Small business startup advice – SmallBusinessVoodoo.com

So Ryanair are considering charging passengers to use their inflight toilets. Have they proved that customer service really doesn’t matter after all, or will Ryanair have stepped beyond the pail on this one?

Ryanair’s latest wheeze to charge for their inflight toilets is the latest in an unofficial socio-economic experiment being run by the company. To what level can they continue to strip customer service out of the system before people will stop buying their cheap tickets? Just how badly do customers want to get to destinations for next to nothing? And, to be fair, it’s a fascinating experiment to watch.

At the moment it seems OK that luggage is lost, flights are cancelled without warning or recompense, grumpy tetchy service is endured, surprise charges at check-ins are standard, customer service lines are unhelpful and stampedes for boarding gates are the norm. Read more »

How strange that we small businesses so often forget to target customers as a priority when hunting for that elusive increase in sales turnover.

Yet statistics consistently show that the cost of gaining business through prospecting is anywhere between 3 and 10 times as expensive as increasing sales through current customers.

Armed with that snippet of information it would be odd not to address the issue of how to target customers to maximise sales.

Target Customers To Maximise Sales In 10 Steps:

Make sure that you work through these steps in sequence. It’s important.

1- 80:20…Prioritise. Always remember that 20% of your customers will provide 80% of your profit. Work out who they are and focus on them. Now target customers who are in your bottom 20%. Ditch them.

2- Customer service.  I’m not just talking good customer service. I’m talking mind busting customer service. Good won’t differentiate you from the competition. 80% of customer service is giving the customer what they want when they want it. 20% is the personal relation building, touchy feely bit. Get the 80% right first without fail. Then worry about the 20%.  And don’t forget to give your customer some fun while you’re about it. Read more »

Like it or not, handling customer complaints is part of life. In fact, customer complaints are great news. Why? 80% of customers don’t complain, they just don’t come back.

Handling customer complaints is one of those times when you really earn your crust. After all, managing the status quo is easy. But don’t keep the pleasure to yourself, train all your staff in handling customer complaints. This is empowering for them and gives a very mature feel to your business in the eyes of the customer.

So here’s handling customer complaints in 9 easy steps:

1. Mindset – Put yourself on the same side of the fence as your customer.  This isn’t a battle. Don’t take it personally, they hardly know you. Prepare for some great feedback for your company.

2. Validate the complaint – If you remember nothing else about handling customer complaints, remember this one. You are about to be verbally assaulted. The first thing you must do is ‘validate the complaint’. In other words, say something like: “Yes, I can understand that must be very frustrating”. You have just diffused 60% of their anger. A sympathetic tone is helpful. So is an apology. Regardless of whether you think your company is in the wrong or not. Read more »

“The customer is always right.” Right?

Wrong!

Customers are just people like you and me, none of us are always right (with the possible exception of my wife) so clearly this isn’t the sense in which Harry Selfridge, founder of the prestigious Selfridges department store in London in the early 1900′s, intended to focus his staff on customer service. A noble sentiment but unwittingly misguided and demotivating for staff.

What about if he had said Read more »