To run a successful business, you must harbor a loyal band of customers who are there with your business every step of the way. If you want to venture out in a new direction or expand your company, having a dedicated customer base would help. You might have noticed that big conglomerates often launch new products, and quite successfully so. Even if they go to a wholly different route with their approach to product marketing, they always maintain one golden rule: the customer comes first. With the benefit of customers in mind, they strategically plan their advertisements. Continue reading this article to learn practical tips for building a loyal customer base. 

Customer Service: 

The motto of every company should be to serve the customer first. Be sure to offer excellent customer service. And it is only possible when your staff is trained properly on how to deal with demanding customers or tricky situations. Everyone can be polite and handle situations well without challenge, but only the top firms know how to handle a crisis with grace and dignity. When in doubt, remember: The Client is always right. Whether you sell a product or provide services, it would help to have 24×7 customer service available for the clients. 

• Ask the clients to review the products and services they’ve purchased. Asking for feedback (without being pushy about it) is a standard business strategy. The online review can very well boost your sales by attracting the attention of other clients. 
• If, however, you receive a negative review online, be sure to rectify your mistake as soon as possible without being defensive about it. Again, it is not the mistakes that make a company look bad, but how the firm handles a challenging situation gets everyone’s attention. 

Keep In Touch: 

When a customer buys a product from you, you get information about that client. Be sure to use this information to keep in touch with them so that they know you care. You get emails or phone numbers from your clients; you can easily send personalized advert based on their previous purchases. Or you may send gifts to your selected clients who bring business to you on a consistent level. For example, many firms distribute customized calendars to clients and staff to build goodwill. Calendar printing doesn’t cost much, but it is a fantastic way to let the clients know that they matter to your firm. 

Separate Goals:

You want to keep your old clients and at the same time, add new ones to the list. Therefore, your approach to these two client bases should be separate. It would help if the business formed a personal relationship with individual clients by creating a remarkable social media presence and sending personalized emails. 

Technology:

There are various tools and software that help you analyze sales. You can quickly learn relevant information about a customer that can boost your product sales. For example, you can categorize the buyers into age groups, gender identity, and even pin code areas. Suppose you find that certain ethnic groups or people from certain income areas purchase your products more than others. In that case, you can modify your advertising strategies to target that specific group. Or you may also target a different audience base to expand the business. Let technological advancement help you grow your business exponentially.

Partnership with Other Businesses:

An innovative way to grow your company is to partner with businesses that complement yours. For example, if you are a greetings card company, you might partner with a local café or cake shop to get more clients. If you run a YouTube Channel, teaming up with similar channels will automatically grow your audience base.

These days, the world has become a global village. With that in mind, choosing to shake things up, move abroad and start a business far from your native country does seem like a  very reasonable idea. However, no matter how the rise of digital technologies made the world smaller, the national borders, different cultures, and various regulations are still there to make the life of expatriate entrepreneurs very challenging.

Sure, things may look the same on the surface but it takes only one ill-advised business move to prove us wrong. But these obstacles are far from impossible to overcome and the success of your ex-pat company will ultimately depend on your strategy, knowledge, and good decision. Let’s see if we can help you along the way.

Research the local business environment

Running a company means leveraging countless different factors most of which are not under your direct control. Understanding these circumstances will help you articulate your portfolio and business model and adjust them to the local political and economic environment. So, put as much effort as you can into understanding the local regulatory climate, political history, economic potential, cultural differences, and the previous COVID-19 containment measures. Knowing these things will help you anticipate the moves of the local government and set up the contingencies for the eventual fluctuations.

Turn your anticipations into clear actionable objectives

First and foremost, you need to have a clear idea about why you are exactly moving abroad and what do you want to achieve once there. Once you determine these overarching goals, you will have a much easier job identifying short-term objectives that will, step-by-step, lead you closer to the finish line. Also, being aware of these objectives will help you make more informed decisions in regards to the tasks like narrowing down the business location, deciding on the business structure, crafting a branding strategy, etc. All these moves need to be driven by the goals you have set before moving.

Set up the infrastructure for effortless collaboration

Taking into consideration you are probably close business ties with the native country and hire labor all around the world, you need to have the tools that will render regional differences nonexistent and allow effortless collaboration. Be sure to pay attention even to the smallest details. For instance, the Gmail CRM famously doesn’t have a feature for mass-sharing the Gmail contacts across the profiles which is essential for effective CRM. So, you will probably need to get a third-party plugin that makes it possible to share Google contacts between users. The more details like these you manage to cover, the better.

Figure out the financial infrastructure

Depending on the country where they moved to, the expatriates may have a legal status that cuts them off from the traditional financing channels. Although these problems can be solved by partnering up with the local entrepreneurs or relying more heavily on investors rather than financing institutions, you need to have these foundations laid out before moving on to any legal procedures or immediate plans. The same can be said about taxes, payroll, and other important business facets. If possible, you should leave these tasks to local third-party vendors and focus on the tasks that are making money.

Set up the startup budget

Now that you have all these things covered, it is finally time for putting together the startup budget. To do that you will need to take into consideration the following factors:

• Available financing options
• Liquid and non-liquid assets
• Expenses you need to make before launch
• Fixed costs (mortgage, payroll, benefits, etc.)
• Variable costs (raw materials, equipment, utilities, etc.)
• Estimated monthly revenue

If possible, your budget should cover the six months’ worth of expenses to make sure your company has enough time to branch out and establish an initial customer base.

Assemble a team of prospective local talents

Like all other companies, your startup will probably heavily rely on outsourcing and foreign labor. Still, if you want to truly make an impact on the regional market, the core of your company should be comprised of prospective talents with good connections in the local business community and excellent knowledge of the local climate. Also, assert strong leadership and fill in the senior positions with people who will be able to inspire loyalty, lead by example, keep an honest, transparent relationship with lower-level employees, and take into consideration the specific needs of the local labor. 

Look for the support of the ex-pat community

Although you should avoid making your future company needlessly “ethnic” or oriented towards a narrow audience, spreading the word across the ex-pat community and making it a launchpad for your future efforts does seem like a natural move. Depending on the time you have spent abroad you have a reasonably developed list of contacts you can leverage for securing financing and establishing your initial customer base. It only takes a couple of clever guerilla stunts, strong social media calls to action, referral strategies, and similar marketing moves to turn this narrow pool into a fully developed customer base.

These few examples should give you a general idea about the obstacles you are going to experience when starting your future company and hopefully outline the steps you need to take to avoid them. Moving abroad always presents an excellent opportunity for a fresh start but the life of an expatriate also comes with various challenges. The success of your company will depend on your ability to find a path between these two extremes.

While field service is as old as the business world itself, there’s been a massive expansion of the field service management industry lately. At this rate, it is expected that the field service management market might reach $5.1 billion by the year 2025.

The reasons behind this sudden boom are quite numerous. A good field service allows businesses to meet and exceed the expectations of their customers, reduce operational costs, and become more competitive. With all of this in mind and without further ado, you should definitely be aware of several benefits of field service automation.

Higher Level of Professionalism

Response time and adequate feedback are key factors in determining your perceived level of professionalism. There are other things that come hand in hand with field service automation, like giving everyone the type of treatment they deserve by automating the process itself. You see, once this type of process gets automated, it becomes far more systemic. By being thorough in your field interventions, you will be deemed as both more professional and attentive.

Digitalization, alongside automation, also leads to the availability of information on any location. If all the data – including the customer ticket, can be accessed in real-time by the field team, they’ll be more informed, and their actions on the spot will be far more effective. This will be evident even to your clients. As an end result, your company’s representatives (in this case, your customer support and your field team) will seem more competent.

Resource Optimization

Highly accurate field services will inevitably lead to much greater resource optimization. With better response time and route optimization, the fuel economy of your field teams will get a noticeable boost. It’s not just about the number of resources spent but the utilization of available resources. This too is something that great field service automation can help you with.

Second, the fact that the diagnostics will be automatic, your team will carry all the necessary equipment for the task at hand. This means that there’s a reduced likelihood that a repeat trip will have to be made. In other words, operational costs involving work-related commutes are far lower. Most importantly, this reduces the time between the client reporting the problem and your field team resolving it, resulting in a massive reputation boost.

Superior Coordination

Your field teams are just a tiny cog in a much greater machine. In order for your field team to do their job, your management, supply acquisitions, production team, and customer support need to do their job as admirably as possible. In other words, a lot of things need to come together in order for field service automation to give the desired effects. With field service automation, this becomes a lot easier to achieve.

One of the reasons behind this is the fact that the majority of field service platforms are cloud-based. This means that your field teams and those coordinating them can access the data they need and edit tasks from their personal devices. This global access makes communication, cooperation, and coordination much organic and nips the majority of logistical issues in the bud.

Greater Customer Satisfaction

One of the first benefits of field service automation is that it provides a much quicker response. As a result, you get better customer satisfaction. Sure, your field team might not be available right away, but just by providing your customers with an accurate ETA of the team, you’ll already ensure a great start. Adding to this, field service automation usually implies better diagnostics, and the successful resolution of the problem becomes even more likely.

There are several reasons why customer satisfaction is so important. First of all, it’s essential for your word of mouth (WOM), including the reviews and ratings you receive online. Second, it builds up customer loyalty. After a single successful interaction, 27% of customers are bound to return. If they’ve had a positive previous experience, chances are that they’ll come back for more. Even more importantly, 20% of your regular customers make as much as 80% of your profit.

Record Keeping

In order to improve your field service, you need to have some data that you can start working with. For instance, you need to have an estimate of the average time it takes your team to get to the target destination, the average cost of the intervention, and some specific feedback about these operations. Remember that a single intervention might not be representative, but you can start drawing conclusions once you have enough data.

Another benefit of field service automation is that it makes storing client history easy and systemic. In fact, when using the right field service automation tool, you can rely on this data to be delivered on-demand. This means that the next time you have to “activate” your field team, they’ll have the previous client data available, which will make this intervention more effective. Moreover, it will help them boost customer satisfaction even further (by giving the client what appears to be preferential treatment).

Insight Into Field Teams

For a lot of entrepreneurs, the question of what field teams do when they leave your premises is no short of a mystery. After all, while you can monitor your staff members personally or by using a remote employee monitoring software (remote workers), it’s quite difficult to make an estimate of the work done by a field team. With the help of field service automation tools, even this is made possible and with much better KPIs.

The majority of these tools have GPS trackers pre-installed, which is necessary, seeing as how fleet management is one of the essential field management aspects. Other than this, the above-mentioned reporting and record-keeping system also do a great job at improving your evaluation efforts. The collection of on-field data with mobile devices carried by your field teams will further enhance your ability to develop a much deeper understanding of the work they do.

Everything On a Single Device

Finally, in order to get more control, you want to centralize your workplace. This can be quite hard when a part of your team is in the office, some are working remotely, and you also have a field team. The collaboration tool might be the right way to go, but field teams definitely need the support of their own. This is why, while you want to keep everything on a single cloud-based platform or collaboration tool, you also want to have service automation software.

Most importantly, you need to adopt a new mindset when it comes to field service automation. You see, when accessing all of these platforms from your mobile device, they are all just a click away. In other words, you don’t have to keep everything on a single platform. Having it all on a single device is good enough. This is especially true if you already use private IM tools to communicate with some of your team members.

In Conclusion

In the end, field service automation is crucial for both your branding and your operational ability. As such, finding a way to improve it and make it more efficient is bound to result in the improvement of your overall business efficiency. While there are a lot of specialized tools to help you out, it is also important that you put field service automation as a priority when restructuring your organization. This way, the results are bound to follow.

Printing stickers for your business or art is a quick and relatively cheap way to get your brand out there. Customers and clients love getting stickers and putting them on laptops, bags, or even cars to show their support. But a sticker needs to be designed well for it to succeed in the marketing world. If you’re looking in the L.A. area for stickers on-demand, you’ll want to have a ready-made sticker to print. Here are a few design tips for your stickers.

Use Different Shapes

Stickers typically come in two shapes, square or circle. And while something a little off-shape, such as a diamond or oval, may work to catch the eye, non-standard forms work better. Attention is drawn to the unusual, so making a sticker with a unique shape will get your sticker seen more.

If you have a mascot, or your art is of a person or animal, design the shape of your sticker around the shape of your subject. The curves and contours of the art will make the sticker stand out and will invite fun placement on different objects. In a sea of 90-degree angles and perfect circles, your unique shape will stand out.

Keep Font Readable

Nothing is worse than having to squint or tilt your head to read something. Stickers are, by nature, small and already a little difficult to see if there’s text. But using a font that is hard to read or doesn’t allow for more than two words without getting all squished together makes for a terrible sticker design.

If you’re using text on your sticker, either as a full quote or just your/your company’s name, make sure you pick a font that is legible and easy to read when small. It’s best to steer clear of any overly decorative or curvy fonts unless you’re only using one word or your text makes up the majority of your sticker design. Using simple and clean fonts helps your sticker stand out and gets your message read.

Maintain Color Coordination

Chances are if you’re making stickers, you’ve already got a brand for you or your company. Which means you have a logo and most likely a website. This means there are colors and designs already associated with your brand. If you’re printing out any marketing material, you want to make sure you keep cohesion with the rest of your brand. Printing out a lime-green sticker may seem like a good idea to attract attention, but if your logo and website are dark blue and silver, you’ll lose the connection, and your sticker won’t be recognizably yours.

Getting your stickers printed on demand is an excellent tool for keeping up with your marketing. But if your sticker isn’t designed well, it can be a futile effort. By utilizing unique shapes, with readable text and colors that match the rest of your brand, you can make quality stickers that represent you and your company.