"Management Musings-12":
"Tips for Successful Marketing-A":
1 In the information loaded Society act of simply finding you, can be a challenge to your customers and prospective customers. Therefore create awareness about you, your products, your location of operations. Example: 0ne internet service provider collects monthly charges from customers and gives receipt which doesn't bear address or phone numbers! If any query arises then where the customer shall contact? and to whom? Therefore ask yourself this simple question: Are you easy to find? yes or no.
2 The ultimate in customer satisfaction with regard to opening hours is to be open, when your customer needs you.
Example: Two-part banking hours morning and evening or 24 by 7 service.
Evaluate your opening hours based on customer needs, community relevance & competition, Regularity needs w.r. to you. Put yourself in customer's shoes and ask: Are you closed, when they should be open?
3 Best business practice is to answer telephone within three rings, worst practice is to allow it to ring 30 times. if you use a recorded message or software, please don't be irritating and test the patience of the caller.
4 If customers have to wait, make them clear how long will it take to give the service to them. Please don't laugh and keep them waiting for long time. Example: There was too long a queue at a bread shop chain and hence someone was so irritated that he wanted to go to the Chairman's office and wanted to scold him; he returns frustrated as he finds queue there was much longer than for the bread shop! The moral of the story is, making customers wait is to lose them ultimately.
5 In the marketing experience I had, I noted that company has stocks which they can't sell easily and they have many orders but for which they don't have goods' in stock and can't produce in time, what is required. The ultimate test is how accurate you are in judging the forecast of the demand.
6 The rules generally, an Organisation Makes for its customers are arbitrary and when analysed against reality, they make little sence.
7 Look at the all of your business processes that involve the customer. Analyse them, ask why are they done that way? Do they respect the customer needs more than the business needs? In reality it is always the other way round ! Please therefore, make sure that you make rules, procedures which are required and comfortable for the customer.
8 A lot of money is lost due to wrong kind of processes as well as things not being done correctly first time. A wrongly noted order, when gets delivered and executed, it frustrates ultimately the company due to lot of costs involved, as well as the customer would be irritated.
9 It is not a bad idea to make a call after the delivery to ensure everything is ok, instead of not calling at all and facing some problem latter on. Therefore please remember to cut the problem in the nip and other benefit is an opportunity to offer more.
10 There are various simple ways for easy payouts like checks, debit cards direct debit, financing through credit provider etc.
11 Make sure that obviously required extras are included in the price and let this be known to your customers.
12 If you state a delivery date and time, regard it as sacred & if you think by any chance you will fail to deliver, please alert the customer and inform him new definite delivery time.
13 What sort of guarantee do you currently offer? How does it compare with your competitors? Do you make these terms to known? How? Do you hide anything behind the fine print?
14 Be realistic about the need for the original receipt, people always don't save it, file it for every purchase. If there are other ways to to prove the Purchase be realistic, be kind.
15 Honour the customers who deal with you. It is very important practice to offer some rewards in cash or in kind, if the customer is important.
16 You can't begin to
compete unless you know what your customers exactly want. Produce a good quality product that fully satisfies the needs of the customers, find is it needed? does it work? does it provide incremental benefit versus competition? is it easily available?
17 Check your product before you put it in the box and dispatch. Failure outside is more costly and can cost you even the customer himself!
18 Go an extra mile attempt to worry about giving than getting. Turn satisfaction into the delight and keep it up.
19 Think always and continuously how you can improve your offering. Find out, what needs to be done. Keep record of improvements with dates, when they were initiated. Use thing as a way of your marketing Communications.
20 Dream the Impossible. Dream better than the best. Show respect for your customers, show that you do show respect.
21 Look at your standards, your practices, processes. Find out the best business practices, not necessarily from your own field and try to follow them.
22 Do you know what business you are in? If not, first find that out what are the basics, fundamentals of your business. Remember and follow them.
23 Don't hide but identify deficiencies and announce a fix up time table that you can live with and stick to it.
24 Easy way out is: The job is not done, until you have come up with really a good reason as to why the job was not done. Don't follow this and give excuses. Make a definite commitment and adhere to walk the talk.
25 Your own employees should respect your products. If this is not, find out the holes and bridge them without any delay. People making and selling a product not respecting it, is sure to bring about a disaster and failure for you one day or the other.
26 Listening to your customers is the best way of improvement. Be helpful to them. Understand their problems and attempt to solve them.
27 Make it easy, for customers to complain. Don't shy but invite complaints that would provide you mechanisms for improvement.
28 Attend to complaints seriously and most efficiently. Regularly analyse the complaints and find the reasons for each one of them.
29 Respect your your customers, find out how they can be retained & become loyal to you. Just niceness is not enough, what customers look forward to, are the results.
30 Make sure that they are cared for, make sure that customers always feel better and better. Don't take relationships as granted. It is worth to do an audit of your customer relations and identify any possible threats for the same.
31 Do everything you can to build up your understanding of your customer and your own relevance to their needs. Find what would they do if you were not there. Interview the last customer, find what problems were found & fix them. Ask them, if you can be given one opportunity to serve. Treat loss, as a way to learn and improve.
32 Step outside the box by changing the way you look at things. Look for parallels and analyse what are the customer expectations and perceptions based on?
33 For working out a strategy consider areas:
# Customer service.... Quality,
# Customer relations...business processes,
# Communications.....employee relations,
and
# Image.
Workout achievable objectives for above areas and achieve them. Align your such objectives in line with your functions.
KISS: hey Keep It Simple Stupid.
You must keep up with changes and challenges. For that you need to be continuously innovating.
Few more interesting tips in the next article....
Thank you.
Collected by
Sudhakar Natu
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