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What To Think About When Giving Corporate Gifts

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management ArticleAs Christmas draws closer, business owners around the world will be starting to think about organizing, purchasing, and giving corporate gifts to their clients, customers, and suppliers. Whether these gifts seem like an expensive and unnecessary thing to do, or they feel like a Christmas tradition that can’t be broken, the point is that, if you want to make a good impression going into the new year, you’re going to need to give at least something to someone.

If you don’t quite know what to offer up as a holiday gift yet, and you’re not sure what to think about when choosing the gift, here are some key pointers that will help you out and ensure that everyone is happy with what they are given.

What Is Your Work Culture?

If you can distill your company’s culture down into one gift, this will certainly help you to be remembered, and it will ensure that whatever you choose to give will be completely unique. To do this, you need to think about the work that you do and the people who work for you. You might be famed for your dress down Friday, or perhaps your office parties are something that everyone talks about. Maybe it’s the fact that you give everyone their birthday off, or you include your employees’ families in everything you do. Whatever it might be, search around for a gift that speak of it, and give this to those important business connections that you want to impress.

Be Inclusive

It is important to find something that you can give to everyone because buying individual gifts will be expensive and time-consuming to find and purchase. If you want to offer up branded t-shirts, for example, think of the cut and the material – will everyone like it? Is it going to work for both men and women? This is an important point but one that will help to set you apart and show how caring you are and how you think of others when it comes to all aspects of your work.

Think Of Presentation

No matter what you are giving and to whom you are giving it, presentation is all-important. Wrapping a gift well in nice paper, perhaps with additional bows and ribbons will always be appreciated, especially when the alternative is a poorly wrapped gift that no time, thought, or effort was put into – assuming the gift is wrapped at all. Although this is a corporate gift, it should be treated no differently to any other that you would give to someone important to you. Make sure it looks good, because first impressions regarding anything county for a huge amount.

Ask Employees

As a business owner, you have final say in what corporate gifts you want to give, but it could be worthwhile to speak to your employees and get their opinions too. If you are completely drawing a blank, then ask your employees to come up with some ideas that you can work with. They might have more insight into what your clients and customers would like because they work with them more closely.

If you do come up with some ideas but can’t decide between them, again, you can ask your employees. They might be able to help you to determine which of the two, three, or more ideas is the most viable, saving you from buying and giving something that just wouldn’t really work.

Ask Questions

Being considerate and asking questions is another important step. You may feel you have discovered the ideal gift, but if there is any doubt then getting in touch with the recipient to determine whether this really is the case will help you – it will show that you are thinking of your clients and customers rather than simply buying the first thing that comes into your head (even if, in reality, you are). For example, if you are thinking of offering a food-related gift, it is a good idea to speak to the recipients and check to see if they have any allergies, or if they prefer beer to wine or red or white wine. You don’t have to tell them what you are buying in detail, either, so the surprise element will still be there.

Make It Local

Something that is always widely appreciated is a gift with some local flavor. This is a great gift whether the recipient lives nearby or far away – it’s always fun to be given something made in a specific place, perhaps in a specific way. You could choose a calendar showcasing your local area, or some food products that a local maker has created. If your area is famous for anything, this is a great gift to give as it will help the recipient get a better idea of where you are based and what the place is like.

This is also a great way to support local small businesses who might be able to help you in return. By doing this, you are enabling the economy to thrive, which is certainly another bonus.

Make It Personal

Whatever you choose to give, you need to ensure that it reflects your company in some way, and the easiest way to do that is to brand it with your logo or company name. Many companies such as Perfect Imprints make this an easy thing to do, and your branding can be added to mugs, coasters, Christmas decorations, t-shirts, pens, and much more.

You should remember not to overbrand, however. You can make yourself remembered with just a small logo, for example, rather than printing your name all over the front of everything that you give away. This can look much more attractive, and will even do a better job of reminding those who receive the gifts about you, as they will be more likely to use items with only small amounts of branding on them.

Give Quality

Whatever it is you choose to give, it needs to be of good quality. If you buy cheap and give items that are poorly made and that break apart quickly, or that can’t be used, worn, or even eaten, this will reflect badly on your company. You don’t need to spend a fortune to find good quality products, but you should take the time to read reviews and even sample the products for yourself if possible, to ensure that you are happy to give them to important clients and suppliers.

How to Improve the Customer Experience Throughout Their Journey

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article

There’s no getting around it; the customer is king. Without them, your business will be going nowhere fast. They have the power to make or break your business, and your aim should be to do everything in your power to make their experience a good one. Once upon a time, it would have been the quality of your product or service that made you stand out from the competition. Nowadays, however, the focus has shifted to the experience a brand is able to offer the customer throughout their journey. Improving the customer experience is not the easiest thing to deal with. There are certain things your customers will expect. These include being able to interact with your company, however they decide to do it. It’s also important that their experience is a personalized, rewarding and effortless one. Above all, they want this to be provided in an efficient amount of time. Here are some things you can do today.

The Customer Experience vs. Customer Service

You might think that they’re one and the same, but they’re actually quite different. Customer service focuses more on the way a service is delivered, before, during, and after a purchase. Customer experience, on the other hand, is the sum of all the experiences and interactions the customers have from your business relationship. The two work closely together, and you can’t have one without the other.

10 Steps to Improving Your Customer Experience

The first contact your customers will have with your business will be via the phone, email or one-to-one interaction, and this is where you can start making improvements.

Create a Customer-Focused Culture

There is little point in trying to make improvements if the whole of your workforce are not behind the changes. From the bottom to the top, everyone has to be focused on customer satisfaction. A good way to do this is to create a list of statements that can be used to guide company principles and focus your staff. Principles can include delivering an excellent service, to show humility and welcome change. Take steps to introduce a staff training program and focus on etiquette, how best to address customer complaints, and the standard responses to use.

Know Your Customers

If you don’t know who your customers are, how can you address their needs to improve your customer experience. The beauty of humans is that we are all so different. We don’t have the same needs, desires or expectations. As well as understanding demographics such as age, race, and residence you need to consider several other things. For example, how will they use your products and services, what are their expectations, and how will they prefer to interact with you.

Understanding who your customers are will result in a deeper understanding. Your employees will be able to empathize with them and look at the service they’re providing from their point of view.

Live Chat

Providing your customers with a live chat option is crucial to improving the customer experience. If your audience is within the 18-34 age bracket, you might do well to appreciate that more than half of them prefer this option over phone interactions. It is particularly popular among online retailers. However, there’s more to providing live chat than just having a person to answer customer questions. It can include co-browsing, which is where an agent takes control of a user’s browser to provide technical support or to direct them to pages where they will find what they want. Audio/video chat services, integrated knowledge bases, and Chatbot services are also being added to the list.

Mobile Customer Support

More than 91% of adults in the US own a mobile phone, and more than 63% of them use their phones several times a month to search for products and customer support. Providing a mobile interface for your customers is vital. Unfortunately, many are poorly designed and cumbersome to use, even if there is an optimized website. The result of these poor designs is that customers are forced to contact a business directly for simple queries. Contact centers are then flooded with queries. Allowing customers to solve their problems using their mobile phone will improve the customer experience.

Social Media Support

It’s possible to use social media to communicate with customers in a customer-centric way. Many large companies use it very effectively. Using a variety of social media platforms, companies can share content and answer questions from customers. The marketing department can also ask interesting questions and gain a better understanding of the customer base.

Self-Service Portals

There are two ways self-service portals can help a company. Firstly, they improve the customer experience. Secondly, they reduce workload and thereby increase company capacity. A self-service portal provides customers with instant access to information. A series of self-help functions are open to the customer and accessible through a company’s website. Features include:

  • Self-resolution of issues through the use of a knowledge base
  • Password reset
  • Self-logging of incidents
  • Service request
  • Collaborative spaces
  • Chat services

Empowering customers to find information, request services, and resolve their own issues is a great way of improving the customer experience.

If you think outside of the box a little, you can probably work out some pretty ingenious ways that you can help people to improve their own experience with these kinds of portals. You might have a visitor sign-in app, for instance, so that you know who is in the building. However you approach it, the fact is that these kinds of portals are growing in popularity with good reason, and they are some of the best ways to make sure that the customer’s experience is so much better throughout the journey.

Provide a Range of Communication Channels

Not so very long ago, customers would have been more than happy to call customer care to get assistance. Those days are long gone, and today’s customers want to have access to more options. These should include text, email, and social media, depending on which your customer is most comfortable with.

Younger age groups may prefer to use social media while those over 40 might prefer to call customer care. The industry you’re working in can also influence the channels you choose to use. In a more professional industry, phone calls or post might be more appropriate. There is no one size fits all, and some experimentation will be required to find which fits best.

Customer Experience Manager

This is a relatively new role and has come about because customer experience requires effort from across a company, which means someone needs to be managing it. A customer experience manager will look across a range of departments such as customer service, sales, market, production and more. They will act as the link between customer and company, coordinating work across all the different departments.

Researching and Gathering Data

A crucial part of the customer experience is conducting research and gathering data. Customers expect a certain quality of service when calling your company. The service you deliver has to be above average. If the service received is excellent, it is more likely they will pay more for your products or services and return time and time again. To provide exemplary customer service, you first have to do some research and gather feedback from your customers. Asking customer testimonial questions will help you to establish their needs, wants, and expectation. It will also help you to grow your company with the help of customer reviews.

Benchmarking and Evaluating

There is no point in implementing any changes if you aren’t going to spend time evaluating whether the processes, teamwork, and technology are paying off. It’s important to measure the return on investment of customer experience. Finding the best strategy will be much easier if you’re able to try different things. Collecting data to ensure you know what works and what doesn’t. A good question to ask customers that will gauge the effectiveness of a strategy is “Would you recommend this service to a friend or relative?”. Provide a point-scale to measure how happy or unhappy they were.

The Benefits of Optimizing the Customer Experience

Companies who invest time and effort in improving the customer experience will reap the rewards, both in terms of revenue and financial health. There are many benefits of providing an excellent customer experience including increased customer loyalty and higher customer retention. It’s also interesting to learn that a high percentage of customers will pay more for a better customer experience.

There’s no way you can anticipate every customer issue, but you can anticipate there being an issue and making it easy for customers to contact you. Being reactive and proactive will pay off. Customers want to be treated well, respected, understood, and get what they want. They want a good experience when dealing with your company and an assurance that every time they get in touch, the experience will be equally good. The modern consumer has an immense amount of power, and they can choose to wield it as they see fit. Providing an excellent customer experience will instill trust and boost revenue.

Providing the best customer experience can help you to build meaningful relationships with your customers. The experience you provide is a reflection of your business. Your brand image depends on more than just a single moment when a purchase is made. It is a culmination of every interaction they have with your company. Provide a superior customer experience, and you will have a competitive advantage, build customer loyalty, encourage positive word-of-mouth, personalize relationships, and provide customer satisfaction.

How To Improve Customer Satisfaction

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management ArticleOne area of your business you should pay special attention to and make more of an effort is your customers. After all, they’re the ones handing over their money to help keep your business afloat so never underestimate their importance.

Your company will begin to thrive once you can ultimately improve your overall customer satisfaction scores. When clients are happy, then the entire business will experience less mayhem, and your employees start to like their jobs better. However, you first need to accept that you can always be advancing in this area and then put measures in place that are going to help you pick up your performance.

Ask for Feedback

Improve customer satisfaction by proactively asking for and seeking out feedback from your clients. Send out surveys, pick up the phone or meet one on one and confront them about what it is they do and don’t like about how your business operates. Dive deeper into the specifics so you know exactly what it is you can change that will truly make a difference and draw in more customers. It’s common for companies to make assumptions about what it is clients are looking for and then head in the wrong direction. It’s a wise idea to have the data to back up your claims and only commit to certain modifications if you know your customers are onboard.

Be Available & Responsive

In this day and age, it’s important always to be available to your customers and ready to help. Not only do you want to be available to answer questions and inquiries during your regular business hours, but it’s also a wise idea to provide support across multiple channels. What will help you out the most is to make sure you’re staffed appropriately by using an online employee shift planning software. You can read more here about how you can get this going in your workplace, so you’re always properly staffed and no customer is left wanting.

Train Your Employees

Your company culture should include making customer satisfaction a top priority if you’re going to succeed in this area. It’s worth you taking the time to train your employees and make sure everyone understands how to interact with clients properly. Pay special attention to your customer service department and confirm that your staff knows best practices and how to handle all sorts of difficult requests and inquiries. Create policies and procedures that both your employees and customers are to follow to make your jobs easier.

Listen on Social Media

One place where you can actually learn a lot about your customers and get a better idea of how they feel about you is on social media. Assign staff members who are in charge of this responsibility and can spend a good amount of time listening and jumping into conversations where appropriate. Use this as a way to collect a lot of valuable data and then have these individuals report back to everyone in the company about what they’re discovering. There may be aspects you’re unaware of that are hurting your business and causing customers to feel dissatisfied. If you need more clarification about a specific topic or complaint, then reach out to that individual privately and collect more information on the matter.

Build Relationships

Communicate to your team that you want them to work on building relationships with customers and not simply thinking of each person as a number or transaction. Get to know your clients on an individual level and show that you care about them as people. Encourage staff members to create an open dialogue with customers and find out more about why they do or don’t enjoy doing business with you. Be able to recognize and reward your most loyal customers and be sure to treat everyone with respect no matter how much money they’re spending with you. It doesn’t look good for your business when you don’t remember people by name who are consistently making a lot of purchases from you and are loyal advocates of your brand.

Exceed Expectations

You can improve customer satisfaction by not only delivering on your promise but also going above and beyond on a regular basis. Work to not only meet expectations but to exceed them time and time again. Instead of aiming for mediocre, shoot for the stars and show your customers that you truly want to see them satisfied after having made a purchase with your company. Not only take care of any problems that come your way but offer up a freebie or discount code they can use the next time they shop with you. Throw in an element of surprise once in a while and watch how quickly their faces light up and they’re willing to share their positive experiences with others.

Track Your Progress

You’re not going to know how well of a job you’re doing or how satisfied your customers are unless you track your progress. Set goals, keep score and monitor how you’re performing as a team throughout the year. Hold meetings that revolve around this topic specifically and get input from your employees about how you could be doing a better job. The only way to improve is to set goals and define metrics and then be diligent about observing how you’re performing and making changes where necessary. You should eventually notice an upward trend. Otherwise, you may have to adjust your approach and regroup about how you want to proceed.

Conclusion

Customers aren’t automatically going to be impressed with your business just because you have a solid product or service in place. They’ll want to be wowed and impressed in their interactions with you and see that you’re putting forth an extra effort each time they reach out or spend money. The good news is that you can use these tips to help you improve your customer satisfaction scores and make sure your business is offering your clients an unforgettable experience. It’s important you never stop learning and growing in this area if you want to guarantee a bright and steady future.

3 Huge Customer Service Mistakes You Could Be Making

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The majority of customers prioritize good service when they’re choosing a company to deal with and they certainly won’t become repeat customers if they don’t feel that your customer service is up to scratch. That’s why it’s vital that you know how to make the customer experience perfect every single time. There are a lot of things that you should be doing, but it’s equally as important to understand the things that you shouldn’t be doing. These are the biggest customer service mistakes that you could be making right now.

StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article
 
Not Taking Advantage Of Technology

Technology is a great asset for businesses and you’re really letting yourself down if you’re not taking advantage of it. Good technology can massively improve your customer service department if you know how to use it properly. One of the major benefits of technology in customer service is that you can make yourself available 24/7 on a wide range of channels. Head over to www.bpmonline.com for more information on implementing customer service help desk software. You can set up a live chat service which is more convenient for customers and also easier for your staff to manage. It’ll also help to improve your phone systems and give you email alerts when customers are trying to get in touch. Good customer service software will help you to respond to queries a lot quicker and offer better resolutions that keep everybody happy.

Ignoring Negative Comments

People base a lot of their purchasing decisions on reviews these days. Most businesses have an online review service and that’s the first thing customers are going to look at. Hopefully, you won’t have too many negative comments on there but every company is going to get a few. That’s not a problem as long as you deal with them properly. Some companies think that the best thing to do is ignore them, but it isn’t. If you ignore those comments, other potential customers will assume that’s your response to customer complaints. What you should be doing instead is coming up with good resolutions and then posting a reply, apologising for the problem and outlining how you’re going to deal with it. Customers don’t expect your company to be absolutely perfect but they do expect you to deal with any problems in a timely manner. Visit www.fundera.com for more tips on dealing with a negative comment.

Excessive Company Policy

Company policy is important and it’s there for a reason. It helps you to maintain a level of consistency across the board but sometimes, it can be a big problem. If you’ve got too many different policies that aren’t logical, and you’re not willing to bend the rules a bit, customers are going to get annoyed. You should let your employees use a bit of initiative and go outside company policy in certain situations where it makes sense and it helps them come up with a resolution for the customer. Don’t let company policy get in the way of good customer service.

These 3 mistakes could cost you dearly if they ruin your customer service and send your valuable customers elsewhere.

What Do Customers Really Want?

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StrategyDriven Customer Relationship Management Article
 
Businesses like Zappos and Amazon have set the bar high for customer-centricity. Are you an entrepreneur wondering how to match the big guys in customer focus? Have you spent thousands of dollars for setting up a customer survey exercise to understand what customers really want? And has that left you with no better understanding than you had previously?

Well, you are not alone. Every post-2000 marketer has been obsessed with finding the answer to what customers really want. Gone are the days when big market research companies used to deliver the answers at the end of a fat and dusty survey exercise.

Today the customers are openly and communicating honestly about what they want. Do you have an eye on your customer touch points and an ear on your social media? Let us break down into simple actions how we can answer this question of what customers really want. Read more