10 Do’s and Don’ts Of Customer Services
Email etiquette is the key to help calm down anxious and impatient customers. People assume that once they press the “send” button that we will get everything sorted out in an instant!
Of course we all know that this is not an accurate representation of how things work. However, you should prepare yourself for the occasional hot tempered emails, regardless of whether their comments are unreasonable or not.
Five Do’s Of Good Customer Services
1. Thank them for contacting customer support in the opening sentence of your reply messages.
2. Ask for further clarification if you are unsure of their requirements. Suggest some extra details to answer their query more effectively.
3. Address the support question within 24 hours of receiving their message to avoid unnecessary confrontation and dissatisfaction.
4. Offer further support if they require it and provide a sincere thanks for their custom. Also confirm that their message has been received and when they should expect a response.
5. Be apologetic to their needs and offer complete support and reassurance. However if a customer is still unsatisfied with their order offer them a replacement or refund.
Five Don’ts Of Customer Services
1. Don’t use abrasive words in your email. Always remain calm, courteous and professional.
2. Don’t leave the problem unresolved or unanswered because you are offended by their tone or for any other reason whatsoever.
3. Don’t neglect your customers by repeatedly delaying your response times. This will lead to negative feedback for your company and will inevitably cost you sales and damage your company’s reputation.
4. Don’t allow a customer to bully you into doing something irrational or unethical just to please them.
5. Don’t lie to a customer about your product. Make sure your description and terms are clear and are easily accessible on your Sales Page, Thank You Page and receipts.
Summary
Provide valuable information about your commitment to providing high levels of support by supplying your dedicated email address, fax, telephone number and mailing address. Place your company’s customer services details on your
“Sales Letter Page” and the “Thank You Page” (after orders are paid for and completed). This helps to reassure the customer that they will be able to contact you for ongoing help and support throughout the order process and after sales.
Once you have established a customer services support details you must ensure that all enquires are handled quickly and efficiently. If the enquiry needs more time to look up an order then send a confirmation email to let customers know that you have received their message and will get back to them in good time.
Unreasonable delays in response times can irritate customers so it is important to address problems any questions within 24 hours to avoid negative feedback.
Nancy P Redford shows you how to Take Online Payments for any web site without a costly merchant account. Stay safe on the Internet by getting wise to Online Scams
and Shams. Plus get some of the best business tools and resources for your home-based business here at: http://www.miriadz.com
[tags]nancy p redford,managing customer services,customer support,good customer services,managing business[/tags]
Managing Creativity - An Oxymoron! Not
Interrogated on a beach in Barbados by friends insistent that there was little validity to my speciality, I have felt compelled to answer the most common objections in the field of Managing Creativity and Innovation.
a) Managing Creativity and Innovation is an oxymoron!
When ideas are required, leaders tend to herd people into a room with a flip chart and conduct (usually an ineffective) brainstorming session. Implicit in this action is an acceptance that certain techniques and processes can increase problem identification, idea generation and the elicitation of tacit knowledge.
Structures such as the Hero’s Journey are accepted as increasing creative output when idea streams (such as in screenwriting) are needed.
Product development theory has proven innovation strategies that allow better idea selection, development and commercialisation. Frameworks such as the S-curve and idea funnels allow the efficient monitoring of ideas through a pipeline and effective go or kill decision-making.
b) Creativity cannot be managed because ideas occur out of the blue!
Ideas are the result of the mind working on particular problems at various cognitive levels. Though you cannot predict what an idea will be, where it will occur and what form it will take you can increase the likelihood of ideas occurring. Further, you can increase the number of ideas produced, the rarity of those ideas, the diversity of those ideas and the frequency of their production.
c) Creativity is not a process!
If you analyse the behaviour of people who are used to generating many ideas regularly, you will find that common patterns emerge. There is a definite process that triggers creative activity on multiple cognitive levels, resulting in the required insight. The process includes identifying and intensely investigating a problem, forcing production of ideas using creative versus critical thinking and other techniques; seeking stimuli and allowing the unconscious mind to take over by engaging in rest and unrelated activities.
d) Creativity is not tangible; creativity cannot be measured!
Analysts can measure (and therefore make tangible) creativity by quantifying a wide number of criteria. For instance, idea generation can be measured according to the number of ideas produced, their novelty, their variety and the frequency of their production. The DIY Creativity and Innovation Audit that comes with the MBA dissertation lists more than 150 benchmarking criteria, allowing holistic measurement.
e) Creative people will be creative whether they are “coached” or not!
Consider the infinite number of people who have been working on half finished manuscripts for months and often years. Management techniques increase creative output enabling completion in much shorter periods. Further, management techniques encourage targeted prolific activity, thus allowing the building of competencies and improvement.
f) Managing Creativity is not a useful activity unless it results in economic gain!
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation. Innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation. First use creativity to generate an idea pool and then use innovation to select feasible ideas, which can be developed and commercialised.
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These and other topics are covered in depth in the MBA dissertation on Managing Creativity & Innovation, which can be purchased at http://www.managing-creativity.com
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You are free to reproduce this article as long as the author’s name, web address and link to MBA dissertation is retained.
Kal Bishop MBA
Kal is a management consultant based in London, UK. He has consulted in the visual media and software industries and for clients such as Toshiba and Transport for London. He has led improv, creativity and innovation workshops, exhibited artwork in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London and written a number of screenplays. He is a passionate traveller.
[tags]Creativity, Innovation, Creativity Management, Brainstorming, Lateral Thinking, Creative Thinking[/tags]
Manage or Lead - Why the Difference Matters and What to Do About That Difference
Many books have been written about managing people, and an equally large number have been written about leadership. Some use the words manage and lead interchangeably, and some talk about the differences between the words, building a distinction based on style or behaviors.
With all due respect for these books, let me make it simple.
Manage things and lead people.
Manage
Often we can clarify much by going to the dictionary to look up words we already know. When I looked up manage on Dictionary .com, I saw phrases like:
“To direct or control the use of; handle, to exert control over, to make submissive to one’s authority, discipline, or persuasion . . .”
Given those definitions there are many things we need to manage:
Budgets
Production schedules
Sales forecasts
Marketing plans
Projects
Work flow
to name a few.
Obviously, management skills are important. Organizations need the capability of effectively managing the items and resources on the list above (and 100 other things).
The rub comes when you start thinking about managing people. People aren’t budgets or marketing plans. People are a resource in a whole other classification beyond the other resources of an organization.
People won’t perform most effectively if they are being controlled or made submissive to authority. (Hey, I’m just using the words from the definition I read!)
Lead
On the other hand, let’s go back to the dictionary.com for some phrases on lead.
“show the way by going in advance, to guide or direct a course, to inspire the conduct of ” are just a few of the definitions I found.
People respond to being led.
Just as you can’t inspire the conduct of a budget, you won’t be most effective trying to manage people.
Which leads me back to my initial premise: Manage things and lead people.
Beyond Semantics
I challenge you to think about your current practices, habits and approaches to working with other people. If you can find situations, times, or tendencies where you lean towards managing people, I encourage you to try a new approach starting today.
Here are six things you can do to shift your focus towards leading:
1. Think about how you have felt when being led vs. being managed. Write down five reasons you prefer to be led and use those reasons as reminders for yourself.
2. Explain these differences to those you lead and have a discussion about those differences. Commit to these people that you want to lead them more and manage them less. Ask for their help in adjusting your approach.
3. Recognize the strengths in those you work with and find ways for them to express those strengths more often and effectively.
4. Take the lead. Show the way by rolling up your sleeves to help a group with a sticky problem or to help them overcome a time crunch. Maybe you know the real work and can help in that way. Maybe you help by getting rid of an obstacle, providing moral support or getting the pizza.
5. Build relationships. Remember always that leading is a relationship activity, so take more time and focus more energy on building relationships with those you lead. As you build relationships you give yourself the opportunity to be more effective as a leader.
6. Think of yourself, call yourself, and introduce yourself as a leader and not a manager. The words matter.
Improve your management skills. Learn how to allocate resources, control expenses, and build projects. Use the thoughts in this article to help you continue to improve your leadership skills too. Both skill sets are important. And both always have room for improvement.
They just aren’t one in the same Manage things and lead people.
Kevin Eikenberry is Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group (http://KevinEikenberry.com), a learning consulting company that helps Clients reach their potential through a variety of training, consulting and speaking services. To receive your free special report on “Unleashing Your Potential” go to http://www.kevineikenberry.com/uypw/index.asp or call us at (317) 387-1424 or 888.LEARNER.
[tags]managing people, leading others, leading, managing or leading, leading or managing, leadership, mana[/tags]
Managing Resistance to Change
01.Sometime back this author had written an article titled ” Are your employees leaving the organizations in disgust? Apply Change Management practices”. While discussing about the various aspects of Change Management concepts, it is informed that the employees, for obvious reasons, generally dislike changes brought in by the management, as they do not like to come out of the existing practices.
This article makes an attempt to demystify the resistance to changes by the employees, besides explaining why do they develop such resistance to changes .It is also discussed that how this issue can be resolved and how to make use of their resistance to maximize the working results of the organization, while proceeding with the change efforts.
02.Reactions to Change.
The resistance to change is purely a psychological concern only. They are concerned with their safety. They do apprehend whether they would be protected and free from harm during the period when changes are implemented. The situations caused by changes will trigger the psychological responses such as safety and security. Some of these responses may be positive and some others may be negative. For example, if people with decision-making powers were taken out, on account of change efforts, it would cause a negative result. On the other hand if they are told clearly about these early and given clear options to chose from, they would be more positive about the change.
In the same way, people who are accustomed to a particular style of working will find it very difficult to change their way of working and they do resist such changes.
Change causes people to question whether they would continue to have the same level of power and control; even after the change measures are introduced.
Employees are concerned whether the changes would cause a deceleration in their income level and apprehend whether such decisions would be fair enough to them or based on whim or nepotism.
Again, employees apprehend whether they would continue to be recognized and cared even after the changes are introduced or would be treated poorly.
Hence the resistance to change is displayed by the employees on account of factors such as Safety and Security, habits, fear of loosing control, economic factors and finally their apprehension about loosing importance and recognition in their organization.
03.The Change Process.
Now, let us discuss how the resistance for change can be removed. In fact the change leaders must attend to People’s core psychological issues by adopting the following measures. It involves taking people through four phases of change, as under.
a. Awareness - Tell the employees why these changes are contemplated and what is the result anticipated.
b. Understanding-In what way the changes contemplated would affect the job, role and responsibilities of the employees
c. Acceptance-What type of support and training the employees would get, consequent
to the changes contemplated.
d. Commitment-Involvement to increase both bottom line and top line of the business
Above all, change leaders should remember one important point that the resistance to change
is mainly on account of ego of the employees concerned. If the changes contemplated are discussed with the employees sufficiently early and all their clarifications are properly explained, then the problem of resistance can be avoided.
Alternatively, the employees should be prepared for a change through the following.
Vision, Communication, Organization Goal, Training and Support
04.How do people react to Change-a live Case study?
The author of this article had an occasion to introduce change measures, while he was working as an executive in a bank. The Corporation of the local city is one of our valued customers and our bank has an extension counter at their premises for their convenience. The working hours also was fixed taking in to account their way of functioning, that is from 11.00 AM to 6.00 P.M.
The business hours during which they can transact business is 11.00 A.M to 3.30 P.M.
During the second week of every month, there would be heavy inflow of cash and generally the quantum cash would range in the order of Rs 75 Lacs and the employees were cooperating even by working beyond the stipulated hours.
It so happened that in one month, there were three consecutive holidays and on the day of reopening, there was heavy collections and Cashiers of Corporation came to the Bank for remitting cash at 4.30 PM only. The employees on that day refused to accept the Cash, on the plea that time was over. The undersigned somehow managed the situation and decided that some thing should be done to correct this situation because the Cashiers of the Corporation can come on busy days after 4.00 P.M only and taking in to account the quantum of business we get, the working hours are to be changed to their convenience.
Next day, with the concurrence of the higher authorites, the business hours were changed from 12.30 PM to 4.30 PM and office hours up to 7.30 P.M.The employees were advised accordingly.
There were resistances from the employees for the change of working hours and union leaders also started shouting.
The author called for a meeting of all employees and the union leaders and informed categorically that the bank cannot afford to lose the account of the Corporation and the other banks are ready to serve them. Since the extension counter is put up at their premises for their convenience, it would not be fair to insist them to have their functions according to bank’s convenience. If the changes contemplated are to be dropped, then the bank would loose a valuable customer and the extension counter be closed and the employees would be redeployed.
The fair and frank discussions, the author had with the employees, had a telling effect and they realized their folly. However, they wanted the time be changed; that is, instead of 12.00 PM.the branch be opened by 12.00 Noon and they have assured that they would extend their full cooperation in receiving cash on busy days even beyond the stipulated hours. Thus the resistance to change could be solved to the satisfaction of the employees.
05.Employees`resistance-a potential energy for Change effort.
It now clear that when employees do not accept the change measures and do not like the change process, the same should be seen as a healthy and beneficial wake up call for improvement. Each employee can be considered as a product of intelligent people with good common sense, trying to make things better.
It must be construed that dealing with resistance in positive ways is one of the good strategies for accelerating the change effort. Employee resistance can be considered as potential energy, which can be harnessed for improving the bottom line of the organization.
In the case referred to as above, the resistance of the employees for the changes in timings could result in motivation of their morale and the employees develop a sort importance for the bank to develop and come to the conclusion that the growth of the Bank is the growth of the employees Alternatively, the welfare of employees depends on the growth of the organization.
Article by: S.Suyampirakasam, Divisional Manager (Retd) Canara Bank
Retired executive of canara Bank,31 years of Bank experience,A graduate in Chemistry and a certified Associate of Indian Institute of Banking and Finance with a rank.Good exposure in Credit management and Foreign Exchange,After retirment,I am doing consultant works like project Preparation, conducting viability study and feasibility study,preparing rehabilitation programme for Sick Industrial units. I am a visiting faculty for MBA students of the following three colleges,handling International Financial Management,International trade and Documentation and Economics a.ICFAI National college b.Thiagarajar School of management c.R L Institute of Management Studies. A freelance writer
[tags]This article makes an attempt to demystify the resistance to changes by the employees, besides expla[/tags]
Effective Management Of Your Customer Services
With a third party merchant account you will have a dedicated 24/7 support team to handle your credit card payment on your behalf as part of your package.
You will also need to provide your own support for issues relating directly to your product.
It is good practice to draw up a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page to list answers to common questions. Provide a link to your FAQ page on your “Thank You Page” and all your support emails for your customer’s convenience. By doing so you will help to substantially reduce the number of duplicate question you will have to answer by email.
You could use install inexpensive software to automate your FAQ web page and customer support tickets which will also reduce the number of emails you will have to answer individually.
Keep your customers happy and develop trust and a good reputation by serving their needs as best as you can. Your customers are the life-blood of your business. If they feel they have been treated well throughout the order process they are more likely to buy from you again and recommend your site to others. This is where you will build your back-end sales and generate more profits for you and your business.
Hire Extra Support Staff
Depending on the volume of your daily enquiries you have the option to hire people to reply to support questions on your behalf. Search online for “Freelance Virtual Assistants”. This can be very cost effective and will free your time to get on with other areas of your business.
Another alternative is to install a “Virtual Customer Support” with automated responses and a more professional way to answer customer enquiries. This will also eliminate unsolicited emails from your email inbox because a real person has to click through to initiate a response ticket for each enquiry.
Remember happy customers will recommend you to their friends and colleagues. Providing your business with positive feedback and developing a good reputation and returning custom.
Nancy P Redford shows you how to Take Online Payments for any web site without a costly merchant account. Stay safe on the Internet by getting wise to Online Scams
and Shams. Plus get some of the best business tools and resources for your home-based business here at: http://www.miriadz.com
[tags]nancy p redford,managing customer services,customer support,good customer services,managing business[/tags]
Managing Your Major Sales - 7 Steps That Could Change The Way You Pursue Business
Ever lost a sale you thought was in the bag? Not an unfamiliar feeling for many businesses large and small. No matter how good you think your product or service is, everything finally boils down to your ability to convince others that it is good for them. It is all about getting the decision makers who matter to say “Yes”.
In major sales the whole approach is fundamentally different to small scale selling and requires a very different set of skills and techniques. Being competent in the small, simple sale is no guarantee of success in larger scale selling. The traditional techniques and “tricks of the trade” such as closing don’t seem to work in quite the same way in the more complex large scale sale. They are replaced by precise planning, information gathering and behavioural skills that build trust in the minds of the decision makers. Fundamental to this is the development of a detailed understanding of how decisions are made in your target customer and who the key players are.
So what constitutes a major sale? For most businesses they have a number of characteristics:
1. A lengthy sales cycle. This can vary from a few days to a few months or more depending on the industry.
2. Multiple decision makers. Any decision becomes complex as soon as more than one person is involved in making it. Understanding who these people are and their role in the process is vital if you are to improve your chances of success.
3. High potential value/importance. This varies from business to business. If your turnover is
Managing Change
How often have you heard the statement, the only thing constant is change. No kidding, right? Anyone living on the planet earth can attest to that statement.
For most of us, the pace of change seems to have picked up dramatically over the past few years, thanks in part to the increased availability and use of technology, as well as the global economy in which we now live and work. Layer on all of the merger and acquisition activity and the ongoing waves of layoffs, and you have a recipe for constant change.
Do you remember the story of the frog and the pan of hot water? If you put a frog in a pan of boiling water, it will leap out instantly. However, if you put a frog in a pan of cold water and gradually turn up the heat, the frog will typically remain in the pan of water because it has an opportunity to adjust to the increase in water temperature.
Unfortunately for most people, when we experience change it often feels like being thrown into a pan of boiling water. So what can you do to avoid becoming frog soup? I find the best way to manage change is to practice a little change every day, particularly when you have the ability to control the change.
What does this mean? Take a new route to work. Visit a musuem during your lunch hour. Buy something new for your office. Pick up a pair of new sunglasses. Volunteer for a new project at work. If you usually drink coffee, try tea. Get a new hairdo. Take an art class. Join toastmasters. Listen to a new radio station. Take Spanish lessons. Visit the zoo.
The list could go on and on and is only limited by your creativity and imagination. The point? Managing change on a small scale when you are in the driver’s seat, helps you to develop the resilience to manage change on a larger scale.
So the next time you find yourself in the midst of change, relax and focus on the possibilities. After all, you’ve been practicing, right? And you never know, it could be fun and you might even like what change comes your way. Otherwise, you might just find yourself eating frog soup.
Regina Barr is a business consultant with a passion for helping companies develop their full potential by focusing on their most valuable asset: their people. For more information on her programs and services, check out her website, http://www.RedLadder.com and sign up for her free email newsletter, Developing People…Inspiring Success.
[tags]managing change[/tags]
Business Leadership Skills - Managing the Human Being Behind the Business
Managing the Human Being Behind the Business
It’s a common problem and we’ve all seen it - business owners that are just ‘too busy’ all of the time, and as a result, do not enjoy the success in business they had hoped for. Let’s not kid ourselves, there is a lot to focus on: technology, employees, sales, marketing and so on. These functions are essential and need to be well organised and managed.
But there is a second aspect to business success that is often overlooked - the effectiveness of the person running the show. Businesses are a reflection of the people who run them. If those people are ‘too busy’, stressed, or poorly organised,
Taming The Procrastination Demon
Are you like many people who put off what you know you should do in your daily life? Is the basement, the closets, your office, the garage, the yard work all demanding your attention? We all delay doing some chores, but if you are finding yourself with more and more undone projects, maybe you are a victim of “procrastination”. This gets to be a really demoralizing situation. If you accept the challenges that life provides, then you are more likely to live many years longer than those who spend their lives stressing about “getting things done” and never making the necessary moves to accomplish what needs doing.
If you are not being challenged in your daily life by your work or your living situation, then maybe it is just fear holding you back and you need to accomplish much more. Fear grips you so that you are not able to accomplish what you desire and so you put it off, making excuses not to accomplish the project. Eventually this can become a habit throughout all your facets of living. This article will attempt to reinforce your zest for a challenge, to enable you to take chances, to overcome rejection and to step up to the plate when you know you have things that need attention.
Here are some steps to take immediately:
1. Be organized - I know that this is a hard goal to reach. But, start out small to accomplish the larger goal. Make a project chart for your larger jobs and put the smaller projects on your daily chart. Organize your day with a “TO DO LIST” and put the items down as rapidly as possible and do not worry about what order until the page is filled up. Then go back and rank what is most important and circle the item, make a star by that item, or otherwise note their importance. This way you can let the other items fall below what is most important and you can get to them later. What you do not get done one day can be added to the next day’s list. I know this can be a hard habit to get into, but once you do it for a week or two, you will find it will be hard to get to sleep without your list made for the next day.
2. Divide Major Projects - If a project seems overwhelming, then have a major project list and divide each segment into smaller tasks. For instance, let’s say you want to clean out the garage. (At my house, that is a MAJOR project!) On Monday, you can go through the stuff that looks like it should be going to Goodwill and box that up. Tuesday, you can do an easy chore of taking it to Goodwill. Wednesday, you can arrange all like items in separate piles. For instance, yard tools, lawn furniture, sports equipment, household tools like step ladders, tool cabinets, brooms and mops, things of that nature. On Thursday, you can map out how much room to allow for each category because maybe you have too much lawn furniture based on the space you have or maybe you want to devote more space to lawn furniture and less to sports equipment. Whatever your lifestyle is, this is the way to organize it within the garage area. On Saturday, move everything that you plan to keep out of the garage and clean the shelves and floors and windows. Then put it all back and arrange neatly based on the space sketch you have. On Sunday, enjoy having a place to park the car, finally. It is all a matter of doing little bits of associated action and keep moving to the final goal.
3. Just get started - When you find yourself making excuses and putting things off, then you know that you are letting yourself go down the road to being a prisoner of the demon called procrastination. Just do not let yourself provide excuses. Start with your easiest task and proceed from there. You will have a greater sense of accomplishment when you make small insteps to the greater project than if you do nothing at all.
4. Outside help - Enlist outside help if you find it necessary to finish a project. There is nothing wrong with having help, whether you have to hire outside help or whether you encourage your family members to help on some projects. The idea is to make a goal sheet and keep on the projects you know are needed around your place and pick a start date so everyone knows how to schedule their time to be involved. A family that cleans together keeps the place cleaner for the next time!
5. Reward Yourself - Finally, reward yourself and your crew when you finish a project. Getting a job done has taken a lot of effort, and you need to be good to yourself for fighting the procrastination demon. There is a wonderful feeling which comes over us when we know we have done a good job and can see the fruits of our labor. That is how the world works. As it has been said, this is a kill and eat world. You have to know how to make yourself set goals, work through the human desire to put things off, and finally to feel the sense of accomplishment and reward with completion of a project.
Ok, now, get out those pens and papers and take a mental trip across your home, your business life, and your personal or religious life. What needs to change? How soon? Will you take my advice and banish the procrastination demon and finally feel the reward for accomplishment that you may have been lacking recently? And make no mistake, the procrastination demon can come on you at any time, in varying degrees, and you must take a stand and banish the demon with whatever steps you feel necessary. Do not put off having the things you want in life because you procrastinate. Give yourself the satisfaction of accomplishing the things you need and doing them within your goal period.
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Steve Hall is the owner of http://www.your-official-guide.com, your one-stop location for getting the information you are looking for on a wide ranging and ever-growing list of subjects.
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[tags]time management,goals,goal setting,success,managing time,time,procrastination,motivation[/tags]
Managing Yo-Yo Style
Does being managed by others smack more of “Survivor” than Stephen Covey for you? Could there BE any more management styles out therehave you gotten to experience all of them yet? And what kind of manager are youor should you try to be?
If you’re reading this, you’re probably familiar with too many types of management and leadership stylesmore flavors than months, for the most part. On the leadership, not so much. I offer to you now an additional insight into a newly designated style that you will recognize, and may even find funny. Or not, depending on life at work.
And speaking of life at work, what could be more fun than children’s toys at work? How about just the thought of them? No, waithow about BEING them?
Before I go on, I must tell you I am at work on a book on management styles, because we definitely need more fun at work, but this type of “leadership” stands alone, and was recognized and developed by a colleague and myself, with one disclaimer only: No alcoholic beverages were consumed in the making of this theory!
Now back to our theory, which shall be forever called The Yo-Yo Style of Management