You do not have the benefits of looking at the customer and figuring out from subtle hints and clues that can help you to assist them in what they are looking for. You have to rely on other methods, which can make setting up customer retention policies more difficult when handling online customers. It is not however impossible to accomplish with a little creativity.
Blogs are a great way to communicate and reach your clients. They provide a platform for a wealth of media presentation options and can help keep customers up to date on what is going on in your business.
Using your blog to stay in touch and keep your product or service in the mind of the client is an easy thing to do. Blog software is designed to be easy to use, even if you’re a complete internet newbie.
Blogs have the added benefit of being naturally interactive. Readers can subscribe via RSS feed, and leave comments on your blog posts. This gives you the opportunity to engage your reader in thoughtful way while getting to know them. Encourage them to leave comments by asking direct questions in your blog posts. Post polls and surveys to find out what your client’s business needs are and how you can fulfill those needs. You can gather a lot feedback through your blog to help you improve your site and products.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Getting Started with Relationship Marketing Part 2
Getting Started with Relationship Marketing Part 2
Customer service training is one of the first steps to relationship marketing. Relationship marketing is all about customer retention. The best way to retain customers is to have great customer service whether you are the sole employee or you have a complete staff.
As previously mentioned, if you’re outsourcing your customer service tasks you’ll want to be sure to train your staff to follow the relationship marketing methods that you’re using in your business. You want to have consistency across the board in the customer service being provided to your clients.
Give your customer service staff plenty of resources to work with. Go over examples of situations that might come up and how to handle them. Provide them with FAQ’s and outlines to follow in the most common cases. If you’re doing most of your customer service via email be sure to provide them with email templates to use in their correspondence. This way nothing gets left out.
It’s also a good idea to make yourself available to your staff in case things come up that they can’t handle right away. You never know when a new problem is going to crop up or a site might throw errors. It’s also quite handy to provide them with the contact information for your maintenance person if you’re not handling site maintenance yourself. This way if the site throws an error or a problem crops up within the programming they can contact you right away, or better yet go straight to the maintenance person to have it taken care of in a speedy fashion.
Customer service training is one of the first steps to relationship marketing. Relationship marketing is all about customer retention. The best way to retain customers is to have great customer service whether you are the sole employee or you have a complete staff.
As previously mentioned, if you’re outsourcing your customer service tasks you’ll want to be sure to train your staff to follow the relationship marketing methods that you’re using in your business. You want to have consistency across the board in the customer service being provided to your clients.
Give your customer service staff plenty of resources to work with. Go over examples of situations that might come up and how to handle them. Provide them with FAQ’s and outlines to follow in the most common cases. If you’re doing most of your customer service via email be sure to provide them with email templates to use in their correspondence. This way nothing gets left out.
It’s also a good idea to make yourself available to your staff in case things come up that they can’t handle right away. You never know when a new problem is going to crop up or a site might throw errors. It’s also quite handy to provide them with the contact information for your maintenance person if you’re not handling site maintenance yourself. This way if the site throws an error or a problem crops up within the programming they can contact you right away, or better yet go straight to the maintenance person to have it taken care of in a speedy fashion.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Getting Started with Relationship Marketing Part 1
Relationship marketing is one of the little used marketing strategies when it comes to the internet. Unfortunately, many people are unaware of relationship marketing strategies as a result they are also unaware of the benefits that relationship marketing can have on their business.
Research is one of the first things that you should consider when looking into the different ways you can use relationship marketing in your business. Each business is a little different. One might benefit from phone based customer service while others benefit from blogging or email marketing.
Consider your target market and your product or service to decide which methods are best going to best benefit your business model. You may decide to use a combination of several methods.
Look around at similar products and services to find out what methods they’re using. Don’t forget to check out your direct competition to get an idea of what your target market is going to expect. Then go above and beyond that expectation to deliver the best products and customer service possible.
Once you decide which methods you’re going to use to, you just need to apply the relationship marketing techniques to those. Remember that if you’re outsourcing your customer service tasks you’ll need to train your staff to use these techniques for consistency.
Research is one of the first things that you should consider when looking into the different ways you can use relationship marketing in your business. Each business is a little different. One might benefit from phone based customer service while others benefit from blogging or email marketing.
Consider your target market and your product or service to decide which methods are best going to best benefit your business model. You may decide to use a combination of several methods.
Look around at similar products and services to find out what methods they’re using. Don’t forget to check out your direct competition to get an idea of what your target market is going to expect. Then go above and beyond that expectation to deliver the best products and customer service possible.
Once you decide which methods you’re going to use to, you just need to apply the relationship marketing techniques to those. Remember that if you’re outsourcing your customer service tasks you’ll need to train your staff to use these techniques for consistency.
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