What happens when you own your own business and your customers become frustrated and move on? You fail, of course. That is something that every business owner must think about, as well as those that work in freelance. In freelance, you have repeat customers that can make up the bulk of your business. If you have to rely on new business to keep up and running, you are going to struggle. Repeat business is the key for all types of business endeavors, and that means thinking very hard about your customer retention strategy.

You know that you have to please your customers. That is the most basic premise of a good customer retention strategy. The problem is knowing how you to please them to keep them happy, and how to rectify things when they become unhappy. There are many facets to this and they start from the minute they walk into the door until they have gone home and enjoyed whatever it is that you have offered them. Customer retention strategy is going to be different in each industry or field, but the basics of it are all the same.

You can offer someone something substandard just to make a sale and make some money, but that is not good in customer retention strategy. You have to have something your customer is going to be pleased with. They have to think it is something they need rather than something they just want to have. That means thinking hard about inventory and how you present that inventory in the store. The rest of your customer retention strategy is not going to matter if you do not get that part right. Study successful companies and come up with your own ideas.

When customers are in your store, you have to know they are going to have a pleasant experience that they may not get anywhere else, or that is on par with what they get at their favorite stores. That can keep them coming back. Your employees must be friendly at all costs, even when they are feeling harassed. You should go over your customer retention strategy with them in detail and often. Make that a huge part of their worker review so that they think about that as they go through their day every single day.

You also have to be sure that if there are any complaints that they are handled quickly and to the satisfaction of the customer. This may even mean small losses for you, but remember that ticking just one person off can blow your entire customer retention strategy. Word of mouth about a bad experience can kill your business and your freelance career. Do what it takes to make everyone happy in all regards and your customer retention strategy is going to pay off in dividends down the road.

Many small businesses today realize the need of showing appreciation by providing client gifts. In the rush to produce quality work that meets with and exceeds client expectations, it’s still important to take the time to think of ways to show clients that their business is appreciated. There are lots of stock items that are available. Some businesses are based solely around providing promotional gifts to companies who in turn can pass these items on to clients. However, the challenge comes in thinking of truly unique and personalized client gifts that really convey appreciation and stand out as novel, useful and demonstrate the time that was put into selecting the gift.

Clients are used to being bombarded with lack-luster promotional items like pens, magnets and calendars. However, more forward-thinking companies are learning to go one step further by appealing to the individual interests of their clients. This can be conveyed by offering a variety of client gifts that demonstrate a personal interest in the client. Some examples of such gifts include tickets to a favorite sporting event (giving tickets that may be difficult to obtain or very costly), invitations to use private box seats at a variety of functions, providing gift certificates to popular restaurants or stores and even including clients in personal outings such as trips to the cottage, or to parties hosted on office premises or even held in homes. These sorts of client gifts up the ante and make your company stand out as original, thoughtful and willing to go the extra mile by showing a personal interest in clients.

In addition to personalizing client gifts, smart business owners will also show hospitality when clients visit their office space. Some nice gestures can include ordering lunch or brunch from a local favorite, offering home-baked goodies along with fresh brewed coffee, and by always remembering personal preferences such as a client favoring tea over coffee, any health problems that dictate a particular diet, or even remember a client’s soft drink preferences. These personal touches go a long way as far as client appreciation goes and definitely keep your company top of mind for the future.

Taking the time to record and remember your client’s personal information and preferences communicates to them that you are interested in them as people, and are not just looking to fleece them at every turn. This is how long-term client relationships are built and goes a long way in ensuring strong client relations, open lines of communication and positive business interaction.

There are many things that can make a business fail before it gets off the ground. Having the wrong type of product or service is an obvious reason for losses and ultimate failure. But there can be more to it. You could have the wrong hours, or be in a very bad location. This can happen even if your business is primarily online. You could have skimped on your advertising and no one knows that you even exist. One thing that can kill a small business is not having a good rapport with customers. You have to be good at building business relationships that last or you are doomed before you begin.

I once worked for a man that had no idea what building business relationships was all about. We lived in a very small area, but he had enough business to keep him open. He was making a decent profit for a while, but customers were talking, and people stopped coming. At one point, he alienated an entire union who from then on would not shop with him. He felt that his store was the best place to state what was on his mind without regard for others. This is not the way to go about building business relationships that are going to last. He closed shop soon after.

You don’t want to make the same mistake when building business relationships. You want to keep your personal life and opinions out of things. It is always ideal to be a bit personal with your customers, but you do not want to subject them to your ideas about politics, how to raise their children, or general badmouthing of anyone that they may know. They are not going to come back, and you can bet they are going to tell others of their bad experience. Building business relationships means knowing when to speak and when to hold it in.

Another key element in building business relationships that are going to be beneficial and last into the future is to be honest and take each complaint, no matter how small, very seriously. The saying that the customer is always right is around for a reason. Even when they are not right, you have to bend to keep them happy. That does not mean doing something to put yourself out of business, but you have to think about the consequences when dealing with any type of customer service issue. At times, this means biting your tongue and giving in.

Building business relationships that last is also about what you do for your community. If you become involved in things that mean something to those that are your main customer base, they are going to see you in a better light. You are going to attract new customers as well. You should by no means get in over your head with financial commitments that you cannot fulfill, but you should make an effort to help out, even if it means that all you have to give is your time. Building business relationships is an ongoing endeavor, but very easy to do if you know how to treat people the right way.

What Constitutes Good Customer Service?

Last week, my wife had to call our gas company because they had overestimated our natural gas bill by over $300 for one of our properties. As you can imagine, we wanted the bill to be fixed. When she called the company, she was met with some of the worst customer service that she or I had ever encountered. She was treated rudely, and as if she had no idea what she was talking about. Our bill was eventually adjusted, but it left us with a bad taste in our mouth. We are switching to all electric because we know we get good customer service from our local electric company. This isn’t a knee-jerk reaction, as we have dealt with the bad service for a decade and we refuse to take any more of it.

I believe what most people believe. Good customer service is a must or I will go elsewhere. Though there are some cases when it is obvious that the customer is wrong or things are not going well, but anyone who wants to retain business knows that you have to remain calm no matter what happens. Those who work in customer service know that when things get out of control, it is always a good idea to get management to move in before tempers are lost – and customers are lost as well.

All companies need to keep an eye on things to be sure their customers are getting good customer service, even when the customer is being difficult. Some even have repeat customers that give employees a hard time, but they do return because they are given a calm and serene response, even when they are irate for whatever reason. They can be hard to deal with, but they will return if they are getting great customer service. Money is money, and each customer does count, even if you are a large business with thousands coming in and out each day.

If you are worried about good customer service, no matter how many or few customers you have, you do have to keep an eye on things. You should take some time each day to see how your representatives are handling things, and be sure to have a solid set of guidelines and rules in place. Those that want to have good customer service must realize that not all reps can be perfect at all times, and that they need to have someone to call on when they feel they are losing control of the situation. If there is no one else, that go-to person can be you, as you have the most invested in being sure great customer service is occurring in your company.

Proper business phone etiquette is often a neglected area these days. But it is an absolutely crucial part of doing business – particularly for companies that do a lot of consumer service work. As a matter of fact, I’ve worked with clients who lost a great deal of money due to improper phone etiquette for business before they even realize that it was a problem. No one had really given business telephone etiquette any consideration. They assumed that, as responsible adults, their employees all knew how to talk on the phone with customers. They did not realize that there was more to it than that.

The biggest problem that they faced was a lack of formality, cordiality and proper business telephone etiquette. A lot of their secretaries were very comfortable being completely informal with all of their clients. Although this works for a lot of American clients, it is not a good general strategy – particularly when dealing with people outside the United States. Europeans, Japanese, and clients from many other countries tend to take proper business telephone etiquette more formally. They believe – quite correctly, I’d say – that you should not talk to someone in an informal tone unless you know them very well and are on equal footing with them.

Fortunately, it is very easy to fix problems with proper business telephone etiquette. There are a number of short courses, guidebooks, and other tools available to educate your employees on the rules of business. Proper telephone manners mostly involve assuming a set of rules. You call everyone, “Sir” or “Madame” until you have reason to do otherwise. You avoid colloquialisms or idiomatic language. And you always do your best to satisfy the demands of a customer. They are pretty straightforward, but it is a mistake to view the rules of proper business telephone etiquette as common sense. If you do, you risk having employees who don’t know the rules.

One of the best ways to prepare your employees for telephone etiquette in business – or for anything to do with business manners – is to use role-playing. By doing short meetings with employees several times, you can keep the rules of business etiquette fresh in their minds. You may have to remind them a few times because it is hard to break bad habits. So be patient at first. Eventually they will get it. Once they do, it will give your business a more professional appearance. It is worth the effort, and great for business in the the long run.

Advertising ethics should be the hallmark of all website marketers, especially if they want to be successful over the long haul.

Running a website business offers many advantages over running a brick-and-mortar only business. The first advantage is you don’t have the overhead of property leases and high utilities. Another key advantage is that you can automate many business functions. Furthermore, you can have a flexible schedule that suits your lifestyle. These reasons make it easier to enjoy your work. But nevertheless, one of the main reasons you’re in business is to make money. When you give good service and stand behind your promises to customers, you naturally meet with greater success. After all, the drawback of a web-based business is that your customers don’t typically meet you face-to-face. You must work a little harder to gain their trust and establish your credibility as an honest, ethical marketer.

Developing good advertising ethics requires that you generally adopt that time honored adage, “the customer’s always right.” Anyone who has worked with the public knows that dissatisfied customers can be unreasonable at times, but if you treat them with respect and treat them fairly, they’ll return.

For example, if you advertise a product with a money back guarantee, you’ve got to be prepared to stand behind that promise. There are people who will take advantage of such offers, but luckily, those “chronic returners” are rare. All it takes is one disgruntled customer to put a terrible mark on your reputation, even if they happen to be one of the “few.”

Let’s say you put up a page on your website, making an offer good through a certain date. You mistype the date, and your customer is misled, believing it’s good for an additional period of time. It’s your mistake. Even if you discover the error after publishing, good advertising ethics requires that you allow the extended time period. Why? If you modify the page to correct the date, what happens when a previous visitor returns to make the purchase? You must honor the offer as published.

In a case like this, you can try to earn yourself a few PR points and turn it to your advantage. You could insert a note, right above the offer, to let your customers know you goofed, but are still going to honor the offer. You may even gain more sales, because your visitors have mentally calculated that your advertising ethics must be pretty trustworthy. You didn’t have to honor it, but you did.

Just as with a single disgruntled customer, who believes they’ve been treated badly, can spread the word about with their friends and online message boards, a happy customer also tells others of your impeccable advertising ethics. Good news spreads as well as bad news.

Although we know there are some genuinely unscrupulous marketers out there, it doesn’t make much sense for a legitimate business person to not embrace a high standard of advertising ethics. High ethics will do your business good in the long run.

The second piece of bad news about Google hit the newspapers today. Yes, I meant physical newspaper. Sometimes you have to get your “facts” from places other than online. The news story said that Google would be laying off 300 employees. Imagine that, the darling of Wall Street plans to layoff people. This news followed a story a few weeks ago about Google earning less money on advertising because less people were clicking on their ads. I guess nobody is immune from this recession.

Maybe this is the start of Big G becoming little g. Maybe online advertising doesn’t work after all. Maybe the Internet is just a passing fad. Maybe the only good jobs will be at Walmart. Maybe… Whoa! Not so fast down this slippery slope. To the untrained eye, it may appear that Google is heading towards their demise. Let me assure you, though, that this is furthest from the “truth.” Here is my story from the trenches of online advertising.

Google spent time last year cleaning up the Internet. I have seen website after website being erased from the digital library that is Google’s index. Sadly, some of these websites included a couple that I own. They weren’t junk sites, mind you, but they were caught up in the sweep. As far as I can tell, they were getting rid of the junk out there — directory sites, made for Adsense sites, framed sites, redirected sites — anything that did not add value to the Internet according to Google. That was part one.

Part two began about six months ago. Google made it difficult for their Adwords advertisers to put up junk ads that led to junk destinations. I don’t claim to be an Adwords guru but I do know that when Google raised my bids to $5-$10 minimums, they don’t want me to advertise on their system. Why did they do this? Why did they bite off the hands of the advertisers who fed them? In their “Infinet” wisdom, Google wanted the same user experience on their advertised side as their organic side of search. This may cost them short-term revenue from lost Adsense and Adwords fees, as we have seen via their latest financial report, but in the long run, they stand to benefit. They are taking one step back to surge three steps forward. This will happen because the Internet will become a better place to search and surf again with less junk websites. If Google serves up less junk results, people will trust them more than say, Yahoo Search. With more people using their search engine, Google can eventually charge even more than they do today. More people and higher fees equals a bigger and fatter Google.