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Have you ever asked yourself what the major determinant of client contentment? It is added value.
In a competitive market, where we have to fight for every customer, where we all try to earn some money, the best proven tactics you should follow is differentiation. You need to become more than an accountant – experienced and reliable adviser, more than a store – someone’s favorite bookstore, more than a SEO Company – trusted professional who is ready to help you.
Gaining such good characteristics is very hard, this is why you have to look for new opportunities of adding value to your clients. People don’t like to be sold, they want their problem to be resolved. In simple words, give before you try to get. You will find many loyal customers in this way. Let’s take a look at the most important value adds.
Let your clients know you are thinking about them. Start to send them articles, your newsletters and other helpful information, which they could be interested in.
Help your clients to educate themselves. Offer Bank Ach them to participate in interesting seminars or conferences on subjects relevant to your business. It will be highly appreciated.
Offer your key clients some benefits. Let them be first to discover the items from the new collection, invite them to meet the author of a bestseller in your book store.
Report your clients the status of matters. Periodic reports may serve as your great performance record, or, vice versa, give you notice of notify you of possible problems in the future. Another certain advantage is finding how your customer can save his money with your company.  For instance, redesigning a website for your client is the part of Search Engine Optimization and PPC service package.
Invite your client to participate. Usually clients love it. Communicate with your clients, chat with them live, do not hide anything they need to know, try to build trust between you, let them know what exactly needs to be done and how. Don’t hesitate to ask your clients what they think. Let them know you care. Do not forget, they are human beings not machines.
Help your clients with networking.
Recommend other great products or services to your clients. Make it easy for them to turn to you for a piece of advice, even if it is not something you are offering as a service.
By building trust with your customers, by providing a value added services, you will obtain a synergy of service and relationship, which will positively influence your all business processes and your business vision in general.

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Technorati Tags: added value, business, customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, customers, value added service

Why bother?

The life blood of any business is good customer service. New customers are important but good customer service will help generate customer loyalty and repeat business. With each satisfied customer your business will secure many more customers through word of mouth and you should always keep in mind that if you are not taking proper care of your customers there is always a competitor that will.

A customer satisfaction survey will help by not only identifying problem areas but will also demonstrate to your customers that you care and are proactive in looking for ways to improve the service that you provide.

Where do you start?

Objective – As a first step decide what the main objectives of the survey are, in that way you will be able to retain focus and find it easier to decide what questions to ask.

Analysis – In addition to the objectives consider how you will analyze the answers having completed the survey.

Bare in mind that ‘closed’ questions (where the respondents are asked to choose from a limited number of responses) are easier to analyse than questions that are open (where the respondent can reply in anyway they want).

A lot will depend on the likely volume of respondents, the higher the volume the more important it is to have an easy method of analysing the results.

Opportunity Keep in mind that as well as obtaining valuable market research data customer surveys are also a good way to publicise aspects of your service that your customers may not be aware of.

Before publishing the survey read through the survey from a market research view point to confirm that you are asking the right questions in the right way and that your chosen answer format will provide you with feedback that will allow you to make informed decisions.

Then, from a marketing view point read through the survey, confirm that you have phrased each question so that every opportunity has been taken to promote your business?

The ideal question will perform the following three functions:-

• Market research – provide valuable feedback to help you improve your customer satisfaction levels and in turn your business
• Marketing – promote aspects of your business
• Information/Education – advertise a service that you provide that your customers may not have been unaware of

For example:- Do you find the in-store baby changing facilities useful?

By asking this question not only will the store receive good market research feedback on the facility they provide but they will also promote their facilities and advertise themselves as a family friendly store, even beyond those customers who have a specific need for the baby changing facility that has been provided.

Warts and all to maximise the benefit from a customer survey you must be prepared to take criticism.

A well designed customer satisfaction survey will enable you to identify problems so that they can be addressed; regular customer satisfaction will prevent complacency and give you early warning on where you might be losing out to your competitors initiatives.

What are the questions you should ask?

Although it is a given that each business is likely to have specific and unique factors that are important in providing good customer services there are common areas that are relevant to all businesses be they a physical store, online internet store or a service industry. The following are some key areas to providing good customer service.

Communication – What do you do to make it easy for your customers to communicate with you?

When a customer telephones is their call answered promptly; are enquiries about products or services handled properly? Good businesses will make every effort to ensure that whatever the customers query it is resolved by the right person, politely, quickly and fairly.

If there are reported problems that cannot be resolvable immediately do you promise to respond in a given time period and do you deliver on your promise?

Use a customer satisfaction survey to ensure that all your staff are considered by your customers to be knowledgeable, courteous and helpful.

Location Do your customers find it easy to visit you, if a physical bricks and mortar store, is it conveniently located with good access?

Making it pleasant, making it easy – For a virtual business it is important to ensure that your website is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.

Physical store or online website, is the store properly laid out, can your customers find what they need and is there sufficient information and help on hand to explain how a particular product works?

The right quality products In addition to measuring the quality of the service that you provide you should ensure that the products and services that you provide do in fact match your customers requirements.

Value for money Cheap or expensive is rarely a good measure, value for money is.

Do your current customers consider your services as value for money, if not, why not?

Speed and attention Regardless of the business most customers will want to be dealt with quickly but attentively.

Are you doing everything you can to avoid any delay?

Customers like to be treated as individuals, how do you treat your customers? Attention is appreciated but it needs to be followed up with a quick and satisfactory resolution to the query.

Demographics and Specific issues Take the opportunity to profile your customers, for example where do they live and what is their age group?

The more you try to understand your customers the better you will be able to target your business.

Within the survey allow customers to highlight specific problems and provide contact details.

What next?

Having completed the survey analyze the results.

Trends Identify specific and common areas where the service needs improving.

Ask yourself if any criticism is valid, be honest to yourself, is there anything that can be done to properly resolve, or at the very least, minimise the problem?

Training Are the staff properly trained and do they have sufficient knowledge?

Where employee training programmes have been implemented have they had a positive impact on the business?

Follow-up If a customer who has completed a survey has raised a specific issue ensure that they are contacted and their complaint addressed.

Do not lose the opportunity to resolve a problem and keep a customer.

Continuously Monitor – Based on the survey results make changes and then re-measure by issuing further surveys.

To view a sample customer satisfaction survey for a store that demonstrates some of the above advice please visit:- Sample Customer Survey

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Technorati Tags: customer satisfaction, customer services, marketing, Online surveys, questionnaires, satisfaction surveys