Adding Alternative Home Care Products to Your Therapeutic Lines

When practicing in therapeutics, many homeopaths, nutritionists, and holistic therapists aim to provide the best experience for their clients through the addition of alternative home care products to their therapeutic lines. These retail products can be used to support the given therapies to complete the regime of well being care. If you aren’t currently stocking alternative therapy retail products now might be time to consider how beneficial it can be for both your clients as well as the bottom line!

With the media frenzy in the world today, CDs, DVDs, eBooks and audio books in MP3 format are all fantastic possibilities as alternative therapy retail products choices. Facial creams and shampoos needn’t be the only option for adding to your sales. Through audio and video care, the therapy given to a patient or client can extend far beyond the office setting. Collaborative care has been shown to be the best choice for patients in a therapeutic setting and these medias will help to create a combination setting for the best possible end results.

Aromatherapy is yet another alternative to the traditional facial products most therapists stock. Selling holistic therapy products such as scented oils, candles, and home and body sprays can help to ease tension and stress.

By the way… if this isn’t something you are familiar with, aromatherapy is the art of using the 90 essential oils as a part of calming therapies. These 90 essential oils are not the same as the fragrant oils sold on the market today, so marketing a true essential oil will require a bit of research before applying the name “aromatherapy” to your product! Once again, knowing your product is essential.

Another idea to think about is products books and printed supplements… When a therapist combines verbal therapy with printed therapy it gives the patient or client the opportunity to continue therapy at their own pace after leaving the office or practice. This form of self controlled therapy when combined with in person therapy can reap large rewards for the patient.

The books chosen can be written either by yourself or by others in the same field of care. When choosing the books to offer to your patients, it is best to choose an author that feels the same way about holistic and alternative therapies as you feel. This will boost the patient along the paths you are setting as a care giver.

The key to marketing alternative home care products is to think of angles to complete your current therapeutic choices with your patients and clients. Whole forms of therapy are idealistic in that they provide continuous support for the patient or client at a self guided pace. Books, eBooks, audio books, essential oils, candles, nutritional supplements, home sprays and body sprays are just a few of the alternative home care products available to supplement your current patient offerings.

Have a think about what you can be offering your clients that will both add to the results they see after their appointment with you and that will also benefit your business financially. There are literally hundreds of options. The key to success is to ensure it’s a win-win scenario. For the highest sales whatever you stock needs to be of benefit to your clients as well as being something that you are enthusiastic about and that will add profit to your bottom line.

Rebecca Kepple specializes in helping business owners massively increase their client base and profits. To get instant access to her free insider secrets report ‘The Top 7 Secrets for Massively Increasing Your Client Base’ visit: http://www.wellbeingbusinesssecrets.com/freereport.

How I Waited Upon 120 People for Breakfast One Morning

As a waiter you should always be ready for the unexpected and be ready to adapt to any situation. The restaurant can be slow one moment and all of a sudden a bunch of people can come in and the restaurant is packed.

One of my most memorable shifts occurred to me back in the summer of 1990 when I was working in Jasper Alberta. Jasper is nestled in the beautiful Canadian Rockies and has a population of about 3,000 people but during the summer the number swells to 25,000 tourists per day that fill up the local hotels and inns. Jasper becomes a mecca for the service employee who wants to make some good money during the tourist season.

During this summer I was working breakfast at one hotel and dinner at another restaurant so I was making some good cash. Where I worked for breakfast each morning we would get what I like to call the bus people in early enabling them to grab the bus by 8AM and continue on their tour. This meant we were slammed hard right at the beginning.

There was 3 of us that worked the breakfast each morning but on this morning there was one that asked for the day off which left two of us to handle two bus loads at 7AM. That was about 90 people. Our supervisor had just quit too. It was going to be busy for sure but with a fully loaded breakfast buffet most people headed that way as it was included in the price. Some would order off the menu but not many.

That morning I arrived to work the usual time at 6:15 to set up the buffet , put the creamers and assorted jams on the table , and start making the coffee. Time was speeding by and soon I realized the other waiter was not there yet. I checked the time and it was 6:45. The chef came out and asked if I was the only one to show up. At that moment I looked at the locked entrance door where I noticed the hungry wolves licking their chops ready to attack the buffet and anything else that resembled food. The way I was feeling at this moment I probably looked a little like roast beef on a plate.

Summoning up courage I said to the chef just watch the buffet and I will take care of the rest. Having prepared up to 6 pots of coffee and a couple more of boiling water for tea I opened the doors to the throng of people awaiting.

As they hurried in to grab a seat I gave everyone a couple of minutes to enter, then made my big announcement. Using my experience in public speaking and holding two coffee pots I said , ” I am the only one on this morning so I am coming around with coffee and here is our buffet so help yourself. If you need anything off the menu I will get it for you. Be patient and you will all be served and seen to within a couple of minutes.”

All I asked of them is anyone who orders off the menu and needs to settle up their bill line up at the cash about 7:50 just before it is their departure time and pay me before leaving. This way I can give the best service possible to everyone leading up to that time.

Well it worked like a charm. I got everything everyone wanted and the kitchen helper kept the buffet replenished. Not one complaint at all , in fact the front desk did not even know of the missing waiter.

Once the crowd left and caught their busses , every table was heaped with dishes that I was unable to clear while serving. Buffet plates , coffee cups , juice glasses , and plates ordered from the kitchen all stacked on the tables. I began with a huge tray to start clearing tables but then suddenly there was more people coming that were not on any schedule and just were coming for breakfast. As they came in I cleared a table for them to sit on and wiped it down. Until 11AM when we closed for breakfast I served another 30 people.

The kitchen helper gave me a hand to clear some of the tables during this time and thank heavens we were not open for lunch. The Food and Beverage Manager came and asked why I didn’t call him. He had no idea. The one thing when you are a waiter is if you are busy you are usually too busy to call anyone!

At the end of the day I survived and I guess I made a good impression because when I went to visit two years after that summer the dishwasher did not remember my name but did recall that infamous morning when I served the entire breakfast myself to 120 people.

His motivational speakingengagements are both funny and informative. Find out more about Steve Nicolle at his website which is at http://www.stevetalks.ca

Tips On How To Achieve Success In Customer Service

If you are ambitious to be successful in the field of business, you must be aware of the fact that customer service is one of the main factors, which plays a great role in bringing success in the business. Customer service happens to be one of these things that bring about the satisfaction of the customers. It is well known to all that if the customers are happy with the way you deal with them and id the products or the services that you provide to them are of a high quality.

If you want achieve success in customer service, you have to follow some principles. You have to have a clear idea about how you would deal with the customers. If you are looking for some tips that will help you to attain success in customer service, here are the tips and some suggestions. Follow them and know how to be successful in customer service.

If you are having a conversation with the customer over the telephone, it is better for you to mention the name of the customer you are talking to. When the customer hears his name from you, he is going to have a different kind of dealing with you. It will also be easier for you to deal with him. End the conversation with a thank you.

If you are already experienced in the field of customer service, you must have had the experience of dealing with customers who are irate. Say I apologize or Im sorry if you find some customer angry. Do not forget to take a follow-up with the customer. Contact him some time later. When you end the call, thank him. Before ending the call do ask him if you can do anything else for him.

There is a very tricky way to incur the interest in the customer that you deal with. After your conversation with him is over, you can leave a message for him. You may also ask for a feedback about what he or she feels after availing the customer service. The way you ask is also quite important. Instead of asking him how he liked the interaction you should ask him how he would like to rate the customer service that he availed. The answers in the second case are most likely to be more specific.

The most important factor in achieving success in customer service is the way of your dealing with the customer. You have to be very careful about not hurting the belief or faith of the customer. The pleasant features of your behavior of yours will surely impress the customer. One more obvious way to success in customer service is to provide them with the products or services of the best quality so that they have the least scope to feel unsatisfied. If the customers are happy with the products or the services that that are availing, it is much easy for you to gain success in customer service.

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The Key Component To Having A Successful Business Relationship

We interact with people every day in both our professional life as well as our personal life.
These relationships are on various levels and may take on different aspects ranging from casual conversations to complex business exchanges. But do you know the key component to having a successful business relationship?

The tone of our voice as well as the words we choose makes a difference in how others respond to what we have to say. We know that if we wish to convey a particular point, disagree regarding a topic or issue, simply by changing the tone of our voice or increasing the volume a bit generally relays to the other person our position and how we feel about the topic. In business there is one key component that simply cannot be overlooked or disregarded.

The key component to have a successful business relationship is integrity. When you look up the word integrity, the definition is: the quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standards. Other words that describe integrity are honesty, truthfulness, honor, veracity, reliability, uprightness.

All are business qualities that you look for in others and hope to have within yourself. Without integrity, the relationship will eventually fail. Trust between the parties may be lost, feelings may be hurt and communication between the two may eventually fade away, possibly stopping completely.

Let me give you an example of a business relationship I had. A business associate that I had done a class with called me one day, told me she had recorded our class, and asked if she could use part of what I had said during this class on her website as part of a marketing strategy she had designed. She stated they, her company, would also include a link back to my site in return for allowing them to use my name and this short audio for their website promotion. I asked to hear the audio they wanted to use and she immediately sent it to me via email.

After listening to the recording while still on the phone with her, I agreed to allow them to use the recording that I had listened to as long as placing it on their website was the only way they intended to use it and as long as it was not to be used for any other purposes.

The following day, I received an email from this same business person. This time, the entire audio was attached, not just the snippet that had been sent for me to listen to the day before. She now stated that they actually were developing a product they planned to sell. She would like to include my full audio as it would not be much of a product without it but since

I had stated my limitations on the telephone, allowing just what I had heard to only be used on the website, they now wanted to have full rights to my entire audio for this product they planned to sell and needed my consent. She now offered me a percent of sales if I would agree, however did not mention an amount or how the sales would be tracked or controlled.

Our relationship had suddenly shifted from verbally communicating regarding this subject to emailing. There are also considerable changes or modifications to the original subject we had discussed the day before leaving me to feel less than comfortable. How would you have responded to this? Did this business person create a feeling of trust? Would you have felt a sense of honesty or integrity flowing in this relationship?

During the initial phone conversation, she could have come forth with their plans regarding the product they were creating and ask permission to include my material. That would have opened the door to further discussion and both parties would have felt a free flow of exchange and sincerity. This would have shown integrity. I would have respected that and been receptive to what they had to say. I would have appreciated their honesty and integrity for the manner in which they conducted business.

When you act with integrity, you automatically treat those with whom you interact with more respectfully. Do you want happier customers? Then add integrity to your customer service. You will find that not only do your customers appreciate you more, but they will do more business with your company and refer more clients to you. They will trust you because they know they can accept your words as honorable, without any hidden meaning or agenda.

No one likes “the small print” in ads. This makes you feel uncomfortable. Exchanges similar to the one I mentioned above are like the small print in ads. They leave you feeling uncomfortable and that is no way to conduct any type of relationship, especially in business.

Your words are a direct reflection of who you are. Are you speaking and working from integrity? If you are, that’s great. If not, perhaps now would be a good time to do a little reflection about how you have been conducting business or living your life. Take a close look at your current relationships.

Do you value honesty, truthfulness, honor, veracity, reliability, uprightness? Then you value integrity, and integrity will play a major role in your relationships; not just in business but throughout your life as well. Integrity, it is the key component to having successful business relationships.

Judith A. Wentzel, CTACC, EFT-ADV, Life Coach, specializing in law of attraction & EFT educates, liberates, & empowers clients, enabling them to transform their life or business. Trandform the quality of your life from fine to FANTASTIC! www.EFT-Coaching.Consulting.com

Knowing And Understanding The Products You Sell Is Critical

If there is one constant in the world of beauty, it is that the consumer knows what they want and expects to receive just that. But, what do you do in the health and beauty business when a new product comes around and you want to market that health product to your customer base? You learn everything there is to learn about the product and you convince your customer that this home car product is the BEST product for them.

Understanding Ingredients:

It is important to start with the base of the product. When learning about beauty solutions, the ingredient list will be the heart of your marketing. Clients and consumers are more educated than ever before and they know which ingredients they want to see in their facial creams, lotions and make-up. Many beauty retail products are based on these ingredients, but some offer very little of an active ingredient to keep costs low and profits high. This fact is often masked by the term “proprietary blend”.

The ingredient list can be broken down into individual ingredients with each one holding a different marketing tactic. If the main ingredient has been shown to significantly reduce wrinkles, know that fact and present it to your customer. If there are secondary benefits, like younger looking skin and reduced chance of acne, tell them that as well. Your knowledge of the product must dig deep into the formulation and ingredients used to make that product.

Taking Your Knowledge a Step Farther:

On the same lines as understanding your ingredient list, you should also take things a step farther and learn about the ingredients used in your products. Where are the active ingredients processed? What is the country of origin for the product? Who is the main manufacturer of the product and what other successful products do they manufacture? These simple facts will not only impress the client or customer, but make for an easier sale and that is what makes marketing worth the effort.

Knowing what the ingredients can do is just as important as knowing what the ingredients “do” do. Many health and beauty business marketing centers on testimonials, but knowing simply how the product can work and being able to present the real benefits of using the product to your clients will increase your sales and make for more return customers. You can increase your sales and boost your profit in one easy step – LEARN the PRODUCT!

Rebecca Kepple specializes in helping business owners massively increase their client base and profits. To get instant access to her free insider secrets report ‘The Top 7 Secrets for Massively Increasing Your Client Base’ visit: http://www.wellbeingbusinesssecrets.com/freereport.

Use This One Essential Strategy for Relationship Selling

What does love have to do with sales? Any time you have a relationship with someone, you are selling yourself and putting your integrity on the line. Relationship selling takes on a multitude of forms.

However, the quote, in my opinion, is faulty. If everyone acts righteous in personal relationships and no one ever utters I am sorry, when trouble brews, I believe this is a recipe for disaster. Without hearing an apology, the offended person will begin to stew over the issue, there will be a long-term simmering and finally, like a pressure cooker not carefully watched, an explosion will occur.

The same concept is true for business. Everyone is human and sooner or later we will make a mistake albeit forgetting to follow-up at a designated time or misunderstanding what the other person meant.

Just as the little things can break up a marriage, so can the little things break up a business relationship. Your best course of action is to take action to avert the stewing, simmering and ultimate explosion.

Rather than indignation, your first reaction should be to immediately utter, I am sorry. Follow that brief statement with, That was not my intention, how can I (we) fix it?

Once you take ownership of a bad situation, strive to fix it. The second part of taking ownership, is to do it with a smile. Your smile will put the other person at ease. Your swift actions will present you as ethical and trustworthy, and when the other person arrives at this conclusion, you will be the vendor of choice for the long-term.

If you dislike apologizing, you can minimize mishaps in the future by taking these steps:

When someone begins to communicate with you, Stop, Listen or Read carefully and Question. Dig deep with questions to get their true meaning.

Learn the rules and processes of the other person for doing business together. Write their list down on paper so that you have it to refer to. Once the list is finished, ask, Is there anything else you would like to add? This demonstrates, within reason, you are willing to abide by their rules and are truly interested in becoming a model vendor.

The point is, when you begin asking questions, the other party realizes you are interested in working hard on their behalf. The likelihood of conducting business will greatly increase as will the size of the sale.

As in all relationships, business is a two-way street. You are as equally important as the customer. If the relationship is not 50-50, the person with the lesser percentage loses and will feel lost. This next question will pinpoint whether or not the other party is truly interested in conducting business with you.

Ask, If I abide by your rules and am able to produce everything you require will you seriously consider me or my company for your next vendor?

The above question demands that your prospect be honest about intentions of doing business with you. You are a professional and deserve the respect in return.

By not asking these types of questions due to fear, you are opening yourself up to risk. The risk will be in the form of letting others take advantage of you by leading you on without intent of ever purchasing. Most importantly, you will be wasting too many hours of precious time.

It is critical to get a reading on how interested the other party truly is in working with you. Your income depends upon it and you must know whether you are wasting your time or spending quality time with your prospect building your relationship.

If the getting to know you process is taking far longer than it should, and you begin to have doubts, test the waters of intent. You have every right to do so. Sugest to your prospect they begin with the smallest unit of product or service. Follow this question with the following statement, If it provides you with everything I say it will, may wethen move to larger units for your entire company.

This last statement most often will work to get your prospect off of the fence. If a favorable decision cannot be made on your behalf, it is either time to find someone else in the company who can make a decision or find a better prospect. In the end, you are in control of your destiny. It is up to you to keep pursuing!

Elinor Stutz, CEO of Smooth Sale, LLC and Author, offers sales training,coaching,speaking and a full product line.

Smooth Sale Delivers: Professional Sales Training, Licensing, Coaching, Motivational Speaking and a Full Product Line.

Elinor’s book, Nice Girls DO Get The Sale,translated into multiple languages and sells worldwide.

Call 800-704-1499 or
Sign up for Sales Tips ezine at Smooth Sale.

Avoiding Feast And Famine Periods In Your Health And Beauty Business

There are three main goals in most businesses… Firstly to attract potential clients. Secondly to convert those potential clients into actual clients by getting them to book or buy from you. And thirdly to cultivate those clients into regular clients who come back again and again.

Doing activities that focus on all three of these means you will have a strong client base which always books ahead and is extremely loyal. Which is the whole goal!

For each of these three steps you need to have specific strategies which will bring you new leads and get their contact details on your database and that will then convert them into paying clients and then get those paying clients to come back. If you just focus on one and neither of the other two steps, you can end up with holes in your marketing approach.

Obviously the level to which you do all three depends on the type of business you’ve got… If your business is mostly focussed around repeat business then you’ll probably end up spending more time on step 3, but if your business is mostly focussed around doing intensive bursts with clients then they are healed and you move on to the next client, then you’ll probably want to spend more time on steps 1 and 2 to get a continual flow of more new clients in.

For example
- In a Beauty Therapy Business clients should come back every 4 to 6 weeks
- With Laser Hair Removal clients come back regularly for a few months then hopefully only about once a year for top-up treatments
- In most Counselling or Chiropractic Businesses, clients come in regularly to start off with then only for maintenance type sessions every now and again

However no matter what type of business you have and how often you ideally want your clients coming in, you still need to get their interest to begin with, convince them to book and then get them to come back at some point in the future (be that regularly to begin with then only occasionally or be that every month without fail).

So as with everything, there is the easy way and the hard way of achieving this…

There are ways of implementing these steps that are going to be more time consuming and those that will be less.

And I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get into business for myself to spend hours staring at a spreadsheet or pounding the pavement with fliers. Funnily enough I personally quite enjoy the spreadsheet / planning aspect of things, but that’s not all I want to do. I want to get out there and help my clients. And I want a better lifestyle for myself and my family.

You’ve got your reasons why you got into business for yourself and it could be a multitude of contributing factors… lifestyle, money, health, change in circumstances, a specific end goal… Whatever it is, I bet it wasn’t to spend hours filling in spreadsheets or pounding the pavements with fliers. If you wanted to do that, you’d have trained to be an accountant or a postman, not a therapist or practitioner or even an entrepreneur!

And part of what we do is being and entrepreneur so we should be able to live that lifestyle where we get time for ourselves. Where we don’t have to work 100+ hours a week just to make sure all the work gets done.

The best way of ensuring you don’t end up doing this is to have a full marketing plan that addresses all three areas equally each and every month. Then you need to follow this marketing plan.

Without a marketing plan you could spend hours and hour at your computer typing stuff up or hours and hours of physically stuffing fliers in letterboxes because it has suddenly gone quiet. However with a solid, well-thought-out marketing plan, there will be a continual flow of new and returning clients coming in rather than feast and famine type periods.

Rebecca Kepple specializes in helping business owners massively increase their client base and profits. To get instant access to her free insider secrets report ‘The Top 7 Secrets for Massively Increasing Your Client Base’ visit: http://www.wellbeingbusinesssecrets.com/freereport.

Trickle Down Customer Service Training

Everyone can make a difference in customer service. Every employee and every person. Whether your job is the CEO of a multi-million dollar company or the janitor of a mom and pop, you are invaluable to those around you. And customer service training starts from the top down.

When it comes to customer service, the people on the front line (because they are seen by the customer more often than the management) appear to be more in need of training. However, good customer service training starts from the top and trickles down to each and every member of the staff. That is why it is important to give customer service training to the management first to provide a strong foundation. Then and only then through employee training can they pass the information on to the rest of the staff.

In any business it is crucial that everyone be on board with the message and the goals of the training.

Just imagine how difficult it would be to train a minimum wage worker to do something that the high paid manager was not willing to do himself. One of the most crucial elements of customer service training is to allow the employees to visually see what is expected of them. Such as smiling at every customer, or remaining positive even in a negative situation.

Once while I was speaking to a large company on the importance of customer service I noted that the CEO spent the entire seminar sitting in the front row with his arms crossed and never once cracked a smile. At the end of the program I allowed some time for questions to which this CEO stood and asked me how to get his employees to smile more at work. He seemed to have no idea that his actions directly related to the atmosphere in his company.

What he needed was to understand the importance of trickle down customer service training. If he had focused on his positive attitude he would enjoy a staff with that same mentality.

But without this consistency from the management the employees would see no reason to comply. This of course will cause customer service training to fall by the wayside.

Managers and owners have to set a high standard for the service offered and then remain diligent to that standard. It is unreasonable to expect employees to follow rules not followed by their managers, so put the standards in place then start with customer service training at the top.

Wendy Gillett is owner of ExtraordinaryCustomerService.com, a full service online membership site dedicated to Customer Service Training specializing in increasing profits through Customer Experience Optimization.

Improve Your Customer Service And Retain The Customers You Have

Crappy customer service is everywhere: unmanned checkout counters, personnel wandering about, employees chatting or text messaging on their cell phones . . . as a partial list. Poor service has become the norm rather than the exception.

Business owners and managers take note! Here are some troubling facts regarding poor customer service:

1. A typical business will only hear from 4% of dissatisfied customers. 96% quietly just go away . . . oftentimes, forever!

2. On average, a dissatisfied customer will tell eight to ten people about their problem. One in five will tell 20. Do the math.

3. It takes 12 positive service incidents to make up for one negative incident. Accentuate the positive.

4. Seventy percent of complaining customers will do business with you again if you resolve a complaint in their favor. If you resolve it on the spot, this figure goes to ninety-five percent.

Handle complaints quickly. Set up an AS IF clause in your business. Always act as if you are the only personal contact that the customer has with the business, and behave as if the entire reputation of the business depends on you. Think about this. Better yet, implement it.

Some additional credos to live by:

A. Customers-clients-prospects-patients are the main reason you and your staff are able to draw a paycheck. That is true in all organizations: for profit, not for profit, retail, professional, government, medical etc.

B. Your telephone policy can help you or hurt you. Call into your own business and check the helpfulness and friendliness of your outgoing message. If the tone comes across as we are very busy here and your call is an annoyance at best . . . or listen carefully as our menu options have changed. Press 1 for . . . or I am away from my desk helping customers (what am I, chopped liver?), making calls in the field, on vacation or . . .

Sorry, Spanky, but I did not call in to wade through a menu or to check on your personal itinerary. I called in for answers to my questions . . . preferably right now.

Please do not misunderstand.

I am happy that you have escaped the chain binding you to your desk, that you have managed to get out to lunch or on vacation, but I really wanted to place an order or inquire about your product or service.

Perhaps your competitor will have a live person answering their phone! Good-bye!

Speaking of chains. Here is an old-fashioned but doable suggestion for big box store managers: unchain yourself from your desk, depart your cubicle and get out on the selling floor, especially during peak hours.

Last week I visited a big box garden shop and counted 14 people lined up at the only check out register that was manned. FOURTEEN!

When I entered the main store, I spotted dozens of employees engaged in various tasks, heads down . . . busy, busy, busy.

Someone in charge should have been walking around and directing some of these people to high tail it to the Garden Shop and help check people out. If not the Garden Shop, the Paint Department and so on.

What a simple concept! No need to hire more people. Re-deploy the people you already have and get the entire store team engaged in taking care of customers.

Tear down the invisible walls separating departments. Have employees check their cell phones when they report for work.

Lead by example. Some will follow. Many will not. Replace those who refuse. Implementing this concept in any business will boost sales and profits immediately with very little investment.

The key to building a high level of customer service is to make it EASY to deal with your company.

Make it easy to:
-Find you.
-Contact you.
-Figure out what you do or sell.
-Select your product or service.
-Pay.
-Return a product if necessary.
-Get answers.

If you like us, tell your friends. If not tell us! What a great motto for any business to adopt, prominently sign and live by every day of the year.

Do NOT be guilty of losing track of this kind of commitment by burying it in your mission statement. Tell the world! Especially your employees!

Bob Schumacher books and articles give entrepreneurs a clear coffee-shop English perspective on how to steer their business or profession into the top 20% who achieve 80% of the business and profits. Visit http://www.20do80.com for a complete directory of his articles and books.

Do You Use Customer Satisfaction Surveys?

Do you have customer satisfaction surveys in place?

If you don’t, we highly recommend that you do.
In a recent report from BenchmarkPortal, the top 3 post-call survey methods were:

1) Live telephone interviews 33.7%
2) Post-call IVR surveys 23.8%
3) Email surveys 15.8%

The significant findings as a result of this report include:
26.1% do post call surveys up from 19.6% in 2006
17.4% do not conduct any post call surveys, down from 25.8% in 2006
26% conducted surveys immediately after the call up over 50% from 2006
70.4% shared the survey reports with top management
63.4% agreed that agent training had a major impact on caller satisfaction

When asked when do you conduct your survey, the answers were:

Immediately after the call 26.0%
More than 10 days after 17.3%
2 day or less 14.4%
2-5 days 13.5%
5-10 days 7.7%
We don’t survey 17.4%

The significant question for me was: Based on customer satisfaction survey inputs, your organization made the following operational improvements:

And the top 2 were:

Added, changed or improved training for agents 25.2%
Increased First Call Resolution 19.3%

When asked whether improvements to training programs resulted in improved caller satisfaction, 63.4% agreed with the statement.

In a survey of over 2000 senior human resource executives (Novations Group), 2 out of 3 organizations are experiencing growing demand for customer service training.

Do you survey your customers?

And then if you do, do you use that information to kick your customer service up a notch? I hope the answer to both of these questions is a big resounding ‘YES.’

This goes back to previous articles on asking your customer. If you want to know how you are doing as a company; if you want to know how your customer service is being perceived; then ask your customer. Don’t rely solely on metrics, but rather, remember that the best measure of how you are doing is available to you in your customer.

Our recommendation is for post call surveys to be within 2 days of the call. Beyond that it is a mere memory and people could tell you what you want to hear rather than what is true for them.

If you were to ask me a week later–unless it was a truly bad call experience–I would answer yes quickly to get you off the phone and I might not be accurate in my responses. Of course, if it were a bad experience, I probably would take the time to give feedback.

However, if you are going to take the time to do post call surveys, use the information to:

Upgrade, change, improve your agent training
Increase your first call resolution
Change your IVR or skill based routing
Empower your agents to do more without requiring a supervisor’s approval
Decrease wait time
Share the information with management and all other touch points

In the Purdue University database of contact enters, only 61% report that they have a formal method for collecting caller satisfaction. More important, of those centers that collect customer information, only 33% of them use the information to influence change in the contact center, and even fewer use information to influence other areas in the organization.

In today’s competitive marketplace, what distinguishes one company from another is its relationship with the customer. And that’s a ‘people’ responsibility, not technology or process.

Who has that responsibility? Each and every person from your front line agent to your CEO–anyone and everyone who has interaction with a customer, current, potential, or future.

Rosanne Dausilio, Ph.D., customer service expert, provides needs analyses, customer service training; authors Wake Up Your Call Center, Customer Service & the Human Experience, Lay Your Cards on the Table, Kick Your Customer Service Up A Notch;tips newsletter at http://www.HumanTechTips.com

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