I’ve worked a lot of customer service jobs throughout my life and while I certainly didn’t enjoy the vast majority of them, I do have appreciation now for what they taught me about the market and how a customer should be treated. A staff that is highly skilled in customer service is a staff that is going to laugh, work hard and please more customers as they pull in more and more revenue while the competition struggles through issues like complacency in the workplace, dissent and other highly stressful situations which can bring down both the quality and production of any workplace..
Although I’ve always prided myself on my great customer service skills, I always wished I had learned a second language. I took several years of German throughout high school but now I only remember the swear words, and never got around to learning Spanish. While this isn’t a big deal on a personal level since I live in Florida and everyone speaks English, it does get pretty sticky when you consider the fact that I work for a successful software company that appeals to a global audience.
Last week alone I spoke with four customers from Germany, 1 from Portugal, 3 from Russia and over 10 from Colombia and Argentina. Lucky for my business, many international customers do have some English education and so we are able to do business, but on a very basic level. They come for what they know they need, and that’s exactly what they get. Because I’m not able to communicate on their level, I can’t be as great at my job. Even if I did somehow retain that German, it would only help me with a fraction of international sales opportunities..
I don’t like looking stupid and I don’t like not knowing what I’m talking about so I decided to start making all of my web tools work for me. We regularly use Provide Support Online Chat for our company and I can’t tell you how much happier our customers are, and how much lighter our phone volume is. We’re able to link customers directly to points on our website or elsewhere, and can issue price quotes in seconds. Of course, this still means nothing if I can’t read Spanish. But I can read Spanish. I can read Norweigan, Russian, German, Danish, Urdu, virtually anything I need.
By combining the benefits of online chat support with the benefits of FreeTranslation.com, I can finally understand customers from virtually every corner of the world. Now that I understand what their needs are, I can meet those needs and start building a global laoyalty. I used FreeTranslation.com in conjunction with Provide Support to have an extremely productive and confident consultation which lead to a sale. I’m proud of that, and couldn’t have done it without these two important tools!
If you think about it, we really haven’t been at this very long. Despite the fact that humans have been around for millions of years, we hadn’t really come into our own until just a few thousand years ago. Discoveries like agriculture, animal husbandry and bronze working were huge for their time, but our time requires a lot more to keep our modern society happy. Today we want things like android phones, iPads and video games. They might not be all that effective when hunting for food, but our modern day tools are essential for navigating today’s busy life.
One unfortunate thing about our place in the human timeline is the fact that technology is beginning to take off at astounding rates, giving way to newer and greater discoveries around virtually every corner. It’s hard enough for average citizens to keep up with the changing technological times, and the challenge is even greater for a variety of media industries such as newspapers, magazines and television networks.
I am a person who looks forward to new technology. I’m happy to live in this time and feel almost blessed to be able to live amid this uprising of technology in an ever-shrinking global arena. Part of me see’s the Internet as an amazing boon to the world, allowing its’ citizens to instantly connect on a personal level with anyone, at any time. This sounds very wonderful and it really is, but it’s not reality.
The sad truth is that new technology is killing off more traditional industries and that is threatening the global economy. Just look around! Everyone has heard stories about newspapers going out of business due to poor circulation. Musicians have filed suits seeking monetary compensation while fans simply trade music instead of purchase it, and movies are burned in minutes, watched and deleted before the authorities ever catch wind. These points are all pretty nefarious, but all of the reasons aren’t so shady. Television audiences are dwindling because watching your shows online, whenever you like, is far more convenient not to mention the fact that there are far fewer commercials to tolerate.
These things seem insignificant but they’re stealing an inreasingly large chunk of consumers away from traditional industries and into new entities. I am not a tireless defender of traditional industries or anything like that, but I do understand that this kind of technological change is something that should come on a lot slower than it has been, and that it is going to be very difficult to adjust to these changing times and how they influence our economy, both domestic and global.
At the end of the day, however, I can’t imagine that we won’t be able to adjust, to adapt to changing times. Sure, the economy may take a serious hit and could take a permanent nose-dive if coupled with something like another war, but that’s just a risk we have to take. Technology hasn’t ever stopped for our ancestors, so it’s not something we can wait around on now.
Brand awareness is something all business owners need to be conscious of because your brand is represented in everything you do. From Customer Service to Sales & Technical Support, your customers are going to associate their individual experiences with your company as a whole. Are you confident that you and your staff can consistently deliver not only quality service, but a professional attitude and awareness in all things related to your brand? That’s easier said than done.
Everyone has a story about a bad experience they had with the staff of a business, whether local or worldwide. There are bad customer service agents who prefer to hang up on customers, nasty servers who insist on dragging their feet during your lunch break, you name it. Too often we remember that one bad experience instead of the other 99 good experiences we had with the business, and instead let that guide our opinion and what we tell friends and family. It may be unfortunate, but it’s likely not going to change and so Ecommerce websites should be prepared to minimize the amount of inappropriate or unprofessional action of your staff while representing your valuable brand name.
Social Media Malaise
I’m a big proponent of utilizing social media services like Twitter and Facebook to help promote any business, especially for Ecommerce sites with some kind of online presence. Tweeting about your online specials, new products or offering sales and technical support via social media outlets is an excellent way to reach out to existing and potential customers, but be sure you have confidence in the person behind the profiles and fan pages, and make sure that person is constantly aware that everything they do or say will be hand-cuffed to your brand. One off-handed comment on a lazy Saturday afternoon can get around fast and taint your otherwise stellar social media reputation.
Communication is the Key
Despite what some may think, sales & support via telephone or online chat support is not an easy job. Handling an endless stream of customer requests, complaints, sales, even compliments is a daunting task and not the kind of day a staff can generally get jacked up for. Customers traditionally seem quite a lot more annoying than they actually are because customers can be like push ups in that each one tends to get just a little more difficult to get through! Your customer service, sales and support staff are your direct connections to your customers, so make sure your staff are competent, personable and tireless.
Complacency Kills
I personally think complacency is the absolute worst thing that can happen to any company. When a staff gets complacent, they pay less attention to what they do and thus tend to make more mistakes. Since they don’t care as much, they don’t catch their mistakes and your product or service goes on the market flawed when it should be at its best. When your telephone support gets complacent, they don’t care as much about how they respond to customers, and have less desire to separate their personal thoughts and maintain a sense of professionalism or even politeness! Complacency is the worst not because of the monster negative impact it can have, but because it sneaks up on your office and you rarely see it coming. To defend yourself against your staff becoming complacent, keep the lines of communication open. Talk with your staff about what’s going on, what they’re up against, and always strive to improve it. If your staff is happy and challenged then they’ll most likely not fall victim to complacency.
If you want your business to survive in these competitive times, the first thing you need to do is make sure your staff is on the same page as you. Make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, make sure the don’t have your livelihood on auto-pilot and if they do, make sure they never do it again!
I’ve spent a lot of time working with Twitter on a personal and professional level and there are clear benefits to using them in the Ecommerce arena. Results obviously vary depending on the particular niche you’re in, but by and large, I do believe Twitter is a great means of promoting products and services.
Twitter is a relatively recent phenomenon, a community composed of Tweets a maximum of 140 characters long. It’s great for quick statements and acts a lot like an Instant Messenger and Chat Room had a baby. You see what you want to see by filtering out the Tweets between those you’re following, and other tweets that fit certain search parameters. Twitter is a little tough to get used to at first, but the moment you see the first benefit, you’re likely going to be hooked for a long time to come.
But what does it mean for business? There’s always news about some CEO with a Twitter account who gives us a little more than he bargained for, inevitably getting into an embarassing situation or other trouble of some kind. Twitter probably isn’t so great for the CEO of your company to wax philosophical about whatever they want. They don’t generally understand the technology or the repercussions a single Tweet can have and thus they should be locked out of the Tweet room forever. That being said, some CEO’s have broken the mold. But not many.
Local businesses with an online presence stand to gain quite a bit from a well-executed Twitter presence. Restaurants and bars can tweet daily specials, and yearly events or other points of pride which can result in quite a following. URL shorteners like bit.ly can also track how many clicks your links have received so you can see exactly how effective your tweets are, and how loyal your followers are.
Other businesses such as software companies in particular have a unique opportunity to be there for their customers, so Twitter can act like a point of contact for sales or technical support. Additionally, it is a great place to make announcements about new or updated products, company achievements, specials and more.
You’ll only get out of Twitter what you put into it, and since it’s free to use, we’re talking about your time and effort. If you’re willing to put the time in or have an employee who doesn’t make your company look stupid via inappropriate tweets, Twitter can absolutely increase traffic to your website, strengthen the rapport between your support staff and your customers, and open up new opportunities for business. Give it a chance and see what it can do for you!
Many Ecommerce website owners are redoubling efforts this year to convert as much visitor traffic into conversions as possible. This isn’t anything new, of course, as conversions have been the goal of Ecommerce sites since, well, the beginning. Despite that fact, Ecommerce companies around the world are getting it wrong when it comes to a well-rounded strategy to convert as much traffic as possible into sales.
It’s easy to talk about all of the 101 things like having your contact information above the fold on all pages or providing enough information about your products and services, but there are some very powerful and effective tools out there that can make as impressive an impact on sales as the major factors. Here are just a few of the tools and services your Ecommerce website will need to make a big fat revenue splash in 2010:
Be Accessible or Get Bounced
If you increase your level of customer service, odds are your revenue will increase as a result. Of course, your customers can’t sample your service if they can’t contact you. Remember, just because you have a website with all of the information doesn’t mean your visitors will know what the hell you’re talking about, so provide means of contact! I would absolutely require your Ecommerce website to enlist as many of the following as possible, if not all:
- Online Chat Support allows you to engage your customer within the website which is perfect for providing information via links, or communicating with customers who simply prefer not to be on the phone. Like me.
- Online Help Desk Systems are another important way of engaging customers in a medium that will allow you to assist them in ways their telephone’s can’t provide, such as attaching files or providing link information or prolonged communication during off-business hours, much like email but in one designated location. Additionally, help desks create a knowledge-base which can be tapped for product ideas or customer feedback.
- Abandoned Cart Recovery processes should always be utilized to reach out to customers who have left your store for whatever reason. Executed appropriately, Ecommerce sites can recover upwards of 40% in lost revenue that would otherwise be lost forever. But really, anything better than the 0% you’re currently getting is better, and worth the effort.
Improve Your Website Usability
Websites are like snow flakes in that you’ll never find no two that are exactly alike. This is true for a variety of reasons, but the best reason is because website owners should be constantly changing and improving website usability. This isn’t the case most of the time as you may well imagine from all of the websites out there that seem frozen in the late 90’s. A lot has happened since then, people! If your Ecommerce site isn’t at least attempting to implement some of the following additions to your website, then best of luck because you may well need it:
- Does your website navigation make sense or are you sending your visitors through a maze of accessory pages that will do little to convert the customer into a sale, and actually work against that conversion? Categorize and organize your website content so that your menu and page navigation make the most sense possible. There are all kinds of different people on your website so it needs to be as universal as you can make it. However great you think your menu and navigation may be, it can always be improved!
- How does your conversion funnel look? Once you get a customer to bite, you need to put some thought and strategy into nudging them down that purchase path. Pay close attention to how your visitors react, on which pages they abandon, and try to find out why. Split testing is an effective means of testing slight variations in the funnel so that it can be optimized for your traffic.
- Adding video content relevant to your products or services is one of the more effective ways of turning an interested customer into a paying customer. Product walk-throughs, user tutorials and video testimonials are a significant factor in leaning a visitor in one direction or the other and it’s important to cater to that slice of your traffic that may prefer to watch a video rather than read. You can shoot video with a camera and upload it for viewing on YouTube, your website or elsewhere and you can also take video of whatever you’re doing on your computer, which is ideal for software tutorials or walk-throughs.
Search Marketing, Anyone?
With all the online competition these days, your Ecommerce business won’t survive the year without at least a semi-organized and thought out search marketing strategy. If you can’t afford to hire an internet marketer and need to do it yourself but don’t have the time, sticking to the basics is the most fundamental recommendation. Here are some of the major basic factors you’ll want to consider when promoting your website:
- I don’t care how intuitive you claim to be or how well you think you know your industry. If you’re not researching keywords relevant to your online business then you not nearly as smart as you think. There are free, effective keyword research tools readily available online, but it’s a good idea to round out your research tools with a paid subscription to WordTracker keyword research tools, one of the leaders in the field.
- Are you watching your competition? If another website in your niche has the search engine ranking that you want, check out that page. Take note of the keywords they’re targeting, how their pages are laid out, etc. You don’t need to copy your competition, but it can provide a path in the right direction to surpassing them.
- Whether your Ecommerce site is new or has been online for years, paid search is one of the most effective and easily-tracked forms of advertising online. Keyword research tools come into play pretty heavily with paid search also, so your subscription to WordTracker could be beneficial on a variety of fronts. If you don’t have the time to get involved with paid search, there’s plenty of PPC software available that can automate much of the process with results you can take home to your Mom. If you simply don’t have the budget or the time to set up paid search campaigns for your Ecommerce site, at least consider setting up one campaign to bid on keywords related to your brand name so your competition isn’t stealing those easy conversions from you.
This list is a tiny sliver of a much broader search strategy for improving your Ecommerce site and keeping up with the times, and nowhere near what you need to do to be at the best of your game, but it’s a good start to cover some of the more important bases. There are plenty of other things you can do to improve your website ranking and increase traffic to your website and we’ll look forward to examining more of those throughout the year. Until then!
Local restaurants and bars are in a prime position to take advantage of the exploding social media phenomenon, but very few actually have a grasp of how it works and how it can benefit their business in ways traditional advertising never will. Lots of local businesses have a presence on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but they’re thrown together with little thought, and maintained very poorly. It’s not their fault, they’re not in the business of internet marketing. Why should they know how to do it? Whether your restaurant or bar currently has a social media presence or not, the following points are some things to consider when you inevitably dive into the digital local communities online.
It’s Fans Pages, Not Friends Pages!
When a restaurant or business account is created for Facebook, you should always create a Fan page instead of a regular Facebook account. Fan pages are created for speaking to an audience, no matter how broad, at once. Sending messages to all of your fans is easy and your fans don’t have to see who you became friends with every other minute because people simply become a fan.
Another great thing about Facebook Fan pages is the range of visitor statistics avaible to you. You can see how old your visitors are, which part of the country they’re in (particularly important for local businesses) and a lot more. This feature is not something that comes with a normal Facebook page, and it’s not something you should ever go without.
Making It Count: Tweets & Status Updates
I can’t stress this enough: Be timely with your updates! Tweeting the morning breakfast specials to your followers at 9 in the morning isn’t going to bring anyone into your diner, but tweeting those same specials earlier, say 6 in the morning or even the night before will give your fans and followers enough notice so they can plan their mornings accordingly. Nobody should have to miss a delicious muffin because they got the tweet too late. Nobody wins!
Brand Awareness Still Matters
One pitfall of many businesses in social media is the inability to connect with their audience. Whomever maintains the Twitter or Facebook account can sometimes have trouble finding ways to keep people engaged and might think it’s a good idea to be more casual. That’s all fine and good but don’t forget that you’re still representing a business and should stay appropriate. In other words, don’t say anything you wouldn’t want one of your customers to over hear a waiter saying. If you’re not sure how to approach this, it might be a good idea to stick to updating your specials, events and any special deals for your online audience.
Your Own Spotlight
Believe it or not, people want to come to your Fan page. They want to look at your wall, see your pictures or videos if you have them. Twitter has features like Twitpic and you can utilize other services like Daily Booth to give your audience a snapshot of what it’s like at your restaurant or bar. Remember, you’re representing a business so don’t put anything up that you have second thoughts about.
The above is a simple set of guidelines for getting started on Facebook and Twitter for restaurants and bars. There’s really no limit to how far you can push the social media envelope so once you conquer the above points, venture out on your own. Break some new ground and keep reeling in those paying customers.
What’s the most important thing for your business in 2010? I’m sure this question is heavy on the mind of many Ecommerce website owners in this still new year, and there’s certainly plenty of priorities you’ll come up against as your quarterly goals wax and wane. It’s no stretch to speculate that a lot of companies are going to be focused on (you guessed it) increasing revenue and cutting costs, but how many are actually going to get there? More importantly, how will they achieve their goals?
One inexpensive, effective method of increasing revenue without dilluting your web traffic by attracting a wider, less relevant audience is to implement an abandoned cart recovery process. By identifying the slice of traffic that started the purchasing process but failed to complete it, you can begin to analyze and get some insight as to why. Not only will you then have the opportunity to recover that specific sale, but you can potentially correct a problem in the checkout process that is causing other, non-identifiable visitors to leave you high and dry.
Abandoned Cart Recovery may seem like a really simple method, and it is. Despite that, many Ecommerce websites are losing out on the chance to gain upwards of 35% recovered abandoned carts which can result in a substantial chunk of your overhead. If your Ecommerce software doesn’t have the capability to give you information on your abandoned shopping carts, then ditch them and find a provider that does.
How Does Abandoned Cart Recovery Work?
To abandon a shopping cart on a website you need to first add an item or service to your cart. If you leave the website after adding an item to your cart but do not complete a purchase, then you have abandoned your shopping cart. Once you have done this, your visit will essentially be flagged to indicate that you’ve left without completing your purchase. The amount of information you leave behind can vary from none at all, to an email address, exact time of the abandoned cart and more.
Then What?
That all depends. If you’re not currently monitoring this important statistic, then you’re missing out on lost sales and should immediately put something in place. Write up a simple email letting the customer know that you noticed they left without completing their purchase, and you thought they might have a question you could help with. If you don’t see a purchase come through from that same account in a few days, it may be a good idea to send out a follow-up email. One strategy is to offer the customer an incentive to complete their purchase in the second email, and this has some merit. Keep this information on a spreadsheet so you can keep track of your recoveries over time and see exactly how much you’re snatching from the jaws of lost revenue.
All in all, implementing an effective abandoned cart recovery system takes little time and can potentially reap huge rewards. Once in place, the system becomes a 10-minute task that can be responsible for recovering tens of thousands of dollars year over year.
One of the fastest, easiest and more effective ways to get your website up and running is by installing a WordPress blog. Although your website may not necessarily be a blog, WordPress is a content management system that serves as a great way to organize and store the content on your website, making it extremely useful not only for bloggers but also for traditional website owners who want a little more power without all the know-how.
Despite the fact that WordPress is generally very easy to use, installation of the blogging platform can sometimes be tricky. I’ve installed WordPress on HostGator, GoDaddy and Yahoo! web hosting services and I have to say, HostGator is by far the quickest and most painless method of getting your WordPress blog online.
Check out the short video tutorial that will demonstrate the simple steps for Installing a WordPress Blog with HostGator, or read the more specific step-by-step details below the video:
- Visit HostGator to purchase your affordable web hosting plan. The Hatchling plan is good for most, starting at $4.95/mo. although the more expensive plans have better features.
- Once your domain and web hosting are ready, visit your Control Panel at example.com/cpanel. These url’s are case-sensitive, so don’t capitalize anything!
- Log in with the username and password you created for your account.
- Scroll all the way down to the Software / Services section and click the Fantastico De Luxe icon.
- Click the WordPress hyperlink on the left sidebar under the Blogs heading.
- Click New Installation to install your new WordPress blog.
- Select the directory where you want WordPress installed. If you want WordPress to be your entire website, leave the field blank so it will install in the root, or main section of your website. If you want it at domain.com/blog, then enter blog in that field.
- Enter the administrator username and password. Keep this information a secret, because anyone who has it can access and modify or even delete your WordPress site.
- Give your admin username a nickname if you like, in the admin nickname field.
- Specify the email address you would like associated with the administrator information. This is where you’ll receive notifications regarding your blog including registrations and comments.
- Enter the name of your website in the site name field.
- Enter a brief description about the site for your records.
- Click the Install WordPress button
- Click the Finish Installation button
- Enter your email address and click Send Email to receive the details of your installation including the login url, user information and more. Strongly recommended.
Congratulations! WordPress has been successfully installed on your website and can be accessed wherever you specified. If you chose not to enter anything in Step 7 then your WordPress blog will be located at example.com. If you entered blog, for example, then your WordPress blog will live at example.com/blog. When you want to tweak your blog or create new content for it, visit example.com/wp-login.php and enter your username and password to begin.
I generally keep my internet security pretty tight, taking advantage of tools like Avast Antivirus Software, Spybot: Search & Destroy, Windows Defender, CCleaner and others to form a well-rounded sort of drag net that captures the great majority of malicious software including trojan horses, rootkits and a lot more. Despite the fact that I keep everything as clean as possible, some nefarious programs do get through.
Most recently, I had the distinct displeasure of meeting the Alureon rootkit. For two straight weeks I ran scans, deleted via my antivirus software, deleted manually, did everything in my power to get that piece of garbage off of my system. Avast was happy to show me every single time tdlcmd.dll appeared, but moving it to the chest or straight up deleting it just didn’t do the job.
The last time I went through a removal process as arduous, painstaking and frustrating as this was about four years ago. I had stumbled across the Bleeping Computer forum and got my hands dirty in their tutorials section. It took about four days playing with more hands-on programs like HijackThis, but I was able to get everything removed. Should I be so lucky to get my issue resolved with Bleeping Computer a few short years later?
This is where my worlds collide, and one more reason why Twitter is your friend. I was bitching about the fact that my computer was infected and I couldn’t get it removed when I saw one of my followers had the same issue. He was a few days ahead of me, however, and found ComboFix at Bleeping Computer. It worked for him, so I figured I’d try it out for me.
I have to say. ComboFix removed my issue in about 35 minutes. It’s a very aesthetically basic program and all of the functionality seems to be devoted to removing malicious software from your computer. Everything is pretty much run in the windows command prompt and although your computer will chirp loudly and/or restart a couple of times, you should come out the other side with a computer that is free of any malicious software.
See you later, Alureon! ComboFix is totally free, completely effective and quickly rose to the top of my security arsenal.
I’ve been meaning to do it for a long time, so I finally got on board with Mozy Remote Backup which provides 2 gigs of free online storage to home users. The sign up process was fast, simple and involved a small download of the MozyHome Remote Backup application which allows you to select the folders or files you want backed up remotely. The data backup is performed initially and then the program can be configured with a few clicks of the mouse to schedule backups and much more.
2 Gigs fills up pretty fast but it’s enough to store my most important documents and files, the things I would hate to lose in a fire, hurricane or some other terrible event. That’s the draw of an online backup solution like Mozy, at least for me it is. I like the idea that my data is going to be safe, no matter what.
I’m going to try Mozy for free and if my data is safe and sound come Christmas, I just may upgrade to the 2-year Mozy Unlimited Plan for a scant $103.