Anyplace Control Software Blog

Each day companies are losing their customers. There are a lot of reasons why customers leave, but recent surveys show that almost 70% of customers leave their service supplier companies because they felt undervalued. Most companies build their marketing and business strategy focusing on bringing in new customers. They spend a lot of energy, money, time and forces to get reach this goal, but almost always existing customers are forgotten. In a modern world companies are oriented on gaining a profit, but not to reach a warm and reliable relationships with customers.

Very often existing customers seems to be uninteresting to service supplier company anymore, as they have already paid for the service. This strategy leads to company's bankruptcy. Indeed, it is more valuable to have a life-time user, who pays less but constantly for your service then gain a new customer who will leave you because of lack of attention from the side of customer support department. Furthermore, this user will tell others about your strategy in blogs, forums, etc. You should make everything for customer to stick to your company like a glue. Trust me - you will win in a future.

There is a back side of a medal, when long-term customers are trying to reach more than they have paid for motivating of being already 4 years with your company. Surely you may have some discount promo-actions for those who are already e.g. 3 years with your company, you may provide your service free during 1 month for them, etc. But do not let customers to feel like they can manipulate you only because they have spent a lot of time being with your company. It is better to clarify from the first days of a deal what customer may get and which advantages he/she may achieve in a few years. It will save your time in future and protect you from long and unnecessary correspondence.

The other nice way to keep your customers is to make your web-site interesting for them. Make different videos of how your product works, how to operate it, etc.. Video manual will help your customers greatly. Furthermore - when your site looks attractive even a passerby will stay at your site to learn more about the service you provide. Surely your site should not look like a Christmas tree, but it should not scream SELL SELL SELL as well.

Customer loyalty program is an expensive, time consuming but extremely necessary thing to protect your business. Think about it.

Sometimes it is very useful to hold a survey  questionnaire among customers to find out their thoughts about your customer service. It will also help you to get an insight into the transaction between your support team and your company customers. Here is an example of a very general survey that can be used to get your customers' feedback. It is not a unique one, surely you may adapt it to your own needs, e.g. if you want to know more about your remote support team you may add other specific questions you consider to be informative.

There is no doubt that level of business failure or success is defined according to the customer's relation management quality. The highest priority of business nowadays is to ensure customers that the level of service company offers is of top quality. After ensuring this vital principle company may hope to get warm and strong relationships with customers over a period.

Meeting Basic Needs And Demands
Each customer management requires a provision for all necessary information that can be a vital one could be entered. Say such database can contain sales details, including preferences and requirements of the customer, time and dates when you need to contact customer to inform about e.g. state of solution development, special deals and promotions notes. All these details are taken in order to help customers support department or sales team to respond to clients in a timely manner with full customized info.

Promotion
With such client service software you are able to reach any of your user or customer whenever your company is starting a new promo-action or when a new deal is out in the market. With all  information listed in your customer's database you will always know what and whom to offer as you  possess all the critical information relevant, e.g. which time of the year an exact customer is  most likely to buy etc. Using this information correctly you may attract more sales and reach high goals.

Automation System
In the modern digital world there is absolutely no need to manually enter client's information and spend hours in searching of needed information as all this stuff is available at the click of a button. You may obtain all necessary data by sorting the information according to specific criteria. All of the information is stored in a centralized manner, the way for each department of your company to be able to process customer's information appropriately It facilitates the work of your staff and also saves your working time. Hence - automation of database is one of keys to success.

Wide Range Of Opportunities
Nowadays relationship management systems allow companies and organizations to provide incisive marketing,  attend to customer queries, take business automation to a new level and retain clients like never before. With robust customer relationship management software, brand loyalty is very achievable and more customers are likely to remain loyal to the brand.

Very often even big and prospective companies are puzzled when they find out that their long-term users and customers leave a business without any certain reason or even note of complain. What do we do wrong or what makes our customers leave?

Big Boss
When any company starts a business or enter a market - it treats customers very thoroughly and takes a close look to each user's issue in order to win respect and confidence. Nevertheless, the bigger company grows the worse customer care becomes. Less time is given to solve the issue, thus sometimes instructions to overcome a problem are given very unclear. Furthermore company considers to be easier to refund money for service than to solve a problem or to assist computer illiterate user. Keeping on a track this way will lead to bankruptcy. Thus, to keep customers you should clearly instruct your support department about the level of service customer expects to get from your company. It can be respective tone in mail correspondence, smile and politeness during phone calls or eye contact with a customer.

One-time customer
In a modern business world it's rather hard to survive if you provide one-time service, means that your customers won't ever need your service or product again. Business prospers by growing customer base and better if these customers are repeated. Thus, value each customer. Treat each customer as a potential life-time user of your service, that means you could have a stable and constant income from each person. Say, each week customer pays you $10 for your service, means approximately $500 over a year. In ten years only one person brings you $5000. Taking into consideration all these proportions it is evident that understanding a value of life-time user allows to make a decision of how to best handle a customer situation. Whenever your support staff understand that facing with a problematic situation they are dealing not with angry user but with nice stable income - a level of your company's support will extremely rise.

I know what you want
Next common mistake is that we consider our business or marketing plans without asking customers point of view or considering their benefit and desire. Don't think you are smarter than you are actually are. Selling your product without understanding customers' will or continuing to provide same service without any improvement you will lose all customers as you should feel the pulse of their needs or what they want. Try to make your business decision based not only your own business master plan but as if you were a customer, who expects to get a certain service. Think about a manner and way it should be provided. Make different researches or run a survey to know customers' opinions, ideas, get feedbacks. Be sure, users will always tell what they expect to achieve, what they want to improve or to change. Be loyal to your customers and let them participate in your business process showing the way they expect your company to run. If thousand people tell you that they need a new feature in your software - it is a right sign to start a development.

We have said a lot about situations when customers are very angry when they do not receive a proper service or support when they need it. It drives them crazy and customers become very angry. It is rather hard to calm user down, but still it is possible. Here are some techniques how to perform that:

We all we are humans.
Each person has his own moral and psychological needs and requirements. All of them are rather simple, but nevertheless vital. Each person should feel an importance of his/her existence, have self-respect, dignity and to have a feel of financial stability. To cope with an angry user you have to understand him/her needs, try to boost customer's self-confidence, enhance basic human requirements.

Listen To Customer
Before you start to prove your right and that the problem was customer's fault, try to listen to customer attentively first. Check the seriousness of a situation, whether the person is angry or hostile. We do know customer's problem may also drive you crazy, thus the best option is to calm down yourself and to listen customer's story till a far end. Don't even try to interrupt your interlocutor. The only phrases you can tell are "yes" or "no" that indicates you are listening to user. Take notes during customer's talk whenever you don't understand something or have a question. It will help you to find out what you need in the future.
Try to evaluate or imagine a situation from customer's side (as if it was you who faced with the issue). Put yourself on a place of a person who has faced with an issue and try to predict your possible thoughts and deeds. After the user has reached the end of his/her story clarify all points you have noted for yourself. Try to explain your view of way out from the problem. If customer doesn't agree with you, try to ask his/her point of view how to sort out the issue.

Absolute calmness.
Stay deadly calm, don't even try to show your anger. Put your ego aside as any wrong word from your mouth can call a disaster for your company. Customer is angry with the occurred situation, but not with you personally, thus there is no need to feel anger at user. Act calmly and quietly. Try to separate the content of customer's speech and the way it was delivered. Being quiet yourself you will make customer to calm down and it would be a nice chance to approach the problem rationally.

Boiling point
While talking to a customer try to think about what was the reason of the anger. You may face with a customer who is so worked up that you may have a hard time to figure out not only the reason of the problem but what the problem itself is. After you managed to calm down such customer - don't ask too many questions as you can make user angry again. Ask only who, what, where, when, and why questions to reveal the problem.

I know what you want
All users have one aim when calling to support - to get what they want.. And your main task is to provide them with it. Make sure you clearly understand what customer is willing to reach for you to leave him/her completely satisfied.
If customer continues to stay angry and all you have done is worthless - think about a possibility of having a deal of irrational person. User can also be trying to get a ploy to gain a reason not to make a payment. in this case it's better to inform a customer that you need more time to investigate the problem and you will contact him/her back. It would be the best way out from a tricky situation.