Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

Outshine the Competition with Customer Service

Jo Ann Joy, Indigo Business Solutions

One of the most important things that can set you apart from your competition is giving better service. Better service means that you have a genuine customer-friendly attitude. You view your customers as the most important part of your job, and you sincerely respect them and appreciate their choosing to do business with you. A customer-friendly attitude means that communicating and establishing customer relationships are really the essence of your job. You can make a customer a friend or an enemy for life in just a few minutes. Every moment of customer contact is vitally important.

One of the most important parts of customer service is your telephone response and personal contact. When a customer calls your company on the phone and the telephone rings ten times before someone picks it up, your company has already made a bad impression before any business was transacted. These contacts are simple and quick, and they are moments of truth for the customer. Customer contacts are opportunities to create positive impressions and they include the following:

1. Answer the phone with a greeting before identifying yourself or your company. Start the contact the right way and create a good first impression.

2. Be aware of your facial expression when a customer approaches you. Always smile to give customers the impression that you are delighted to see and to help them when they approach you.

3. Never take a customer complaint personally. Rather, think of a complaint as an opportunity to get valuable feedback from your customers and improve your relationship with them.

4. Always offer options if you cannot give customers exactly what they want. Customers can accept a “no” if it is softened by alternative recommendations.

5. Never transfer a customer to another extension until you are sure that the other person is available and will give full assistance to the customer. Always stay on the line until you are certain that the customer’s needs are being handled and questions are being answered.

Customers love the companies that treat them the way they like to be treated every time they have contact with the company. Customers will choose these companies over competitors even if they have to pay more to obtain their products or services. Be sure that every employee that has customer contact is well-trained in the best ways to provide excellent customer service.

The future of your business starts here.

Jo Ann Joy is the CEO and owner of Indigo Business Solutions, a legal and business consulting firm. Indigo Business Solutions is a “one stop shop” for small businesses. We differ from other business consulting firms, because we offer comprehensive legal and business counseling. We can offer most of the professional services that a business requires. We work with our clients to develop strategies that create value and competitive advantage.

Related Topics: Branding, Customer Service, Leadership, Marketing, Small Business    1 Comment    

How to Beat Richer Competitors

Andrew Trinh, Trizle

Imagine the multi-billion dollar behemoth known as Google going after your customers. Think you can compete? Most would say no. Our answer: just take a look at Technorati.

Kicking a behemoth’s butt doesn’t take a million.

Technorati started in 2002. It took two weeks from paper-to-launch — relatively mega-cheap labor. Three years later, the multi-billion dollar corporation (Google) goes after its customers.

Yet, it doesn’t cause a dent in Technorati’s explosive growth. Technorati built a loyal following among key bloggers, and created a vibrant community among the blogging generation. That creativity sustained the company against deeper threats.

(And no it wasn’t first-mover’s advantage. Technorati came on the scene after other startups had started something similar.)

“Just admit it: You suck.”

If people are crying over guys with deeper pockets knocking on their doors (e.g. just Google the “Wal-mart sucks” topics), it’s not that they’re losing because they have less money. They’re losing because they suck.

That is, they can’t find innovative solutions to overcome their lack of funds. They lack ingenuity. If the bootstrapping Japanese clobbered the rich Americans in the 80s with minimal funding, you — as the cheesiest motivational tip goes — can do it too.

The one sweet tip:

Stretch that dollar.

Companies that suck think like nerdy-timid-Bobby-boy-in-need-of-a-date before a prom, but thinks “he’s not good enough.” Companies that win think like confident-bad-looking-Charles: “Let’s ask out the hottest girl in town.”

When you’re small, have ambitions of a million-dollar company. When you’re a million-dollar corporation, have ambitions of a billion-dollar corporation.

Companies that falter use their resources apathetically.

There’s no spunk. No creativity. Just junk. Says LBS’s Garry Hamel:

“Western companies focus on trimming their ambitions to match resources and, as a result, search only for advantages they can sustain.”

By contrast, Japanese corporations leverage resources by accelerating the pace of organizational learning and try to attain seemingly impossible goals.

These firms foster the desire to succeed among their employees and maintain it by spreading the vision of global leadership. This is how Canon sought to “beat Xerox” and Komatsu set out to “encircle Caterpillar.”

Take a look at every-idea-that’s-existed-in the history of mankind: All ideas funded by major powerhouses have been disrupted by lower-cost competitors.

Starbucks had no bling.

When Starbucks started, it didn’t need Super Bowl commercials. It didn’t need loyalty programs. It didn’t need to spend millions building the billion-dollar empire it is today.

Instead, they took a different route: igniting employee loyalty through health benefits, a free fresh pound of coffee per week, sweet stock options for all, and majorly-ambitious-ethical-standards with its suppliers.

“Using the best of our resources” sparked Starbucks.

It doesn’t take a million to build something awesome.

It takes more than daddy’s pocketbooks to build a great, sustainable business. It takes creativity. Ingenuity.

A template for ya: No excuses.

Andrew Trinh is a contributor to www.trizle.com which features Trizoko, a daily business journal based on real studies, which empowers their clients and company-builders like you.

Related Topics: Branding, Leadership, Marketing, Small Business    1 Comment    

5 Things Everyone Should Know About Branding

Rob Marsh, COO Logoworks

For the past ten years, branding has been a hot topic. Experts have written thousands of books and articles, and presented hundreds of workshops that detail what it is and how to do it. Want to create an iconic brand? There are several books that can help. Want a legendary brand? There are books for that too. How about a guerilla brand, a techno-brand, a digital brand, an emotional brand, a simple brand, a primal brand, a luxury brand, or a successful brand? The list is almost endless and there’s a book or seminar telling you how to create all these and more.

If you’re like most small business owners, you simply don’t have the time (or desire) to sort through it all. So if you’re not a branding expert, is branding something you should even worry about?

Absolutely.

But probably not in the ways you might expect. In order to explain what that means, let’s answer a few of the most common questions business owners ask branding.

1. What is branding?

You’ve probably heard the Indian folk tale about the five blind men who were asked to describe an elephant. One man took hold of the tail and said the elephant was like a rope, frayed at the end. The second man held the elephant’s ear and described it as a thin, leathery fan. The third felt the thick, rough skin of the elephant’s leg and said it was like the trunk of a tree. The men holding the trunk and tusk offered different descriptions of what an elephant was. Of course, they were all right—and all wrong.

Branding experts have offered different descriptions of branding and the best ways to do it. Often they, like the men touching the elephant, are describing the different parts of branding. Designers talk about branding as it relates to the logo and trade dress (the look of the packaging and store). Most advertisers think about branding as it relates to television and radio commercials. An Operations Director, Technology Manager, Customer Service Agent, and Salesperson will all have different opinions of what branding is. So how do you bring all these parts together into one whole?

Simply put, your business is your brand.

Said another way, your brand includes all of the elements that make up your business. It starts with your product or service, but also includes your logo, your store front, your delivery vehicles, the person who answers your phones, your return policies, your service guarantee, your advertising, your partners… you get the picture.

2. I have a logo. Isn’t this my brand?

Your logo is the most recognizable element of your brand. Because of this, many people use the two terms (logo and brand) interchangeably. There is no doubt that a great logo helps customers remember and recognize your product or service more easily. But your logo is simply a graphic representation of all the other parts of your brand—it’s visual short-hand for all the great things your business does. The logo is important, critical even. But it isn’t your brand.

3. Does branding require a big marketing budget?

While money definitely makes it easier, great branding doesn’t require deep pockets. But it does take thought, a bit of creativity, and a willingness to try different things. When Geek Squad founder, Robert Stephens, started his business, he needed a way to stand out from all the other guys providing a similar service. So he bought a unique car and wore a short-sleeve, white shirt and skinny, clip-on tie. And he focused on delivering one-of-the kind service (including little details like returning calls within a few minutes and taking off his shoes as he entered a home). There were dozens of other consultants offering similar services, but Stephens stood out. His customers remembered the service, the unique uniform, the black and white car, and—this is the important part—they called him again when they needed him. Today Geek Squad is a big business, but it wasn’t too long ago that Robert Stephens was a small business owner with no budget and a creative idea for making his business stand out from the crowd.

4. How do I get people talking about my brand?

There are as many answers to this question as there are business ideas. Again, it takes creativity and a little work, but there are literally thousands of ways to do it. The very best way? Have a great product. This is exactly how Bear Naked Granola grew their tiny business—by using all natural ingredients, they created a terrific tasting product (my mouth waters just thinking about it). As more people tried and loved their product, they told their friends and family, who bought a bag. When these new customers tried it, they loved it too, and told even more friends. Starbucks did something similar by creating a unique experience around a cup of coffee (yes, Starbucks is big business with big budgets today, but it wasn’t too long ago that it was a four-store chain with a new idea about how coffee should be served).

Of course, you can try things like contests, special offers, and PR events, but gimmicks don’t last long. If your product isn’t better than your competitor’s, or if you don’t offer a service or experience that is different in some way, you will always struggle to get people talking about your brand.

5. What are the most important things to remember about my brand? Always remember you are constantly building your brand, whether you do it consciously or not. The decision to hire (or not) a customer service person with bad grammar is more than a service decision, it’s a branding decision. Choosing to raise or lower prices isn’t just a question about margins, but about branding. How you keep your store, how you treat your customers, the products and services you offer—these are both business and branding decisions. You are always building your brand.

Now back to the question we asked at the beginning of our discussion: Is branding something you should worry about? Again, the answer is, “absolutely.” But it doesn’t require stacks of books or attending branding workshops. Instead, it takes thought, a little creativity, and consistency over time. By thinking about your business decisions as branding decisions, you take a more active approach to your brand. And that will help you attract new customers and stand out from your competition—which ultimately may mean finding real business success.

Do you have a small business branding success story? Tell us about it and we may feature you in a future edition of this newsletter. Email your story to Richard.oto@hp.com

Rob Marsh is the COO at Logoworks by HP and author of the Brand Story Blog.

Related Topics: Branding, Design, Graphic Design, Marketing, Small Business    No Comments