Archive for the ‘Customer Support’ Category

5 Reasons that Startups & SmallBiz Must Engage Their Customers

For some reason, recently I have talked to a number of people that have said the same thing to me.  They basically say that their startup, small business and even enterprise company is too busy to actually engage their customers.  Or they say that engaging and talking to your customers just is not a priority.  My response boils down to this:  Are you for real? Really, your business does not have time to talk to our customers or you think talking to customers isn’t really scalable so lets just not do it? That is garbage.

So I say stop right there.  Stop spending all your time on powerpoints, writing long blog posts that no one reads, trying to figure out ways to increase prices on your customers,  writing requirements for products your customers don’t want or chasing yet other pointless task.  As entrepreneur Mark Cuban said earlier this week:  YOUR CUSTOMERS OWN YOU Without your customers your business is WORTHLESS.  Why do so many people fail to understand that basic concept?

So here are 5 reasons (and a bonus one!) why your startup or small business needs make it a priority to talk to your customers as often as possible:

1. Stop being nameless and faceless to your customers. Your customers have lots of options. They use lots of products in their daily life.  So many of these products are from companies that customers think of as people in a far away skyscraper in New York or office park in the suburbs next to Red Lobster and Taco Bell.  So be different.  Put a name to a face for your business to your customers.  When a customer uses your product they can identify with a real person instead of some random brand name.  Human nature dictates that we all crave connections and if you can make that personal connection with a customer that will immediately distinguishes your business from all the noise that is out there.

2. Start creating deeper customer relationships out of the value you provide to your customers – Your customers have decided to do business with you.  They have taken the step to pick YOU!  So what should you do?  Close the loop and show them how much it means that your customer picked your business from everyone out there.  Then build on that value you are creating for your customer in their daily life and add some deeper bonds to that relationship by seeing (or listening) first hand how customers use your product, what are their other pain points for their own business.  Actually showing that you care about your customers will go a long way because no one else really does take the steps to show that they care.  Be different by showing that you give a hoot! It is that simple.

3. Get real feedback from your customers you can act on – Building on #2, take the opportunity to use your engagement with your customers to get tangible feedback about your product, the market, your competitors and your overall customer makeup.  There is no better market research then actually talking to customers and hearing first hand what they are saying.  I know people say it takes time to do this – to get the feedback and then to act on it.  My suggestion, start small.  One interaction a day, maybe two.  The snowball effect of the feedback will help your business because you will get to see your business and product directly through the eyes of your customers!  That is just invaluable. Here is an earlier post of ours on tools to help your business get feedback.

4. Gain credibility, loyalty and capital with customers – So you are getting feedback, showing that you care and are not nameless and faceless anymore.  What does this do in the totality for your customers?  Your business starts to create brand capital by building up credibility with your customers. This begins to set yourself apart from the crowd.  That credibility with your customer then begins to be translated into a hugely valuable asset and that is customer loyalty.  The reason why – because the customer sees that you are different than the others – you actually are paying attention to them. Back to high school and what happens when the cute guy/girl is paying attention to you – you notice!  So your customers begin to notice and start to conclude your business is different than the others because you care about your customers.  Sad, but that is a rare trait these days.

5. Time devoted to these relationships will help you in tough times & customers will not be so easy to turn their back on you – This all leads up to a major punchline.  And it is this basic.  Inevitably a customer will have a negative experience with your business.  With no customer engagement, no credibility, no loyalty that has been built by your engagement efforts, you will lose that customer during that bad experience.  On the other hand, if you have taken the time to engage your customers, that customer who is having a negative experience is much more likely to give you another chance.  Also if they complain to the community, the crowd of customers that you have also engaged can step in and have your back.  None of this happens without making customer engagement a central priority and following through.

6. (Bonus) Arming your customers with reasons to talk about your businesses – This is a no brainer.  The more you engage your customers and follow up with “wow” moments – the more opportunities you give them to be your best salesperson.  More stories mean more opportunities for your customers to spread the word about your business.  What better way for you to get you more business through your brand evangelists that tell the stories of you wowing your customers.

So lets bring it back to the main argument you hear against doing all of this. Bottom line: Too few resources is a lame excuse for not engaging your customers!  Try it by starting small. Everyone on your team needs to begin every morning engaging 1-2 customers and then build from there. Send a customer a short email or catch them on Twitter.  Even a one person startup can even do this form of limited engagement.  Still dont think this is worth your time? Zappos was founded on this customer engagement philosophy and I think it worked out pretty well for them.  And oh by the way, Zappos started with this philosophy from the very earliest days when their founders responded to every customer’s email!

We would love to hear your stories of customer engagement.  Feel free to leave them in the comments section.

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Archive for the ‘Customer Support’ Category

5 Ways to Develop a Killer Brand for Your Small Business and Startup

As a small business or startup there is a constant challenge of developing a brand for your business.  Unlike large companies like Coke and Apple, small businesses and startups do not have the resources to invest the time, money and effort to build a brand through advertising.  So these businesses are left to rely on my scrappy tactics to develop and grow their brand.  Of course with all of the large, medium and small competitors, it can be difficult to elevate your small business above the noise that is out there.   Here are a few tips that can help your small business build your brand and show that you can be trusted to deliver for your customers:

1. Give Each Customers an Experience: Think about the great brand experiences that are out there today.  There are product experiences like Apple and Zappos.  Then there are city experiences like Las Vegas.  All evoke a certain type of experience when you interact with those brands (yes, I am calling Las Vegas a brand!). So when your business interacts with your customers, treat them to an experience.  What type of experience you may ask?  How about “white glove” treatment from beginning until end where you make every effort to anticipate your customer’s wants, needs and desires.  This is not an easy thing to accomplish, but just making this type of effort will ensure you try to create a good customer experience for your customers.

2. Every Interaction Should Make an Impression:  So this is taking point #1 above and breaking it down.  Think about your customer’s touch points for your business.  Now think about how you interact with your customers at every touch point.  Is it the first time they reach your website? The first time they call your office?  An email inquiry about your product or a meeting at a trade show?  A conversation over Twitter? Now try to aim to make every experience with your customers one that they will remember.  I am not advocating something over the top. I am merely advocating taking special care of the customers at every interaction with your business.  For example, talk to your customer, listen to them, and take the time to say that you value them as a customer. Always remember find a way to go the extra mile to help your customers life a little easier or happier.  That is why every email should be thought out, every entry point to your website considered so you can get into the mind of a customer and make a good impression at every point with them.

3. Help Your Customers & They Will Talk About Your Business: Building on points #1 and #2, if you make an impression and give customers a great experience, you will give your customers reasons to talk about your business, service or product.  What better way to build your brand by having your customers be your brand messengers to potential customers and leads that are out in the community.  That is why the more you go out of your way to build up credibility and trust with your customers by repeatedly beating their expectations, the easier it is for those customers to tell the world about buying from your small business.

4. Promote Your Customer’s Successes:   We have found at Kikscore one of the best ways to help ourselves and our brand is by promoting our own customers.  We have done that by finding every opportunity to promote our customers through various avenues like our blog, on Twitter and by supporting them at every opportunity.  One of ways we have done that is by giving our customers a forum on our own blog to tell their own small business success stories.  What can you do?  Take your customers’ successes and help them tell the world.  If your product, service or company was involved with that success, that is even better for you.

Bottom line: Sell yourself by promoting your own customers!

5. Always Aim for a Consistent Message & Customer Experience: One of the biggest enemies of a strong band is an inconsistent message and uneven customer experience.  Do you treat customers differently?  Is your product simple to use, but your marketing copy and help materials complex and too wordy?  How about your customer service – is it very responsive over the phone, but slow or non-existent on Twitter and Facebook?  The key is to make sure that the way that your customers interact with your business and startup is in a consistent manner across all channels.  This consistency is critical to ensure a brand that does not create mixed messages with customers.  A cohesive and consistent brand is hard to create, but it is imperative to achieve to build a great brand.

While small businesses may not have the same resources as large companies, they do still have the ability to build a strong band without paying a huge sum of money.  But the monetary investment is replaced with a huge human investment in time, effort, messaging and customer service.  That human investment if deployed carefully and deliberately across all parts of a small business or startup can pay major dividends. The trick is studying your business, your customers and the touch points and then developing a branding plan and executing on it.

These are just some of the ways to develop a great brand for your small business or startup.  Let us know if you have any tips in the comment below.

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Archive for the ‘Customer Support’ Category

7 Posts from 2010 That Will Help Your Business Now – 2010 KikScore Blog Greatest Hits

As 2010 winds down, we wanted to share with you a few posts that if you only have a few minutes on the KikScore blog we want you to read.  As many of you know, we pride ourselves on publishing good content that covers small businesses, startups, entrepreneurship, while telling the first hand accounts of small business that sell online and trying at the same time to be a little humorous and even including some references to sports and pop culture.

So here are our greatest hits that we hope you check out:

1. Should Start up Companies and Small Business Release Their New Software Early or Wait Until Its Perfected? – This is our post that discusses the age old dilemma for startups on when is the right time to launch your product.  We had some very personal experience on this issue.  I am sure there are many startups that are facing this very issue right now so that is why it made our list.

2. Issues Escalation and Support Guidelines in a Startup Environment – This is a very detailed and thoughtful post about the process needed to approach the inevitable support issues that get escalated to your service department by your customers.  The post frankly applies to many different types of businesses, from small, medium to large but is especially fitting for startups.  It is a must read especially for software startups.

3. Lessons Learned for Small Business from Sandra Bullock’s Heartbreak – Everyone probably remembers the shocking news that came out this spring about Sandra Bullock’s husband Jesse James and his infidelity.  This post is especially helpful to small businesses and startups that are looking to partner with other companies or use new vendors and contractors for key business operations.  It gives key information and tips to help with conducting diligence before you make these important decisions.  And we do this by tying it all back to Sandra Bullock and Jesse James marriage!

4. Our two posts on reviewing your business on Memorial Day (Check that BBQ and Your Business’ 2010 Goals) and Labor Day  (5 Steps to Help Close 2010 Strong) – Every business should take the time to periodically conduct self-assessments to measure progress.  These posts give detailed tips on conducting the self-assessment for your business at key times of the year and the Labor Day post also outlines concrete steps for taking the learnings from your analysis and acting on those learnings.

5. Building a Startup Company and Having a Family at the Same Time – Ever wonder how entrepreneurs, small businesses, startups balance work, life, family and crazy schedules.  We all face this issue frankly and in this post we discuss tips on helping to find that work/family balance.  To be honest, this is a post worth re-reading throughout the year to keep yourself grounded.

6. Manly Cupcakes and Tips on Finding, Understanding and Appealing to Your Target Market –  This is a straighforward post that appeals to all businesses and startups.  The reason why it is one of my favorite posts of the year is that every company should ask these key marketing and customer demographics questions  about your product, customers and market.  These questions and your answers to them will keep your business and startup more sharply focused and successful.

7. How Do You Judge a Website? –  This post is important for every business because it frames the way potential customers, leads, partners and even investors get their first online impression of your business.  It is a valuable post that businesses can come back to in order to remind them that no matter what you do, these key features of your website will drive the way key influencers view you, your business, your website and your product.

We hope you enjoyed all of our posts this year and we look forward to a great year of content in 2011.

We would love to hear your favorite posts as well as any feedback on our content.  Also let us know if you want us to cover any particular topic and we would be happy to consider writing on a certain subject, especially if it helps the small business, startup and entrepreneur community.

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Archive for the ‘Customer Support’ Category

The Magic of Metrics

As a small business grows and not only builds the customer base but also expands the solution offerings, a metrics tracking method should be developed. There are a wealth of options of different metrics to track across any business. The hype for small companies seem to focus on SEO and website traffic metrics, but there are other business and process facing metrics that can greatly help a small business grow and succeed.

This article promotesmetrics are magic.  Key areas that can keep all team members in-check are to outline metrics surrounding milestones with dates and deadlines, and tracking of metrics like calls, presentations, programming modules, etc.

Depending up on the size and complexity of your business, utilizing a tool set to track and report on metrics could be very useful.  This provides the business leaders an avenue in which to review and evaluate trends and to determine if new solutions are working as expected and increasing cash flow.

Metrics help to outline the quality and measurement of success for any given business, product or process.  As a small business owner, factoring quality into daily activities helps to keep the entire team focused on top quality solutions and practices

What defines a quality metric and tips how to determine where your solution measures up?  The key is to create a metrics roadmap early in your business cycle so that you can formulate processes and checkpoints throughout that adhere to it.

The metrics you track will change over time, as your business expands (or shrinks).  You must also be diligent in that tracking process and share out not only the positive metrics, but the negative ones as well with your entire team. The only way to improve upon your business processes and ensure quality is to define the metrics and make appropriate changes to continue to improve them.  And allow your business to evolve in a positive light by continuously reviewing the metrics and creating new benchmarks that define your business success.

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Archive for the ‘Customer Support’ Category

Build Trust By Listening and Sharing

A couple weeks ago, I focused on the need for valuable and easy to use feedback tools for your customers.  While continuing to research this topic and build best practices for KikScore, a colleague shared this great article with me on How to Make the Most of Customer Feedback.  As a small company, I realized we tend to get caught up in task items of the release schedule we’ve set forth and lose sight of the customer connection – until an issue arises and you are placed in emergency mode.

This article touches well on the subject of empowering customer-facing employees.    As you continue to expand your solution offerings and grow your customer base, this becomes a critical area of focus.  And it’s not just sales personnel, this includes customer support and even marketing resources who are interfacing with customers on a regular basis.  By giving your employees the right tools to not only listen to customer input but also to respond and raise awareness throughout the rest of the organization.  This also goes to the level of communicating in a transparent manner to your customers on what is coming next from your company.  This helps to promote trust between company and customer and shows how your company listens and reacts.

The aspect of close the loop with those giving feedback empowers your customers to then not only see how you take their opinions to heart but also how your company strives to prioritize and stay one step ahead.  Simple steps to promote customer loyalty and make your business a success.

What feedback processes do you have in place and how does your business track and prioritize them?

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Archive for the ‘Customer Support’ Category

Kebabs, $18 Wine & Customer Service – A Small Business Story of Feeding on the New Competition

This is a story about one of my my family’s favorite neighborhood restaurants and what they have done to respond when the competition has literally moved right next door.  My wife and I love middle eastern food. I could easily live on a meal plan of  hummus, lamb kabobs, donner platters and falafel for lunch and dinner…..yes, call me crazy but I really like good middle eastern food.  So one of our favorite restaurants is called Pasha Bistro and is literally right down the street from our house (and one of KikScore’s offices!).  So my wife and I either make the trek over there or order out from Pasha Bistro almost once a week.  And we are not the only ones.  We have close friends in the neighborhood who also love Pasha Bistro too.  So much so, that on a recent night out at a spring bbq, a number of the attendees spent way too much time talking about what were our favorite menu items and even discussing a comparison on Pasha’s fantastic and extra garlicy hummus versus other more watered down hummus from lesser take out places (Mike, yes, that includes Lebanese Taverna the place he drags us all each time he is in DC- by the way for anyone with real taste buds and not from Fargo, Pasha is so much better than that Taverna!).  Bottom line, if you are in DC and especially in Dupont Circle, check Pasha Bistro out you will not regret it.

So what’s the point to this story?  Well the big talk in the neighborhood this summer in DC has been, Did you see who moved right next door to Pasha Bistro? Well that formerly empty location next door to Pasha Bistro was only known to me as the nasty bar where I had to watch the Red Sox complete their inevitable come back from a 3-1 series deficit in 2007 and beat my Cleveland Indians to advance to the World Series. It is now a brand new Mediterranean restaurant called Agora.  Take that Pasha Bistro the owners of Agora must have thought when they opened up in newly renovated digs, right next door.  The two restaurants are so close that a diner eating on the patio at Pasha can literally reach over a small patio fence that separates the two restaurant’s respective patios and swipe his bread in the hummus dish of a customer at Agora.

So when you were the only Middle Eastern restaurant on the block (17th Street) for years and build up a large and loyal following, what did Pasha Bistro do in response to Agora’s arrival right next door?  Well all of us small businesses and startups can take a lesson from what Pasha Bistro did to fight back against Agora over the last few months since its opening:

1) Beat them with customer service – So Pasha Bistro typically has good customer service when we eat there or order take out from the restaurant.  But when we visited Pasha after the “new neighbor” arrived, the service was amazing.  Every little item related to our dining experience seemed like it was focused on by the wait staff at Pasha.  They greeted us even more warmly then ever, they fawned over us before, during and after dinner and they truly looked after us.  The Pasha Bistro staff clearly went the extra mile and made that dinner out even more enjoyable that on previous occasions by being just so amazingly customer focused.

2) Emphasize your strengths – So when the competition moved in, it was almost like Pasha said lets ignore those Turkish invaders on 17th Street.  Pasha did not get distracted by trying to introduce new food dishes and entrees to compete.  Instead, Pasha cooked the same food the same way and the dishes remained first rate, the customer service (which was already a highlight) only got better and Pasha focused on one main ingredient, keeping their customers happy.  These were (and are) Pasha’s strengths and what the ownership did was played to those strengths every day at dinner when new and returning customers came to dine.

3)  Focused on your target market – The invading restaurant clearly was pushing more of an “upscale” dining experience that even included a chef standing outside decked out in a head to toe white chefs outfit with that funny hat. It would have been easy for Pasha to abandon their target market and try to go after the more “upscale” diners.  Instead, Pasha remained loyal to serving their target market of casual middle eastern dining.  There was no white table cloths or stuffy waiters – Pasha just said keep it casual and keep it good – real good.

4) Create unique offerings that keep your loyal customers happy – Following up on the last point, Pasha actually said from a strategic perspective what can we do to further solidify our customer base?  Pasha created a great, every day special that appeals to all diners (that especially like to have a drink with dinner!) and that is an $18 special for any bottle of wine, any day of the week including weekends.  And no, Pasha did not fill their wine list with Boone’s Farm or Mad Dog and try to sell that for $18.  They largely kept their same wine list with good wines and applied this great discounted offering for any dinner.  With this new deal, they got my wife and I hooked and a bunch of my other friends in the neighborhood too.  The $18 a bottle wine offer was a great competitive response by Pasha Cafe to Agora that allowed Pasha to lock in their customers and give us something new to keep bringing us all back.

5) Do not freak out when the competition moves in – From all of this, the one thing is clear and admirable: Pasha Bistro did not freak out when Agora moved in next door. They could have and in many instances you hear of small businesses and startups that freak out when they get a little competition.  The learning from here from Pasha’s experience is they took a deep breathe and said lets go on the offensive, but lets also be smart, targeted and tactical about going on the offensive against Agora.  That is the key here, Pasha mounted a competitive response to the new entry and now Pasha just needs to sit back and keep executing on their response to Agora.

What do you think about Pasha Bistro’s response to Agora?  Please tell us your stories of responding to a competitor moving next door.

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Archive for the ‘Customer Support’ Category

Build Trust With Customers by Providing Feedback Tools

As KikScore continues to grow and add customers, our team is more active in social media sites.  In anticipation of a large partner release, we are working to ensure staff support and processes in place to respond to customer inquiries and issues.

Providing an avenue for your customers to sing your praises and also to vent when needed helps to build trust in your brand and confidence in your customers.  With social media continuing to rise, consumers savor the ability to have a voice in a variety of platforms, and they can yell loudly.  To build trust and loyalty in your customer base, you have to listen and react in a timely and professional manner .

Being a mom, I could relate to the outrage set forth by moms across the country on this Motrin add.  Motrin could have quickly regained confidence and trust in its consumer base by reacting to this outrage in a much more professional  and empathetic manner.

As a small business, creating an avenue for clear communication with your customers on good and bad topics will not only build trust, but also instill loyalty which creates new customers and reduces abandoned shopping carts.  Be an advocate for your customers and they will yell loudly on social media platforms that your business is the business to connect with.

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Archive for the ‘Customer Support’ Category

Fringe and Small Business

I must admit, I am a Fringe junkie… the X-Files of the new generation… if you are a follower of Fringe, or Fringe science one can see how an obsession with a theory (or a job) can overtake you.

Let’s take the Walter Bishop of ‘our world’ vs. the Walter Bishop of ‘the other side’… why is it that he within our world is attempting recovery from insanity whilst the ‘other’ Walter seems to have done quite well for himself and been spared the asylum visit?  One could theorize that our world Walter became so obsessed with not only bringing Peter across but also with protecting him all these years and it eventually overtook his entire psyche.  Where the other side Walter has been focused on finding Peter, he seems (at least in our brief introduction to him last week) to be well put together, so perhaps not as ‘obsessed’ with this mission or at least capable of keeping the sanity surrounding his zeal.  An entrepreneur can easily be led astray down one Walter path vs. the other… so how do you keep the sanity while trying to get your business off the ground?

Here are some key areas that have helped us at KikScore:

Organization and Time Management

Know your market/customer  and react to feedback

Delegate – If you have a team, you can’t do it all yourself

Set clear goals for all team members and communicate

Keep track of lessons learned

What are your Fringe theories?  And how do you keep your sanity in your start-up?

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Archive for the ‘Customer Support’ Category

Thoughts on 'Startup Advice in Exactly Three Words'

I recently stumbled upon this post by Dharmesh Shah on the OnStartups.com blog that got me thinking about the time that we have spent working on KikScore.  In this post Dharmesh comes up with 47 different 3 word phrases that offer advice to others while trying to start-up a new company.  After already having worked on our start-up company for the past 3 years, these pieces of advice triggered a few memories that enforced Dharmesh’s advice for me through these experiences.  Below I picked out a few of the phrases that rang true for me the most and I explain why I feel strongly about these.

Support customers maniacally – This could not be more true for the customers we currently have on our application.  Any customer issue that we receive immediately goes to the top of the priority list in order to address it immediately.  I think that this is a no-brainer for any business but especially for companies just starting out.

Persist through downturns – About 6 months after we started working on KikScore we entered into the recession that we have just now begun to dig out of.  While this definitely wasn’t ideal, I think that it made us focus more on our product and customers and will make us a better company in the long run.  I think that a lot of companies that make it through this recession will be better for it and it will help them learn a lot of lessons that they otherwise may not have.

Improve product daily – We are constantly looking for ways to improve our product and prioritizing these enhancements for release.  I think that it is very important for start-up companies to be regularly adding functionality to their products in order to make current and potential customers happy.

Use your product – Just about everyone on the KikScore team has either used the product themselves on a site they own or worked closely with a friend or family member to use it on their site.  I think that this has allowed us to get a unique perspective on our product and helped us improve it more efficiently for other customers to use.  I think this is important because sometimes the very companies that make great products don’t always use them and over time they become outdated because they don’t have that “real world” experience.

Do any of these items above, or the other 43 pieces of advice that Dharmesh offers, remind you of a decision you made while working on your business? 

(By the way, I must admit that I re-used the picture of the puppies on this post from Dharmesh’s post on the OnStartups.com blog.)

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Archive for the ‘Customer Support’ Category

How you respond to customer issues is important… anyone can be reading!

While researching a couple of issues from a recent KikScore customer signup,  the importance of a quick and informative response to current and would be customers became critically evident.  As a small business, you need to educate your customers so they have confidence in the product you are providing, and also share information in layman’s terms to alleviate confusion and not tech-speak your customers into oblivion.

I struggle with this balance while straddling the technical and marketing role at KikScore (and in my day job too).   Your customer base doesn’t share the in-depth knowledge that your team has on the inner-workings of your system, and thus you need to take a step back when responding to a customer inquiry/issue and put yourself in the customer’s shoes.   This entails not only empathizing with the issue at hand, but also providing deeper context surrounding the potential resolution/fix to the customer’s concern and conveying that back to them in a timely and informative manner.

In the world of social media today, any response you share with customers (and prospects) can (and most likely will) be posted or passed along the internet waves and will have an impact on not only the legitimacy of your business/product but also on its future branding potential.

SocialSmallBiz is doing a series on customer support and social media and the intertwining of each.  A fantastic quote to live by, for ANY small business owner “It Takes Months to Find a Customer… seconds to lose one”

How do you handle your customer inquiries and responses?  Please share your best practices and lessons learned with us.

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