Archives for November 2014
How You Can Provide an Outstanding Customer Experience
One of the best ways to keep your customers coming back for more is to make sure that they get the same high-quality experience every single time they come to your company. This goes way beyond just having a high-quality product or service â every element of your business and your interaction with the customer needs to be on point.
This “customer experience” also holds true for those prospective customers that contact or approach you about becoming a customer. Even when contacted by someone who you knjow is not the right fit for your business, even those who query you about a service you do not offer and yes even those . . . . . yes those . . . . Â anyway . . .
Here are some of the best ways to ensure your customers, and prospective customers, are getting a high-quality customer experience:
- Be responsive. Not only should you make sure to give thorough and accurate answers to all of the questions your customers have, but you should attempt to answer them as quickly as possible. Your
customers will truly appreciate you making an effort to answer their questions quickly.
- Personalize your communications. People donât want to interact with a brand, they want to interact with people. People do business with people. Make sure that customer service representatives are using names and that all communications have a personal element to them. People can tell when customer service is genuine and when people are simply reading off a script. They can also tell when you are being genuine and truly care.
- Be positive. Not to beat the âattitude is everythingâ clichĂ© to death, but itâs true â people just respond so much better to customer service reps that have a positive attitude. Positive vocal inflections, smiles, a willingness to help and saying âpleaseâ and âthank youâ goes a long way in creating good relationships with your customers. Never ever forget, those who contact you prospectively that you can't serve, have people they talk to that you can.
- Care about your customers individually. Treat every customer according to the uniqueness of their issues rather than simply handling everything âby the book.â Youâll be better able to solve their problems if you focus on their unique situation, and your service will come off much more genuine. And speaking of individually, lest we not forget that today's social media enables your reputation and personal style –Â spread quickly – yes especially through those closed groups that is really gossip behind the scenes!
- Use the three âA's.â The three A's are Ask, Agree and Apologize. Ask customers questions to learn more about how you can help them, agree with their complaint and show your understanding of how it makes them feel, and apologize politely for the issue at hand before taking action to solve the problem.
All of these tips sound rather simple, but youâd be amazed at how much of a difference they can make in giving customers a positive experience with your company. Businesses that follow these tips are much more likely to see repeat customers. Businesses that use these tips with prospective customers are rewarded in kind.
by Christine Kelly
CEO and Queen Bee | Viral Solutions LLC
Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.
Honest Criticism Can Be Invaluable to a Business Owner
One of the most common mistakes that leaders make within a business is surrounding themselves with âyes men,â people who agree with everything they say simply because theyâre in a position of authority. What you really need to be focused on as a leader is surrounding yourself with people who aren't afraid to tell you what they think. While you might not always like what they have to say, their advice could be exactly what you need to hear.
Itâs so easy to close ourselves off to this kind of advice. For many of us, we've worked to get to where we are in our careers from a very young age, and during that time we've probably relied on ourselves and our own hard work to find success.
While it can be kind of a shock to the system to get some harsh criticism of our work, having those experiences can make us better.
When I first started out as a full time worker, I was 17 years old and was still finishing high school without my parents or immediate family. Yet my first boss didnât treat me any differently than any other employee. When I made mistakes, he let me know. He didn't shy away from criticism. As a result, I learned to be much more open to accepting the input of others and to take business advice on hand.
I remember my first major mentor, Ben Ruby – I was 26 and in charge of managing over 80 employees and generating revenue of a $1 million per month. Ben was an ancient executive with an Ivy League pedigree. 
Both of us planted in lovely Norman Oklahoma! Ben's talent was to get you to open up to sharing ideas for change. Only to crucify you in the court of employee opinion. A decade later I learned that was not the style of most leaders.
We all need people around us in our business who aren't afraid to give us the unbiased facts about our business. People who are willing to go against the popular opinion if it means making changes for the good of the company. The more âyes menâ you surround yourself with, the less your business will be able to innovate the way it needs to in order to be a true success. You should come to truly value the opinions and advice of your colleagues and employees as the owner of a business. Make sure your company practices open and real communication, yes in the right forum, without penalty. You do not want your team always siding with popular opinion or belief.
You want a company culture where life is great and the team operates the company with pride and wonder. Where leaders are guides for the company's purpose. Where in-line managers reinforce the core values and teach, train, mentor, lead and evaluate the same.
If you'd like to take on a deeper understanding of the five stages of culture, I highly recommend “Tribal Leadership“ by Dave Logan. You can find a Culture Map here.
Discover your company's culture with Culture Sync's Culture Meter.  “Most leaders agree that culture is the critical factor in performance, but canât define it, measure it, or change it. As a result, the few organizations that get culture right seem magical, and people who try to replicate their success usually end up frustrated and cynical. Tribal Leadership shows two simple stepsâdiagnosis and then the best treatment that leaders take to build cultures that can do things most people think is impossible: out-innovating, outperforming, creating an immunity to scandals, and having mountains of fun in the process.” ~ Dave Logan
In the end, itâs your company. You have the right to lead it as you see fit. But the people you surround yourself with can help you to reach the heights youâve dreamed of in your business, so long as you choose the 
ones that have their sights on reaching those goals rather than appeasing you. Yes, the top of the org chart needs to have final say. Yes, when a decision is made those dissenting views need to fall in line for the better good of the whole. Great culture creates great businesses!
Copyright 2014 Viral Solutions LLC
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.
Facebookâs New People-Based Advertising Making Waves
Facebook has been at the forefront of marketing innovation for quite a while now, and a new advertising technology itâs been working on has been garnering a lot of attention within the industry.
They call it âpeople-basedâ marketing. The general idea is that you get to know your audience very deeply, even if you never actually learn their names or identities. With Facebook, the company has been able to 
gather data from its base of 1.3 billion users to specifically target advertising messages to those users. Now, the social media giant is preparing to share the way it accomplishes this to begin delivering ads on a variety of apps and outside of its own web presence through the form of its Atlas ad server.
Facebook purchased Atlas in 2013 and has made a variety of tweaks to improve its advertising targeting methods for companies looking to target specific demographics on Facebook. Now companies will be able to benefit from Atlas away from Facebook throughout their own marketing endeavors.
One media buying agency has already gotten started with Atlas. Omnicom Digital, which works with brands like Intel and Pepsi, has already started to test out the capabilities of the new marketing method.
While there will likely be some discussion about whether this is an instance of Facebook violating user privacy, itâs important to note that there are no individual identities disclosed through Atlas. The ad targeting is based mostly on large trends gathered through various types of data disclosed on Facebook.
Marketers that use Atlas currently can target based on some common demographic data, but as the service continues to evolve it could become more complex, leveraging some data based on peopleâs interests that they list on Facebook (which is how Atlas works on the social network). All of this is made possible through Facebookâs massive reach of 1.3 billion users.
Weâre going to continue to monitor the status of Atlas as it continues to evolve and get popular beyond the walls of Facebook. Contact us today for more information about people-based marketing and how you can get started.
by Christine Kelly
CEO and Queen Bee | Viral Solutions LLC
Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.
Important Metrics for Measuring Customer Satisfaction on Social Media
As social media marketing becomes more sophisticated, itâs important that youâre doing everything you can to track its success. Youâve probably heard all about engagement metrics, like âlikes,â âcomments,â âsharesâ and more, but these are all very surface-level metrics. How can you analyze your social media marketing campaign to make sure that your customers are truly coming away having had a satisfying experience?
Here are a few of the most important types of metrics for measuring customer satisfaction on social media.
- Volume metrics. Your inbound volume measures how many messages you get through social media, which will give you an idea of how many of your customers use social media as their preferred method
Automating the mundane, redundant and repetitive.
While building our business, we used many tools available from the software industry. Tools such as SalesForce, ACT!, Jeffrey Gitomerâs Ace of Sales, Excel spreadsheets and enough other items I could name â that right now are making me ill thinking about. We are business minds first. We found Infusionsoft as our solution to our problem. We have become Infusionsoft experts, by building our business with this amazing tool, our certifications only reinforce it. Infusionsoft is a type of sales and marketing software that helps owners of small businesses to track their leads and stay organized. We work with you to help you develop the best plan with your business and help you get set up with these services, optimize them to fit your needs and give you any other assistance you need to get started. You can either have us help you implement your Infusionsoft strategy or let us take the keys and do it for you.of communication. Your response volume indicates the number of responses youâve sent out. As your volume grows, you will have a better idea of when you need to allocate additional resources to your marketing and business efforts.
- Topic metrics. Analyze the amount of times your brand is mentioned without specifically including your social media account in the post. This could also include hashtags or uses of company slogans. You can pair this with sentiment metrics (which weâll discuss later) to get a good idea of how people feel about your company overall.
- Response metrics. How well are you responding to your customers through social media? Keep track of your average response time, the percentage of inquiries or comments to which you respond, the amount of time it takes for issues to be solved and other similar issues to make sure that you are meeting the needs of your customers and engaging with them efficiently and effectively.
- Sentiment metrics. These metrics are what key you in to how people feel about your brand. Look at your brand mentions and determine the tone of the messages. To give yourself some context as to how youâre doing within your industry, analyze some of the sentiment metrics for your competitors as well. See what theyâre doing right and what youâre doing wrong, and vice versa. You can also see what people say about your company when you prompt them with questions about how youâre doing, and measure whether those responses are different than unprompted responses.
These kinds of metrics will never tell the whole story, but they will add a lot of depth and insight to the surface-level engagement metrics youâre used to tracking. Let us know if you have any questions.
by Christine Kelly
CEO and Queen Bee | Viral Solutions LLC
Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.
How to Start Charging More for Your Products or Services
At some point, you may find that you have an opportunity in your business to begin charging more for your products or services. However, there are understandable concerns that youâll likely have â what if you have to dramatically change your product? How will existing customers feel about a price hike?
It is possible to begin charging more to improve your profitability without drastically changing your product offering.
The secret is in changing the perceived value of your product. Perceived value is basically the value that your customer places on your product and its importance to him or her. This is a completely separate idea than market value â instead, it measures how your customers feel your product satisfies their needs.
Therefore, if you can increase your perceived value, you have a better opportunity to raise your prices without causing too much of a stir. Here are some tips for doing exactly that:
- Add tiers. If you have more than one level of product, you can have more than one level of prices. You often see this in web hosting packages, for example â there will be a deluxe package, a basic
package and a business or âpremiumâ package that offer different levels of services for different prices. Depending on your type of product or service, this could be a good option for you.
- Get more testimonials. Testimonials and good reviews are more likely to make people buy your product, and people will be more likely to spend slightly more on a well-reviewed product than a product without any or very few reviews.
- Push your benefits. If perceived value has to do with the way your product or service fulfills the needs of a customer, then you need to make sure that your customers know exactly how your product does that.
- Give a guarantee. If you strongly stand behind your product or service, donât be afraid to give a satisfaction guarantee. This will make people more willing to give your company a try.
- Raise prices. Sometimes all you need to do to improve your perceived value to raise your prices is⊠raise your prices. Being the âbudgetâ option isnât necessarily the best marketing tool.
In addition to these tips, remember that you donât want to raise prices too much at any given time. However, these tips should help you to be able to start charging what you feel your product or service is actually worth.
Copyright 2014 Viral Solutions LLC
Watch out elephants! This slayer of business challenges comes with 30 years of record breaking sales, marketing, operations, training and leadership experience . He has worked face-to-face with 100âs of small business owners as well as large firms. His love of creating, communicating, developing and executing results for clients shines with each project, publication and training event. His entrepreneurial spirit, passion, industry experience, education, problem-solving prowess, charismatic personality and been-there-done that attitude leads his client focused approach.