Thursday, July 28, 2011
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Promoting your Reviews on Facebook
Does your business have a Facebook page? You could be using your WOMOW reviews to show your Facebook fans how important customer service is to your business. It's a great way to give people more confidence in your service and convert browsers into buyers.That's exactly what Genius Printing has recently done. They've cleverly created a new "Reviews on WOMOW" page and loaded up their WOMOW Widget which automatically shows their recent reviews*.
They've also included the WOMOW Widget and "Review Us" button on the bottom of their webpages. Click here to see this.
“Imagine if on the door of every store, there was an LCD display showing the feedback from the last 5 customers. You would instantly be able to see what kind of service you're going to get,before you even walk in the door,” Rob from Genius Printing says.
“Our business is built on customer service and we’ve always placed a high emphasis on collecting and displaying customer feedback. With WOMOW, we’re taking this a step further by having feedback at an independent site that's trusted by consumers.”
To encourage customers to leave reviews, Genius Printing are now offering a 10% discount voucher to customers that post their feedback on WOMOW. And to increase their exposure on WOMOW and give people an extra reason to choose them, on their WOMOW listing, Genius Printing have included a special offer for all new customers.
This is a fantastic example of customer feedback becoming a true integrated marketing program. (I guess they're not named "Genius" for nothing!)Is your business integrating customer reviews into your marketing and promotions?
PS - Many businesses also use their new reviews as a chance to post something new up on their Facebook Wall. eg "Thanks so much for your feedback MarkS. So glad to hear you're enjoying your canvas prints. They certainly were stunning!" + link to the review.
* Genius Printing have created this page in Facebook using a static HTML app for facebook (of which there are lots). These apps allow you to create a custom tab, with standard HTML code. They've simply pasted in the WOMOW code for the Widget. You can also link to images on other sites and put standard text and other HTML in here.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Renew your Customer Focus: New Financial Year Resolutions
While other businesses are focussing on finalising accounts, setting targets, and reviewing expenses, we suggest that you turn your main attention to something that matters more than any of this - YOUR CUSTOMERS. Remember why you went into business in the first place? Most likely to serve customers and contribute something to society. And did you realise that the strongest predictor of a business' future success is their customer satisfaction levels? (Not how orderly their books are!)Here are 7 things to start doing right now...
Understand the Lifetime Value of Each Customer
Don't worry about perfection but get a rough understanding of the;
- Avg Order Value x
No. Times Per Year a Customer Orders x
No. Years a Customer Stays with You x
Average Gross Profit Margin x
No. New Customers Each Customer Refers
Provide Awesome Service
This goes without saying and is obviously easier said than done! But it's amazing how many months (or years) can go by without us stopping to think - "what could we change to improve the customer experience?" Block out an hour to think about how your processes, facilities, products, or anything else that could be improved.
Get Reviews and/or Collect Feedback
Remember the saying, "what gets measured, gets managed". Ensure you're either collecting feedback internally, or preferrably encouraging online reviews (you get all the benefits of internal collection plus the SEO and marketing benefits). This creates a feedback loop and keeps your focus on customer satisfaction.
Improve the Way you Handle Feedback
When someone takes the time to review your business, call with a complaint, or mentions you online, please show them some respect and respond! Even if their feedback is negative, you can often turn the situation around and a lost customer can become one of your biggest advocates. See our tips for responding to negative and positive reviews here.
Build a Customer Service Culture
Let everyone in your organisation know that each customers' experience matters. Keep the focus high by congratulating staff when they provide good service, celebrating good feedback (print out and pin up your reviews), and make customer service part of everyone's KPI's (even if their customers are internal).
Track Customer Sources
Being smart about customers requires knowing where they're coming from. This is usually as simple as asking each new customer how they heard about your business. Set up a field in your computer system, a column in your bookings sheet, or some other simple method. If it's too difficult to do in an ongoing manner, decide to spend a just one week focussing on this question to get a reasonable snapshot. (When Misty's 1950's Diner did this, she found that one-third of her revenue came from customers that had found her on WOMOW).
Keep Communicating with Customers
Once customers walk out the door, don't let them forget about you. Keep your business top of mind by communicating with them and showing them they matter. Send them a special offer, update on your products/services, information they might find useful, check on whether they were happy with your product/service, thank them for their patronage (maybe with a gift), or find some other excuse to keep in contact. If you don't already, collect their email address so that you can stay in touch easily. A fancy email newsletter is nice, but an informal message (that is quick to prepare) can be just as effective.
Customers are the whole reason for a business' existance - so keep your focus on things that actually have a positive impact on your customers.
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