Every business owner should understand their approach when dealing with others can have a huge impact on success. Failing to deal with clients, customers and complaints in the right way could result in numerous negative effects on your company. With that in mind, you’ll want to start creating a plan immediately. Don’t worry if you’ve never had to deal with anything like this in the past, as most of the tips we’re going to give are pretty straightforward. It just takes a while to implement these methods, which is why time is of the essence. Every clients or customer you lose could tell two of their friends, etc.
Dealing with clients
Clients are other company owners or individuals to whom you provide a service. To win the biggest contracts, you must make sure you are the best business in town. You always want to present a confident and professional image at meetings; you need to know your stuff. Most potential clients will have a lot of questions about your operations and how the company is run. If you can’t provide them with detailed answers, you will almost certainly look like an amateur. For that reason, some people like to write a script and learn it before entering that sort of situation.
Dealing with customers
Customers are people who purchase goods from your business. Unless you exist in a niche marketplace, there will be lots of competition you need to beat. So, you should always aim to offer the best products and services at the lowest prices. You also need to make yourself accessible. It’s wise to write an emotive “about us” page for your website too. If potential customers believe they know something about your firm, they are much more likely to make a purchase. Asking people to sign up to your mailing list could be sensible if you regularly stock new products. Research shows that over 80% of business sales come from repeat customers. So, you need to have means of getting in touch with everyone who made a purchase in the past.
Dealing with complaints
The basic rule of thumb when dealing with complaints is that the customer is always right. Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to bow down to their demands, but you should always offer full refunds when anyone is dissatisfied with their purchases. The speed with which you deal with complaints is also important. Nobody wants to wait three days to receive an email reply from a member of your team. With that in mind, you should install a live chat feature on your website. On top of that, it’s a good idea to set up some telephone lines. There are plenty of firms that deal with overflow call handling services based in the UK, so you don’t need to worry too much if your team are busy.
Having read through all that advice, you should be ready to progress your efforts and achieve better results. The last thing you want is for customers and clients to jump ship and get into bed with the competition.
Image credit: Steve Wilson
