Author Archives: Leah Bowes
How to improve your customer service experience
From the first marketing messages prospective clients see to the first question asked when they need help, your goal should be to create an experience that is as simple and as convenient as possible. However, it’s not all about having the best call center technology or being staffed to the brim—for small businesses, this is not reality. Great customer service starts with the customer’s experience with your company, which means not just being focused on happy customers, but a happy team.
Here are 7 tips to keep in mind to empower your customer service representatives: Continue reading…
How to make an online customer satisfaction survey
“I can’t get no satisfaction!” Hopefully those aren’t words your customers say, but often if you don’t ask, you don’t know. If you aren’t tracking your customers’ satisfaction and asking them for feedback about your service, company and product, you may be missing some valuable information. The best way to gauge your customers’ satisfaction is to ask!
Creating a quick and easy electronic survey using an online survey tool, such as Survey Gizmo, is a great place to start and is a measurable tool for you to use to prove increased satisfaction over a given period of time. Not only will the survey help you and your business get an understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, it will also give you great marketing material for all the positive comments you receive! Continue reading…
What is PCI Compliance and why is it important?
As a small business owner, how often have you asked yourself, “What is PCI compliance, and why is it important?” I would venture to guess not often, and if you have, you probably received a puzzled shrug as a response. If that’s the case, don’t worry, you aren’t alone. A recent study by The Green Sheet found that only about 16% of Level 4 merchants (business who process less than 20,000 transactions annually) were “very familiar” with PCI compliance (more on the study here). That means the other 84% of small business owners probably feel the same way you do. Have no fear; we are here to shed some light onPCI compliance and and why your business should comply; it’s easier than you might think! The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (also known as “PCI DSS,” or just “PCI” for short) are the security standards for any merchant accepting credit card payments. These standards are designed to protect merchants and their customers from breaches that could negatively affect their business and reputation. PCI compliance is a critical part of running a successful business, but is often overlooked by small to medium sized businesses, even though operating in a PCI compliant manner is simply good business. Think about PCI compliance as the golden rule of payment processing—secure others’ payment information as you would your own. You wouldn’t want companies with which you do business to broadcast your … Continue reading…
Be a “Secret (customer) Service” Agent
As a kid, who didn’t want to emulate one of those cool secret service agents from the movies? I know I did! They seemed to know everything and were always smooth as butter. On a seemingly unrelated note, who doesn’t appreciate the warm and fuzzy feeling that you get when you go back to your favorite restaurant, hotel, or salon, and they actually remember you? Don’t think they are related? Think again! Savvy professionals in the hospitality industry employ a strategy known as “secret service.” The term was coined by salon owner and Customer Service guru, John DiJulius. A simple, but brilliant strategy that DiJulius implemented in his first of many salons was to visually differentiate first-time customers from repeat customers. He executed this strategy by giving a white cape to new customers so his staff could easily distinguish them from repeat customers. This allowed his team to treat both types of customers accordingly, but always fabulously. This “secret service” indicator is invisible to the customer, but very important to the staff so they can provide specialized treatment to their various clientele. “Secret (customer) service” is something that every business can engrain in their day-to-day customer management practices, even if they don’t see customers face-to-face. By using your customer relationship management (CRM) software as a tool to record specialized information about your customers, you can employ a secret service strategy with just a little effort … Continue reading…
How to turn customer feedback into product enhancements
Listen to your customers and improve your product. At PaySimple, this is a hard and fast rule that we live by. The feedback that we receive from our merchants, the people using the product day in and day out, is invaluable to the continued growth and improvement of our online payment solution. As such, our customer care team often receives feedback like, “When are you going to add XYZ feature?” or, “It would be great if this feature could also do XYZ.” So what do we do with that feedback? We track and log all of our product suggestions, and forward those suggestions on to our Product Development team. The team then prioritizes the feature enhancements (based on number of requests, scope to build, etc.), discusses implementation, and creates the specifications. While we do our best to prioritize and implement our product improvement suggestions, these enhancements are more difficult to execute than one might expect. Adding features to an existing product takes a lot of thought and testing in order to execute effectively. Many times, a seemingly simple improvement or new feature will require pages of specifications in order to make sure that all areas of the product that it touches are considered. Some of the recent feature requests we’ve added to our system based on user feedback are: future one-time payment scheduling, partial refunds for credit card transactions, defined amounts on payment forms, and … Continue reading…
Top 5 Ways to Improve Customer Service
Regardless of the industry, everyone has had a challenging experience with customer service. Because the Internet has given businesses the opportunity to connect with more consumers, the focus on customer service quality has given way to customer service quantity. This practice devalues the concept of customer service, which shifts emphasis to a negative, self-serving business pursuit: Breaking records by the number of customers helped in an hour. By taking the approach of providing unparalleled quality assistance, as opposed to only trying to increase quantity served, small businesses are guaranteed to have happier, more loyal customers. Here are five key practices (starting with the easiest) to creating an exceptional customer experience: Ask, Listen, Act and Sympathize! Because your customer was already frustrated enough to pick up the phone and contact your customer service department, they are most likely foreseeing their experience to be a negative one. This is the chance to admit when you are wrong, and follow up by working your butt off to remedy their concerns. Send an Update Email. Put yourself in your customers shoes. We’ve all been there, and you don’t like waiting in the dark either. By sending a simple note at the end of the day: “We’re still looking into the problem and hope to have a solution ASAP–Thank you for your patience,” you can prevent a handful of call-backs of customers just wondering what the situation is. Create an … Continue reading…
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