Nowadays, running a business is not as easy as before. Today, markets are going to be more and more saturated for any kind of businesses. Great competition happens within entrepreneurs for different kind of business fields.

The one who can win the competition is the one who can own the most market share and make the most money out of the market. Therefore, if you want to succeed, you have to fight for market share. Yes, it might sound hard to do so but if you know the key, it can be really easy for you.

They key to win your competitors in any kind of business is Good Customer Service.

Good Customer Service is the best way to keep Your Customers

Customers are one of the most important assets for your business. In fact, they are the one who pay you money! So the theory is quite simple. The more customers you have, the more money you can make from them. This is why many companies spend so much of money in advertising just to attract more customers to their businesses.

Attracting customers is only the first steps. What is important is transforming them to become your royal repeated customers. This will be a foundation for your business.

Yes, you can carry out a lot of hot offers or promotions to attract new customers. But if you don’t have a good system to service them, most likely they won’t come back to you. In order to let your business has a long run profitable business, you must keep your customers coming back again and again.

What you have to do is providing a good customer service. This is the best way to keep your customers. There might be thousands types of customers, but all of them only have 1 simple need - is to get someone who is nice and good to solve their problems and let them become peace and happy in their life. If you are the nice guy who can help them to solve their problems and make them become a happy customer, then you have won the competition.

What is the Purpose of Good Customer Service?

Before we can provide good customer service, we must understand what is the purpose we do so. This will be a customer servicing goal for your business:

1. To Build A Good Relationship With Your Customer. One of the common thing we usually do before making any decision to spend money is trying to search for a friend or someone you know. In most cases, customers more willing to pay money to someone that they know and close to. Therefore, the first mission we must do in good customer service is to build a good relationship with the customers. This will let your business become the first choices in their mind when they need helps.
2. To Build Good Brand/Business Awareness. Good service is always a measurement for customers to rank a business. If your support and servicing are good, then most likely your brand will be good too because in customer mind, you are the best business to deal with. They simply believe that you can help them to solve the problems and eventually get the happiness from you.
3. To Win the Viral Marketing Effects. One of the greatest thing about good customer service is you can win a relationship with your customers and eventually they will help you to market your business. They will introduce your business to their friends and families because for them, you are the best.

As you can see, your business will be a good business if you have a good system to service your customers. There are many benefits you can get from good customer service. This is something that you can not miss for your business. In fact, I encourage you to keep improving and pay more attention on the quality control for your servicing system.

How To Provide Good Customer Service?

Different kind of businesses have different system to support their customers. But overall there are 6 ways that you must do or include in your business system to provide a good customer services:

1. Answer/Reply your customer phone call. Phone call is one the most direct way for customer to approach you. So answer their phone and you can get a business. But if you miss the call, you must reply their call and call them back as soon as possible. This will show you that you are caring about them and ready to help them.
2. Keep your promise. Unless you can keep it, please don’t make a promise. Once you make it, you must do and accomplish it. Just in case you cannot make it, you must discuss with your customers and explain to them. Be responsible for your words. This can also let your gain the trust from your customers.
3. Listen more and Talk Less. We have 2 ears and 1 mouth. This is because God wants us to hear more but talk less. The theory applies in business. We must listen and understand our customers then only we can help them to solve their problems. So please listen more!
4. Deal with complaints. Complaints might be bad for your business but in most cases, customers who can complain is usually a good customer that we must keep. When someone complain to you, they are trying to tell a loophole or mistake in your business system. You must take action and deal with the complaints and you should be thankful to the customers who complain too.
5. Be Ready to Give More. You can always shock your customers by giving more. For example, your customer wants to buy product A. So you deliver the product to him and then you set it up and provide a short course teaching him how to use it. First, you can make your customer happy. Second you can show your expertise and build your image in your customer heart.
6. Be helpful and Patient. Not every customer is good. This is a fact. So no matter what happen, we must be patient to serve the customer. Try to be helpful too so that a customer can feel your heart in helping them. Next time your customer will be grateful to have you beside.

You have to Act Fast!

Yes, you have to act fast and build up your good customer service system. Nowadays, customers have more options than ever. Many competitors are trying their best to approach your customers. So you must act fast. Besides that, the rising of reviews web site on the Internet give even more threats to businesses. This is because those web sites help customers to spread their dissatisfaction at the fastest speed!

Therefore you have to setup your service and support system and provide the best to your customers.

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So you have a business idea? You want to start a business that makes you money every month? Then you must learn how to do your home works and research your market.

 

I’m also running a business and I can tell you from my experience that it will be easy to run a business if you know your targeted market. If you have your own targeted market, your business will be easy to stand out the crowd and grow faster than you ever dream about.

 

Brad Sugars, Entrepreneur.com’s Startup columnist, wrote an article on How to Research Your Market which I would like to share it over here.

 

Question to detect your targeted market for your business

1. Is the market saturated? This will determine whether it is easy to make money from your business
2. Does the market demand on what you are offering? This will let you see anybody will buy or use your products and services
3. What’s the competition doing? Get to know your competitors, understand their SWOT and then position your business in the market accordingly.
4. Can you reach your target audience? Research whether you really can reach your target market in particular area.

 

Collecting information that helps you develop a unique business

1. Trade Information
2. Demographic and economic data – you can try out American FactFinder, State Data Centers and Economic Census
3. Business Groups
4. Local Universities
5. Local Competitors
6. National Competitors
7. Potential Customers

 

Source : Entrepreneur.com

Business Sales are very important as it is a way that generates income for your business. So if you have the skill to motivate your customers and trigger them to buy, then your business can be grown to a stage that you never imagine.

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First you must understand what people really want, and here is the top 10 “wants” of people:

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1. People want to make money
2. People want to save money
3. People want to save time
4. People want to look better
5. People want to learn something new
6. People want to live longer
7. People want to be comfortable
8. People want to be loved
9. People want to be popular
10. People want to avoid stress and gain pleasure

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So if you can position your services and your products according to the “wants” of your customer in the market, then your sales will be boosted like rocket.

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I always hear that “Brand” is the key to success in business. Especially if your business market is very competitive and saturated, Brand awareness is important for your products to stand out the crowd. This is why there are so many companies spend billions of dollars to push up their brand.

So what is it takes for a successful Branding? Below is the 5 “C” that BeyondMarketingllc.com listed which needed for successful branding:

1. Consumer’s View – what is the consumers feeling on your brand

2. Confirm the Brand – Confirmation has to come from every level or your brand will not be credible

3. Communicate the Message – Your brand should be marketed across a wide-range of media and have a clear and concise message

4. Consistency – Constant Brand reinforcement is important.

5. Commitment – The commitment to the brand and its message has to be reflected by every aspect of your company

Source : BeyondMarketingllc.com

For those who are running a business will know that innovation for your business is very important. I heard before that Business is a life project and you are dealing with human who, as we know, always change from time to time. So your business also has to innovate accordingly.

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Today I came across an article from Darrell Zahorsky of About.com

Which is about “7 Principles of small innvovations” . I love this article because it mentioned all the tips that help you start small and take simple steps where I always believe “Keep it simple” is the way to be success.

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