Tag: customer relations

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SaaS Branding

Basic Pre-Launch Checklist: 5 Things to Double Check Before Going Live

on May 15, 2021

Before you land your first service contract or take your first product order, you owe it to the longevity of your business to double-check your pre-launch plans before even thinking about going live.  While it is true, a soft launch can help iron out a lot of the wrinkles, it’s still a good idea to review certain business details to make sure all the kinks are sorted before going official.

Launching a business is a serious commitment. It’s best to prepare for business success than miss details that could ultimately lead to setbacks or failure before you even get your business off the ground.  Here are a few basic to-do’s you may want to check before moving forward with opening, launching, and going live with your business.

Re-Check Your Business Name: This may seem like the most obvious advice in the book, but you might be surprised how many businesses crumble when they realize their business name, website domain, or business slogan is infringing on the preexisting presence of another business identity. You’ve likely done your due diligence and researched to ensure you’re not stepping on any existing business title-holder’s toes. But do yourself a favor and double-check your business name is clear of any competing conflicts before going live.

Get a Second Opinion on Branding: Too often an entrepreneur is so in love with their message or brand, they lose all objectivity. This could lead to big misconceptions from the public and bigger problems after going live. It happens to the biggest moguls in business. For example, Kentucky Fried Chicken once botched its famous bi-line, “finger-licking good” by mistakenly translating it in Chinese to read, “eat your fingers off.” Save yourself the embarrassment and costly mistakes by getting additional opinions about your logo, brand, message, and motto before going live.

Confirm You Are Compliant: Are you sure you’re licensed to sell your products in Alaska as well as Nepal? What about taxes, are you charging the right percentages? If you’ve hired employees, do you have proper OSHA certification for your business and the safety of your staff? You get the idea. Double-check your business is compliant with city, state, national and international standards before launching. There’s nothing worse than tasting the success of a business only to have it shut down due to noncompliance.

Review Your Business Website: If you’re like most trending startups these days, a huge amount of your visibility (and liability) comes directly through your online presence. That means it’s crucial to sandbox your business website to confirm everything is in tip-top working order.  Double-check your online order forms. Do testing to make sure the shopping cart works and payment transactions go through successfully. Check your contact page and confirm customers can message you easily to the correct email address.  Run a grammar check on all your landing pages. It might seem innocuous, but a sales page with even the slightest typos or grammatical errors can leave a bad impression which could mean the difference between a sale or a click out of your website. Have a neutral party do an audit on your business website so you can rest assured you are making the best online impression possible.

Check Your Backup Plans: Speaking of your business website, make sure you have proper backup systems in place. If you experience a surge of online customers during your grand opening, make sure your site host can accommodate a hefty amount of online traffic to your website.  Have a backup server or an external hard drive to back up all your online data so if systems go down, you have everything saved without missing a beat. If you have employees, make sure you have clear instructional manuals available showing them what to do and where to go in case of failures or emergencies.  Also, make sure you have financial preventative plans in the event of unexpected overdrafts, and always take measures to prevent cyber hacking with your financial practices as well as your online business transactions. 

All of these double-checking tips may seem like no-brainer tactics. That may be true, but you know how the old saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  When you take the time to double-check these business basics before you expose yourself (and your reputation) to the public, you can save your business a ton of time, money, and headaches in the long run.

SaaS Branding

Quality Customer Service Will Make You Stand Out

on February 18, 2018

The most effective way to get ahead of your competition is to set up high-quality customer service. The success of your business relies on the relationship with the customers. By building a great customer relations policy, you’ll manage to edge your prices above the competitors. Your customers will feel good when they visit your website or store, and they’ll keep coming back. Avoid defending yourself and your company, but learn from the customer’s feedback. Their opinion counts and you should try to adapt to their needs in order to grow. You can collect customer feedback from product feedback software. Take a look at the guidelines below, and start working on your new improved customer service.

Be available all the time

In order to build great relations with your customer base, it is crucial to be accessible. If you don’t have enough time for that, make sure to hire a customer support representative and they’ll be available for all questions your clients may have. Feel free to extend your accessibility. Your contact form should be available across different channels.

Start from social media, website, and email. Most of the communication will be done online, but don’t forget to provide people with your phone as well since some of them will prefer that way of communication.  As you increase channels of communication, make sure you increase the number of employees, so they can take care of everything in a timely manner.

Be quick in responding

People like to get the answer in a timely manner. Try to remember how contacting some companies can get frustrating. You really don’t need unsatisfied customers, so go ahead and make a specific business policies. For instance, determine the timeframe of 24 hours, and instruct your workers to stick to it. That means that every call or email must be returned within a day. Don’t forget to make that information public, so your customers can see it. With that type of transparency, your clients will feel respected and will wait for their service.

customer-support

Concentrate on your customers

Your client base is that one thing that keeps wheels turning. Your business will grow just in case you have great customer service.

Because of that, open your ears widely and listen what they have to say. Sometimes, you will hear something you don’t want to hear but listen through all of it since there might be a thing or two you can learn. Avoid defending yourself and your company, but learn from the customer’s feedback. Their opinion counts and you should try to adapt to their needs in order to grow.

Improve weak points

Every company has its own weaknesses and so does yours. Put some effort into resolving the most common issues your clients pointed out. If there are more than 5 people who reported the same issue, you should slow down and try to take care of it. Set high standards for your firm and your staff. That way, everybody will know their job and get it done accordingly. In addition, try to be as much transparent as you can toward your customer base. Meet the needs of your clients even when they are wrong. You want them happy at the end of the day, and you want your revenue to increase. It’s a win-win situation.

Think about the big picture

Your business isn’t just your product or service, it’s much more. People like to spend money at the places they feel comfortable and happy. Because of that, you should improve the whole experience around your business. Your office will be busy during the day, and people in line should be entertained in some way. You may set up a little library, install a TV or even hire a photo booth as an additional way for your clients/customers to kill some time while waiting. Your customers will be happy with that kind of treatment and will be eager to continue doing business with you.

Educate your employees

The chain is strong as its weakest link. In order to make the strong and sustainable system, it is crucial to make some rules. Once you start hiring new employees, you should invest some time into their education. Present them with company policy and insist on sticking to it.

Of course, be flexible and modify it when needed. If you want to build great customer service, all of you must think as one. It is bad for the business if you answer the same question differently than one of your employees. This issue can be resolved with prepared templates which can be modified in certain situations. Nevertheless, engaging and motivating your frontline employees is crucial, since they have direct impact on customer experience. They play a big role providing an exceptional customer experience and insuring frontline workers are passionate about your brand vision and empowered to engage with customers is essential.

Final thoughts

Making a big and successful company isn’t easy and it takes a lot of effort and time. As an entrepreneur, you should be aware of all challenges you may stumble upon and give your best to resolve them quickly. As much as it is important to have high sales and healthy revenue, you shouldn’t forget that most important people are your customers, so take care of their needs all the time.

This post was written by Ian Pearson. Aside from primary area of interest and expertise in business consulting, Ian could be tagged also as a passionate sports fan, nature and photography enthusiast, always trying to keep up to date with tech innovations and development.