Continual Vigilance

One thing all successful small business owners have in common is the knowledge that their business is based on enthusiastic customers. Despite their multi-tasking titles of bookkeeper, service provider and sales-manager, their most important title is Customer-Enthusiasm Guru.

Your question, undoubtedly, is how do I find time in my unbelievably over-loaded schedule to become a customer-enthusiasm guru? Following are a few quick steps you can take to focus on your customer in everything you do:

1. Evaluate your customer base. Who are your best customers and why? What similarities do they share? What are their core needs and how do you solve them? This step is important because every other task relates to your vision of these top customers.

2. Keep the customer in mind. Before initiating new processes ask yourself how it will benefit your ideal customers. Whether you are implementing a new bookkeeping system or hiring help, keep your customer’s needs in mind. Always prepare your customers for any changes so they know what to expect.

3. Create systems that maintain customer contact. Use automated e-mail notes to keep in touch with your customer.

4. Communicate even when you have nothing to sell. This doesn’t mean take up your customer’s limited time to ’shoot the breeze,’ but it does mean — take time to recognize your customer. Some easy ways to do this are to send a note of congratulations when your customer is highlighted in the local press, promoted, or reaches an anniversary (either personal or professional). Other non-sales communication ideas include sending an article of interest or offering tickets to sporting event, show or movie that you know would interest your customer.

5. Ask for feedback and follow through. Ask your customers (either through a survey, an e-mail request or by a phone call) how you can continue to serve them — even better. Then follow-through. When you follow-through and develop ways to serve your customers better based on their input they will be enthusiastic supporters of you and your company!

6. Foster trust. If you don’t know the answer, don’t pretend to. If you can’t provide what they’re looking for, don’t say you can. Introduce your customer to someone who can solve their problem — and you will have an enthusiastic customer for life.

7. Be consistent. Your customers like knowing what to expect from you and your company. Consistency is as simple as always answering the phone the same way, using the same tag-line in all your promotional materials and most importantly, delivering the same outstanding service and product each and every time your customers hire you.

8. Be easy to work with. Don’t make your customers jump through hoops to get what they need from you and your company. Make it easy for customers to repeatedly buy from you - whether by adding a special on-line scheduling page for repeat customers on your website, or by providing them with a special access number to order your products. If your customers can buy from you again and again without a hassle, they will.

9. Create a customer-enthusiasm training program for anyone who interacts with customers. As you grow, you will hire other people help you with routine tasks, such as scheduling, answering phones, providing services or resending to e-mail. Teach these important team members exactly how you expect them to interact with your customers. Don’t forget that these team members are your customers too - treat them that way.

Provided you take the time and discipline necessary to implement them, these steps will have you on the way to being a customer-enthusiasm guru in no time!

About The Author

Peggie Arvidson-Dailey is the founder of Pet Care Business University and the Pet-Care Business Success System. She is the author “How to Make Your Customers Crazy…about You” and has been a guest on “This Week in Small Business.” As a trainer and coach she has helped people across the country create and build the pet-care business of their dreams. Visit http://www.peggiespets.com for more information.

peggie@peggiespets.com

Many years ago, I was a first year apprentice assigned the task of pressure washing a set of condensing coils on the roof of a grocery store on Capital Hill in Seattle, an upscale part of town.

It was a 90-degree day, in late August. To make matters worse, it was a Friday around 4:30 PM. I was wet, dirty, tired and I was anxious to get home, knowing full well I had at least another hour to finish up. An elderly gentleman in coveralls, and an old and worn straw hat approached me as I came down the ladder. “Watcha’ doin,’ sonny?” he asked curiously. At that moment, it would have been easy to dismiss his inquiry and say something curt or rude. After all, I was tired. However, I decided to smile and explain what and why I was doing what I was doing. His body language told me he appreciated my gesture. He then exclaimed, “That’s great, I’m glad you’re doing this. It’s important. You see, my son runs the store for me. In fact, I own the whole block. Keep up the good work!” On the drive home, it occurred to me, “You just never know!”

He didn’t look like a millionaire. It was a moment that mattered from a business perspective.

A Customer Service Moment of Truth as defined by Jan Carlzon are the hundred daily interactions that occur when we come in contact with our customers. Carlzon gained international recognition by transforming Sweden’s national airline into a successfully profitable operation. In 1981, Carlzon became president of SAS. In one year, he managed to turn a $54 million profit in an airline that had been losing $17 million a year.

How did he do it? By turning the organizational chart upside down. He preached, taught and lived the philosophy that the airline should be customer driven. Employees who dealt directly with customer were put in charge of making decisions that affected the customer. Customers responded positively and so did employees. “The only thing that matters in the new Scandinavian Airline Systems,” proclaimed Carlzon, “is a satisfied customer. We are going to be the best airline in the world, and that means putting the customer first in everything we do.”

“The purpose of business is to get and keep customers,” wrote Theodore Levitt in “The Marketing Imagination.” That phrase is brilliance and simplicity. We sometimes forget that it costs $7 to GET a new customer, but only $1 to KEEP one!

Keeping customers delighted and letting them know how valuable they are is as rain is to dry flowers. Some organizations have made outstanding Customer Service a part of their Vision, Values, Goals and Behavior. They reward and honor those internally that live these principles on a daily basis. They offer exceptional value in their own unique way and once we receive their exceptional service, we are spoiled to the point of fierce loyalty.

Organizations that come to mind are:

•Nordstrom - National Retailer of Clothes

•Starbucks - International Coffee Giant

•Les Schwab - West Coast Tire Distributor and Dealer

•SW Airlines - National Airline that continues to captures awards yearly

•Morton’s Steak House - World Class National Steak House

•Lexus - International Automobile Manufacturer

•New York Times - National Newspaper Giant

•Garth Brooks - Country Western Singer and Songwriter

•4 Seasons Hotel - National Hotel chain

•Arnold Machinery - West Coast Supplier of Machinery for Mining/Lift Truck Equipment

Yogi Berra, the great baseball philosopher once said, “You can observe a lot by watching!” How true that is. After years of reading about Customer Service, observing, studying and spending time with great people and companies with the single-minded goal of learning why they succeed, I have concluded some simple truths.

These common links bind each of the companies listed above, and seems to exist in each organization that values the customer and has committed to serving them to the best of their ability:

1)Great Service is communicated from the top of the Organization on an ongoing basis.

2)Great Service is rewarded and discussed through stories that become legendary internally.

3)Great Service is Appreciating the Customer which ultimately is everyone’s responsibility.

4)Great Service means Extra-Mile attitudes and behavior.

5)Great Service means Listening Actively to the customer on a regular basis. Focus groups, surveys and proactive feedback.

6)Great Service means becoming a Selfless Servant Leader. By able example, leaders demonstrate the behavior they want in others, often without saying a word. As the coach goes, so goes the team.

7)Great Service means high levels of Empathy.

8)Great Service means asking great questions in a moment of truth, like:

a)”What will it take to make you happy?’

b)”What would you like us to do?”

c)”You have a right to feel the way you do. How can we make it right?”

9)Great Service means subjugating personal agendas and purposefully forgetting commissions or hourly wages and focusing on being “Other-Centered.” (What does this person need most at this moment?)

10)Great Service means being flexible and willing to change to leave the customer smiling and happy.

11)Great Service means never being content with the status quo. It means continuously investing in training and growing people. It means guarding against the twin thieves of Arrogance and Complacency.

12)Great Service means treating every person your organization comes in contact with correctly, with dignity and respect. Those “Moments that Matter” will, in the long term, make or break your company.

This list certainly doesn’t represent the last word in Customer Service insights, however, is it worth considering? How does your service stack up against this list?

USA Today carried a story that headlined: “Bank gets $2 million dollar lesson.” It began when John Barrier went to Old National Bank in Spokane, WA, to cash a $100 check. When Barrier tried to get his parking slip validated to save .60 cents, a receptionist refused, saying he hadn’t conducted a transaction. “She said you have to make a deposit,” Barrier said. “I told her I’m considered a substantial depositor and she looked at like…well.” He asked to see the manager, who also refused to stamp the ticket. Barrier went to bank headquarters vowing to withdraw his $2 million-plus unless the manager apologized. No call came. “So the next day I went over and the first amount I took out was $1 million. But if you have $100 or $1 million,” he says, “I think they owe you the courtesy of stamping a ticket.”

I wonder if John Barrier was wearing a straw hat and coveralls? (Wealthy farmers in Eastern Washington often don’t dress the part!) There are many days I don’t feel like providing great service. I’d rather take a nap. But you know, you just never know, when a Moment…will Matter!

Mark Matteson can be reached for Consulting, Seminars or Keynote Speeches on Customer Service, Sales Training, Personal Development and Change Management or a variety of other processes or curriculum tailored to your needs and culture.

Pinnacle Service Group
Raising the Bar in Organizations Nationwide
Mark Matteson
877.672.2001
Fax 425.745.8981
mark@mattesonavenue.com

For your FREE e-zine, go to http://www.mattesonavenue.com

If you are using link exchanges as a way to build your poker affiliate business, there are several important things that you need to be aware of and must look out for. Many webmasters employ little tricks that will rob you of the benefits gained from linking, in this article I’ll be exposing some of these tactics so you’ll be able to gain the maximum benefit from your link building campaign.

1. Robots.txt File - Many websites contain a Robots.txt file in their root directory that tells search engine spiders where to go and where not to go. By using the Robots.txt file to instruct the spiders not to follow their link to you, they are cheating and robbing you of any value that the link is providing you.

After setting up a linking partnership with a new site, grab their robots.txt file a few days later (by simply typing in their domain/robots.txt) and look for signs of cheating. Also, you can change the user agent of your browser to “Googlebot” and view their site. If your link doesn’t appear, they’re not linking back to you in an ethical manner.

2. Nofollow Tags - Take a peek at the source code for the page your link appears on and look for a “rel=nofollow” tag. If this is present, search engines won’t follow the link and you won’t get credit for it.

3. Javascript - Search engines don’t spider javascript code, be wary of link partners who use java to link to your site.

4. Inline Frames - Inline frames are basically websites that are nested inside another site. If the site you’re linking with is using frames, the linking relationship isn’t going to benefit you.

5. Removing a Link - This may seem obvious, but many webmasters don’t think to monitor it. When doing a link exchange with another site, it is important that you monitor their link back to you to confirm that it stays in place. You can do this manually, however the easiest way is to use an automated link management script.

Hopefully this article will arm you with the knowledge needed to avoid linking partnerships which aren’t beneficial to your search engine rankings. Wishing you all the best in your poker promotion efforts!

Learn the secrets of top online poker affiliates and discover how to find the best poker affiliate programs at http://www.epokeraffiliate.com/

118 118 Directory Enquiries is presently the prominent directory enquiries facility in the country & one of the nicest as well.

Should we look around how significantly the directory enquiry business has pulled off since it was first marketed folk should observe that the success is a lot. Beyond fifty percent of the British market prefer to use the directory enquiry firm offering well over any other. All this depicts that 118.com are trusted and that the company provides a product which works noticeably well & the the British clients use around a day to day basis. Although we associate the directory business with just suppliers of business and British public telephone numbers, you will see that the directory business now make available farther more than this. You yourself might well rely on the directory firm to provide one with train times in both arrivals & departures, this is for the huge mass of train travels up and down the UK, the directory enquiry company should additionally be able to tell yourself cinema times & film listings for any movie theatre you require, you yourself will have the option to discuss the film time schedules with the business or 118.com should steer you yourself straight to the cinema you want to speak to. Really a lot of the British clients just associate the 118 118 services with the telephone however it has currently went out notably further than this.

The firm also offers a text messaging service offering, this provides the firm clientele to gain access to the very latest baseball scores from across all the large sport leagues, bar quiz help where you can text msg & ask 118 a quiz question & 118 will MMS one back with the accurate answer, British lottery numbers can also be text msg to your phone as well. Although this service is not a low priced service if you are desperate & in real need of any information then the 118.com text messaging offering is going to be unusually beneficial to you. Directory Enquiries by 118 118, 118 118 is the consumers choice for quick, reliable directory enquiry information in the UK.

Copyright 2006 http://stanleyamazan.ws

How I got my website rank #1 in google when you search my name
Stanley Amazan as a keyword. Fist of all I would like to say SEO
is probably the most important field in the online industry. If
you have a well optimized website you will make money online
even if you don’t sell anything. I know it, you know it and
everybody reading this articles knows it. That said, I just
wanted to give you a quick tip on how to get to the top of
search engines using this tip.

Instead of trying to brand your website name (
www.yourcompany.com ) or keywords around your website theme
which will be extremely completive and will cost time, money and
takes so long. Why not try to brand your own name (example..
Stanley Amazan as a keyword for my website
www.stanleyamazan.ws). This technique won’t work for everybody,
but for some like me it will work wonders. This technique will
only work if you plan on branding your company name around your
name, or you just want your name to be associate with your
business when your name is searched online. If you go on
google.com right now and type in Stanley Amazan or stanleyamazan
you will find my stanleyamazan.ws website comes up. My main goal
was that when you type in Stanley Amazan you will find my
website.

Why I chose to brand my name online you wondering, I wanted to
brand my name from others that have my name online. Now
everybody that search for Stanley Amazan will associate that
name with a Home Business Marketer or Work at Home Guru ( even
though right now in Feb 06 I am not close to being a guru yet,
but see me in Feb 07 ). Did you know that it will be much faster
to optimized your name as a keyword than optimizing keywords
around your name or website. Just imagine how much traffic you
can get from your name if your are a online coach or tutor or
you just want to your name to point to your website when it is
searched.

The same strategies still applies when optimizing your name as a
keyword.. You need a great title, description, keywords and your
heading tags need to be very well optimized. Don’t forget about
your linking strategies as well. It will much easier since your
keyword will be your name. If your name is common you still can
get it out there on top if you optimized properly and it might
work to your advantage because you will get extra traffic and
extra traffic is always a plus in my book.

In conclusion trying this method might help your web presence
more than you know. So take the time and do it. Trust me it
works.. Stanley Amazan is searched online more than you know.
How much is your name searched online…

The really good information on how to make money online sells
for thousands of dollars. However, if you are serious about
making good money online, the simple yet powerful concept of
Virtual Estate I am about to share with you, will show you
exactly how, for free.

Pick a dream location for your dream house. Now, imagine you can
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would ask you to create 2 acres of land for them; in exchange
they would build your dream house for you on your first acre
for free and they would give you the taxes they collect on the
land you created for them as long as they collect them. All you
have to do is wait a few months to get your house and live off
the property taxes or you could create a new profitable project
for the government. All for free!

Such a deal sounds awesome and incredible but it can become your
reality: instead of creating real estate you can easily create
free Virtual Estate (web sites, intellectual property …). If
you have the right tools, you can create a multi-million dollar
piece of Virtual Estate (your own web sites) at an extremely low
cost (from 0 $ to a few hundred bucks max to get started) and
earn recurring income while enjoying your life.

Thank you for reading and best success online!