May 14, 2008 at 1:14 pm · Filed under Commerce World
SHOW YOU CARE
Find a way to give the customer what they want.
The customer is always right - this is really about an attitude of mind. Even if the customer appears really unreasonable, listen to them, hear what they have to say, paraphrase your understanding and find ways to go for a win-win. The customer wants to feel listened to and valued. Listening, reflecting back and letting it be known that you do really want to help, goes a long way to meeting customer needs.
AT THE FRONTLINE
Staff need to know that as well as accountability they have responsibility, the power to make decisions without the continuous need to refer up the line.
Frontline staff, particularly ought to have a very pleasing manner, in tone of voice and a welcoming manner. They are the `face’ of the organisation and very often are the first contact point between customer and organisation. If you are a company where repeat business is important, then having a customer for life is much more important than an individual exercising their ego and then that customer is lost to the organisation, usually forever.
EXCEPTIONAL KNOWLEDGE
Know what you are talking about. There’s nothing better than speaking to a service or product provider who knows exactly what they are talking about. Able to delight the customer by going the extra mile and providing information that enhances the customer’s experience of your company is a great way of keeping customers interested in your company.
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Within a couple of days (at the most) of delivering the service or product, check the customer is happy with what they have received and check if there is anything else you can do to help them. People really do appreciate this, it gives them the feeling that they actually do matter to your company.
CUSTOMERS KNOW BEST
Ask customers what it is they need from the service; find out how the service can be improved. They are in receipt of the service/product and they know. This is probably one of the best pieces of market research you could do. Once you ask customers though, it is really important to act on at least some of their recommendations and let them know that you have by providing them with feedback.
GET BUSY SOLVING CUSTOMER PROBLEMS
Do this quickly, as far as possible at the first point of contact. People tell more people when they are dissatisfied with your service or product than when they are satisfied and the worse thing about it is, even if the customer does not complain to you they will complain to their friends, family, colleagues, and the dog, anyone who will listen. Then you have not only lost that customer, you have lost all those others as well because if they have a choice they won’t risk using your company for fear of the same treatment.
As well as being known as a company that provides an exceptional quality of service, getting busy becoming known as a company that when things go wrong, there is no quibble about putting it right.
Everything I have written so far can be summed up as GOING THAT EXTRA MILE; people will remember that your company went out of its way to help them.
Do you know someone who would be interested in reading this article? Then do please feel free to email it to them.
I am Hyacinth Fraser - Trainer, Consultant and Coach. Please do take the time to read my biography. I am happy to help with any further support, guidance and facilitation. Please contact me at motivationallearning@yahoo.co.uk
I am a Master Practitioner of NLP and a Master Hypnotherapist.
Hyacinth Fraser BSc, M.A, Managing Consultant
Hyacinth, independent consultant/trainer for fifteen years. Highly regarded and ensures that her training is informative, exciting and presented in such a way as to ensure that all learning styles are catered for. She is more than happy working with personnel at the highest levels in the private, public and voluntary sectors, up to and including members of the board as well as front line staff.
Hyacinth has a proven track record and a particular interest and expertise in design and facilitation of Action learning sets, Career counselling and outplacement programmes, Customer care, Personal Effectiveness for women, Mentoring skills, Team building, communication skills and diversity awareness.
Hyacinth has worked within a number of large public sector organisations, including: Home Office, Probation Service, DfES, Department for Transport, CPS, OfCom, NICE. She has also worked with a number of local authorities including: Croydon, Greenwich, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Lambeth,Lewisham, Merton, Southwark, and Waltham Forest
May 3, 2008 at 3:54 am · Filed under Commerce World
Over the last few years, a lot of people have discovered the profit making potential of the affiliate program called Clickbank. At the same time, other folks were discovering the profitability of selling their useless stuff on eBay and still more people found that by placing enough Adsense ads on their website, they could bring in a good bit of extra money every month. Peanut butter is pretty good, and chocolate is even better. But together they create a delicious taste that is more than the sum of its parts. In a sense, 1+1+1=5. This formula can also work in regards to making money.
Dave’s Cool Little Website
Dave Purves was the inspiration behind this idea. It was Dave’s Cool Little Website that showed us all the awesome power of combining multiple affiliate programs to multiply the profitability of any given website. So without further delay, let’s dive in to learn how to build our own cool little profit cranking website!
There’s Power In Numbers
Individually, you could make some pretty good money from Clickbank, eBay or Adsense. But why stop there? What if you were to create your very own website with all three components built in? You would be making three times the money with only one times the effort. Let’s outline the four things you’ll need to get into business.
Master Of Your Domain
The first thing you’ll need is a domain name and hosting. Try to think of a theme that you’d like to base your website on such as “elegant antiques” or “home stereo equipment”. Once you have a theme, go to goDaddy.com to see if you can get a domain name with those keywords in them. If you can, you’re in a good position to start from. goDaddy.com also offers hosting so if you like, you can make a one stop shop.
Clickbank Profits
Next, you’ll need to get a free Clickbank.com account. This way you’ll be eligible to make money on any of their products that you place the applicable links on your website for. They’ve got about 5000 products in their Clickbank Marketplace at any one time and thousands more that aren’t listed. All you need to do is go to their marketplace from the link on their homepage, and do a search for your theme keywords. This will give you a great selection of products that match with your theme. You have picked one haven’t you?
Don’t Spend On eBay - Earn!
Up next, you’re going to go to cj.com to get another free account. It’s Commission Junction and they are the official affiliate management company for eBay. Once you’ve signed up and hooked in with eBay’s affiliate program, you can get a powerful piece of code from them to drop into your website’s HTML code. This will show eBay auctions on your website. Every time someone buys something through your website at eBay you make a commission. You can choose to show products from a specific eBay category, or products matching a selected phrase. The second one is the one I recommend as you can once again use your theme keywords again.
Extra Cash With Adsense
Finally, you’re going to sign-up with Google Adsense at adsense.google.com. Now, I do recommend that you have the rest of the website already set up before you do this because Google will use it to judge whether or not you qualify. It’s usually pretty easy to qualify as long as your website looks good, serves a purpose and doesn’t have any broken links.
Incorporation Of Your Articles
Once you’ve got all of these components together, it’s time to make as many webpages as you can. I recommend including some articles from any of the article sites that allow you to reprint their articles. This will help give you more content based on your theme. This also helps you rank better for your particular theme in the search engines.
You’ve Got Your eBay In My Clickbank!
Set up the homepage with a large eBay block of listings front and center, which you already should have from eBay’s affiliate program. Down the outside columns you should add themed links from Clickbank products, Google Adsense ads, and links to your articles. Include as many themed pages of Clickbank links as there are for your theme. If you want to, create other pages for other Clickbank links you are interested in promoting.
Anyway You Slice It, You Make Money
Once you’ve got the entire website together, you’ll have a profit pulling website that your customers will have a difficult time not earning you money on. If they click on an eBay ad and buy, you make money. If they click on a Clickbank link and buy, you make money. And finally, if they click on an Adsense ad you make money.
Multiple Streams Of Internet Income
If you can make money one way, why not make money in several ways? Don’t take my outline above as gospel. You could combine any affiliate program you know of on the internet into one website as long as you keep a specific theme. This will help your customers and the search engines from seeing just a big mess of links. This is how the big boys do it while marketing on the internet. One product or program will not make you rich, but by combining several you could be on your way to financial freedom.
Sound like a lot of work? Check out how you can get a website designed for you just like the one described above called Dave’s Cool Little Website.
Mark Mann has taken affiliate marketing to the max and works from home on the strength of his 20+ websites. Among them are his site on making money online and his ebook downloads site.
