Socially Devoted

The Numbers are in.  How well did your brand do

http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/2220-socially-devoted-q2-facebook-is-the-platform-for-social-customer-care

The Art of Delegating, Part II

There is a danger with "open access" that you become too involved with the task you had hoped to delegate. One successful strategy to avoid this is to formalize the manner in which these conversations take place. One formalism is to allow only fixed, regular encounters (except for emergencies) so that Jimmy has to think about issues and questions before raising them; you might even insist that he draw-up an agenda. A second formalism is to refuse to make a decision unless Jimmy has provided you with a clear statement of alternatives, pros and cons, and his recommendation. This is my favorite. It allows Jimmy to rehearse the full authority of decision making while secure in the knowledge that you will be there to check the outcome. Further, the insistence upon evaluation of alternatives promotes good decision making practices. If Jimmy is right, then Jimmy's confidence increases - if you disagree with Jimmy, he learns something new (provided you explain your criteria) and so his knowledge increases. Whichever way, he benefits; and the analysis is provided for you.

The Art of Delegating

Delegation underpins a style of management which allows your staff to use and develop their skills and knowledge to the full potential. Without delegation, you lose their full value.

As the ancient quotation above suggests, delegation is primarily about entrusting your authority to others. This means that they can act and initiate independently; and that they assume responsibility with you for certain tasks. If something goes wrong, you remain responsible since you are the manager; the trick is to delegate in such a way that things get done but do not go (badly) wrong.

Communication

Communication

Effective business must succeed in all its aspects in order to both correspond to the newest market trends, and satisfy customers’ demands.

Therefore, among the most important and vital for any organization are:

• Internal communication - between management and employees
• External communication - between the company’s staff and clients, suppliers, vendors

Employee Theft

Prevent it

Studies have shown that employee theft and embezzlement cost the U.S. economy as much as a billion dollars every year.  And now, unfortunately for you and every other employer, current economic conditions and easy access to casino gambling are increasing employees’ temptation to take what does not belong to them.

Building Your Business

Jefferson Truitt

http://jeffersontruitt.blogspot.com

Entrepreneurs have to wear many hats when a business is just starting. Many things need to be delegated to others in order for the business to run smoothly and there are a few things that you must do yourself.  If you can create a habit of performing these 5 things every day, some for just a few minutes, then you will see your business grow right alongside your dreams:

1.       Plan for the future a few minutes each day.  Assume that your products have stopped selling all of a sudden. What direction will you take your company next? What new income stream can you add? This is a time for day dreaming and recording notes in preparation for the future. You don’t necessarily have to take action on these items, but you need to think about them daily in order to bring out the golden ideas.

2.       Work on your marketing in some aspect every day to get new customers.  If your prospective customers don’t know about you they won’t buy from you. Work on getting your message out every day even if it is just for a few minutes.

3.       Work on closing a sale every single day.  Whether you are doing this on-line, on the phone, through the mail, or face-to-face you need to be selling every day. Without the close of a sale there is no business. This is not something that you can delegate all the way. Even if you have a sales force you need to be out there looking for deals.

4.       Develop or strengthen your business network.  You need to join or create a business network where you can help others and they can help you back.  This is a great place to get free customers through referrals and an excellent mentoring opportunity using the mastermind principle.

5.       Contact your current customers. Don’t ever forget about the people that have already purchased from you.  These are your best customers.  They already like what you have to sell and they don’t cost anything to acquire. Contact your current customers frequently, even if you are just saying hello. They need to know what you have to offer and they need to know you are still breathing.  They won’t seek you out. You must go to them

Experience, Mistakes, and Failures

Michael Truitt
Jefferson Truitt
http://jeffersontruitt.blogspot.com

While experience can be a great teacher, learning from others' experiences,-- successes and failures-- can save you time, money and a lot of frustration. So when it comes to growing your small business, here are some mistakes you may want to avoid or fix.

Finding Your Way

How do your customers find you?  It seems like that should be a simple question to answer, but the reality is it can be tricky.  Potential customers have more and more options to find the products or service they are looking for – and it’s your job to make sure your business can be easily found.

Selling Yourself

You are on your way to the interview, and you know the question will be coming. It is the most feared question during any job interview. “Can you tell me about yourself?”

Verbal

http://jeffersontruitt.blogspot.com

Seven Steps to Protect Your Employees From Verbal Abuse

The saying is that “the customer is always right;” and most of the time this is true – except when it comes to verbal abuse.  Neither you nor any of your employees should have to deal with an abusive customer: it’s bad for everyone, not just for your business. You can protect yourself from this kind of unpleasantness, by implementing these seven steps:

Exceptional Customers

Customer Service Tips for Building Exceptional Customer Relationships

Tip #1  Study and learn the six behaviors: spontaneous, adaptive, defiant, controlling, nurturing, and reasoning.  Each behavior has its place and time.  Discuss when a behavior might be appropriately used and when it may lead to further complications.  When you understand how and why people behave, it helps to understand how a customer service situation may best be handled.

Tip #2  Practice the skill of avoiding hooks.  A hook is a behavior from a customer that may provoke you into behaving in an unproductive manner.  This is why it is critical for you to be able to recognize and identify the six behaviors both in yourself and your customer.

Tip #3  Modify the tone of your voice to fit the particular situation.  Your tone of voice for a greeting will be very different than your tone of voice for an apology.  Know that the tone of your voice should fit the most appropriate and productive behavior for the situation.

Tip #4  Choose your behavior.  While it isn’t always the practice, you can choose your behavior and control the choices you make.  You decide how you’re going to behave in any situation.  Choose the behavior that will provide the best possible outcome.

Tip #5  Care about the words that you use.  There are words that show that you care and words that reflect your indifference.  In order to provide exceptional customer service, choose words that are caring.  Replace “you have to” with “will you” and you change the entire tone of the conversation.

Improvement

A JT Blog
htt://jeffersontruitt.blogspot.com
Seven Tips for Improving Your Internet Customer Service

As far as businesses are concerned, the Internet is a living miracle because of the plethora of applications that the Internet offers and the number of opportunities it has created for making money.  Amongst these applications is the management of customer relations, which has made customer service so much cheaper, faster and profitable.

Weaking your Brand

A JT Blog

http://jeffersontruitt.blogspot.com

Though it is true that customer service is an extremely vital focus for your business, there are ways that customer service can make your business successful, as well as ways that may simply weaken the chances for achieving your goals.  Customer service is only beneficial when it is done correctly.  Otherwise it might work in the opposite way.

Foundation to Service

A JT Blog

http://Jeffersontruitt.blogspot.com

Building your Exceptional Customer Service Foundation

Here are 5 tips for building an Exceptional Customer Service Foundation.

Great customer service is essential to every business, and building a good foundation starts with teaching everyone on your team some basic tip.  Follow these 5 steps and you will be on your way to building a great foundation.

Impact

A JT Blog

http://jeffersontruitt.blogspot.com

Customer Service Tips that Affect the Impact You Have on Your Customers

Tips # 1      Identify the behaviors that irk you, your pet peeves, and then recognize that you may have some behaviors that irritate others.  Take the time to identify and eliminate those behaviors and your customers service skills will grow.

Complaints Into Profits

How to Turn Customer Complaints Into Profits

The first thing that most people think when they hear a customer complaint, is that it is bad for business, and future sales can be lost.  While this can be true, it is also possible to turn customer complaints into a profitable situation, with great possibilities for the future. 

The following are the 7 best actions you can take for making sure that your customer complaints turn into profits, not failures:

Improving Customer Service

A JT Blog – Improving Customer Service

Posted by Michael W Truitt in Customer Service

No matter how many people in your business, 1 or 1000, each person needs to feel their efforts matter, that they make a difference within the organization.

Empowerment – This term is a catch-all for many different concepts of employee power and responsibility.  It means employees are given the power to do their jobs and do them well.

Measure Your Service

Measuring your customer service allows you to manage it.  Without measuring, you won't have any way of knowing which goals are being met, which are falling short, and which areas you truly excel.

There are some extremely effective techniques you can use to measure the customer service provided by your company:

Words

There are words that are productive – words that care – and words that are simply unproductive and should not be used – words that don’t care.

Unproductive word should be avoided in customer interactions because they tend to produce undesired results, especially in a situation where the customer is already upset.  In fact, by utilizing the wrong words, you may actually be creating a larger customer service problem with your customer. By minimizing these words, however, you vastly encourage more positive interactions.

Attitude is Everything

Every day we have choices with regard to our attitude.  Attitude is everything, especially in customer service.