methods of payment. In some cases the website will not allow
consumers to actually buy the products online.
What you should try keep in mind is that offering good customer
service through your website does not require a large IT budget.
New processes and technologies available through hosted providers
and third parties can not only impress your customers and make your
business appear far more sophisticated than it actually is, but
also reduce the internal administrative burden for your company.
For example, Microsoft's Office Accounting Pro offers a PayPal
service which allows businesses to communicate with their customers
seamlessly through their website but also, crucially, in a format
that is known and trusted to them. At the same time the system will
tie processing payments directly into the business' back-end
accountancy systems which makes life easier for everyone.
Once you have data on your customers, it is imperative that you
keep a track of them. Having customer data stored in an Excel
spreadsheet or on e-mail is great for basic contact management, but
as you grow you may find it too rudimentary for an office-wide
database that needs to supports sales, marketing and service
activities. You need to be sure that when a customer is in contact
with you they can always talk to someone who has their details at
hand and for that you should consider a way of sharing information
amongst your staff.
A great example of this is Business Contact Manager, included in
the Microsoft Office Small Business suite. You can drag and drop
Outlook contacts into Business Contact Manager to create a single
place for a customer's information, where each person interacting
with that account can view e-mails and record actions related to
the job. It also allows you to track sales opportunities and
service management issues, as well as enabling synchronisation with
mobile devices and the ability to set up basic marketing
campaigns.
A final consideration for businesses is how you interact with
your regular customers. By using online collaboration tools such as
Microsoft Office Live Workspace, you can provide your customers
with facilities to share information which will help improve your
working relationship and cut down on administration on both
sides.
Good customer service is something that is well within the grasp
of every business given the right tools. Given the impending
economic slowdown you need to make sure that every potential
customer to your website has the best possible experience that you
can offer, and that need not cost you the earth.