by Kevin Stirtz on January 10, 2012 · 1 comment
Last week I was interviewed by Daniel Bortz, a writer for Entrepreneur.com. He asked my opinion on some things small businesses can do to keep their customers coming back. The ideas in his article focused on tactics that most small businesses can do and can be made easier using technology tools. The suggestions centered on connecting with your customer and understanding what they want from you and your business. Our daily, routine interactions with customers give us opportunities to know them better and to communicate with them better. But we have to make the effort. We have to pay attention. [...]
by Kevin Stirtz on June 12, 2011
by Kevin Stirtz Recently my friends Chip Bell and John Patterson shared with me this story of amazing service. It’s from their friend and client, Katy Wild. Chip and John call it “Boston Style Customer Service.” “Recently I lost my purse while traveling and then found it, thankfully, but not before missing my plane. So, I had 4 hours to kill in the Tulsa airport waiting for the next flight. While in the airport, the man at the shoe shine stand started a conversation and wanted to know if I needed my shoes shined. What else was I going to [...]
Our friends at Dictionary.com define the word communicate this way: To impart knowledge of; make known: to communicate information This is something companies are very good at. They should be. Big companies have entire departments dedicated to communicating. They “impart information” and make their messages known on a grand scale. For decades, big business (and small business too) has spentvast amounts of money perfecting the fine art of communicating. Trouble is, being a skilled communicator isn’t worth much anymore. Because, as the definition above implies, communicating is a one-way deal. To be successful, all you have to do is make your story known. If you are [...]
by Kevin Stirtz Yo, dude, don’t leave me hanging Every day the Internet makes it easier for people to connect. Employees, customers, friends, family, neighbors…you name it. We have more technology than ever before that can help us reach out to people. If we choose to. And that’s a big problem for many businesses. They choose to NOT reach out to customers. Actually it’s worse than that. Too many businesses ignore when customers reach out to them. Every day businesses are served up piping hot customer engagement opportunities and they walk right by. They ignore their customers’ attempts to connect and converse [...]
by Kevin Stirtz Chris Garrett wrote a post a while ago about being real vs. phony. Here’s what he says about real people: Too many companies hire and train robots to handle the vast majority of their customer contact. They treat employees like equipment. They seem to believe people’s behaviors can be designed and managed like machines. A key tool in this strategy is the much-maligned script. Most employees despise them. So do many customers. To a customer, a scripted employee sounds like a phony, uncaring employee. When management forces unnatural scripting on employees, they can be become the robots Chris talks [...]
There are substantial benefits for companies that improve their customer service. The good news is you don’t need to spend a lot of money to start making improvements in your customer service. You can make customer service improvements starting today. Here are some specific suggestions to get you started. 1. Improve People Skills To deliver Amazing Service, people skills count. So a fast and high return way to improve customer service is to find ways to improve your team’s people skills. This might include bringing in a speaker or trainer. It could mean focusing on people skills topics at staff [...]
by Kevin Stirtz on February 7, 2011
There’s a lot of talk these days of new Web tools that help us communicate with customer better. Websites like Yelp, CitySearch, Google Places and HotPot, Angie’s List and Judy’s Book all provide easy platforms for customers to tell us what they think. And we should be glad they do. One of the best ways to attract and keep customers is to give them what they expect and more. When you do this, some of your customers will be thrilled enough to tell others. And most will consider returning, because they know what to expect. Online review sites and tools [...]
by Kevin Stirtz on November 5, 2010
Mitch Joel hates it when you say “Web 2.0“. I know. He told me. Okay, he didn’t actually tell me in person as in, we’re having coffee at Starbucks and he said, “by the way Kevin…” I was listening to a webinar Mitch did earlier this year. He was talking mostly about Web 2.0 and how it’s changed much of our world. And he ranted a bit about the term “Web 2.0″. He really dislikes it. But more important is what he did about it. He spent a fair amount of time explaining how our world is different now, because [...]
To be successful, in any business, we need to give our customers what they want, in a way that works for our business. We should focus on doing what our customers want AND what we can do well. Then we need to do it well. In fact we should do it better than anyone else in our market. And we need to do it that way with every customer every time no exceptions and no excuses. But we all have a big obstacle that stands in our way. We never really know how good we are. Or, to be more [...]
by Kevin Stirtz on May 25, 2010
The headline of this post comes from a blog post by my friend Brian Carroll. His post describes a conversation he had with a client where they discussed how lead generation often ignores current customers. As a result of the discussion, one CEO decided his company would begin focusing more on current customers. He even referred to their new focus as their “Customers First Plan”. The outcome of their new-found focus on existing customers was revealing. They increased revenue from current customers by 15%. Even better, their referrals jumped over 100%. As they focused more on existing customers, they no [...]
