How to Contact Customer Service at Virgin Voyages?

Virgin Voyages is a prominent cruise line that has its headquarters in Plantation, Florida, United States. This cruise line provides best and incredible customer services at the time of need.

mediaimage
How to get a customer service call assistance at Virgin Voyages?

In partnership with Virgin Group, Virgin Voyages has a free customer support assistance number for its customers. Virgin Voyages is ready to direct its private alternative investment through multi-asset services. Virgin Voyages lets all crew members who work on a cruise ship to support their guest passengers with full efficacy. You need to bring your concern to the crew of the Virgin Voyages Cruise Line team who is being trained all the time and is always ready to assist the crew.

For both travellers and customers with the ability and competent support personnel, the Virgin Voyages customer service phone number is available to support its guests through the cruise assistance team by the following alternatives:

Virgin Voyages offers an on-line Chat support forum to chat with the customer service staff for answers to all kinds of queries. The customer care team offers the best support for all forms of issues about Virgin Travel.
Assistance by telephone number: By dialling Virgin Voyages customer service numbers, you can call Virgin Voyages easily and can get answers immediately for any questions from them to get product support in a very short timeframe.
By email assistance: You can even send an e-mail to your official address to Virgin Voyages. You will need to explain your problems and you will receive all the potential answers from Virgin Voyages.
Based on the social media platform: On the social media pages Facebook and Twitter, you will also be able to join Virgin Voyages, where its Customer Support staff will help you to answer different issues at Virgin Voyages.
Virgin Voyages Phone Number assistance is committed to providing one of the best fleet services by its investment in secure and efficient customer assistance technologies for optimum satisfaction for its customers. Onboard their luxury cruises, there will not be an unanswered issue and they want everybody to be happy and enjoy their rides.

Contact form assistance provided by Virgin Group

You can remove your question from the Virgin Voyages website through the medium of feedback form, which will address your issues to future Virgin crew members. It provides all-round 24 x 7 customer assistance and is keen to satisfy its consumers with a positive mentality and a love of sailing for delivery, hotel operations, product production, services and design, IT, shores and transport, service staff and sales management. The Virgin Voyages Phone Number assistance is given between 8 O’clock in the morning till 6 O’clock in the evening. Further, you can call or chat with their customer support lines (EST) anytime and in less than 72 hours they will contact you back to you. For all sorts of questions, you can dial Virgin Voyages’ phone number from your chosen destination to contact the customer service assistance support and you will get the relevant satisfactory assistance once you are linked with their team.

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e-Marketing Strategy: 7 Dimensions to Consider (the e-Marketing Mix)

The frenzy around these new marketing techniques created by e-tailers and supported by the internet rapidly gave birth to a new dimension of what we knew as Marketing: the e-Marketing (electronic Marketing).

There are many definitions to what e-Marketing is, the simplest and shortest one being formulated by Mark Sceats: e-Marketing is Marketing that uses the internet as manifestation media. A working definition is that coming from a group of CISCO specialists: e-Marketing is the sum of all activities a business conducts through the internet with the purpose of finding, attracting, winning and retaining customers.

e-Marketing Strategy

The e-Marketing Strategy is normally based and built upon the principles that govern the traditional, offline Marketing – the well-known 4 P’s (Product – Price – Promotion – Positioning) that form the classic Marketing mix. Add the extra 3 P’s (People – Processes – Proof) and you got the whole extended Marketing mix.

Until here, there are no much aspects to differentiate e-Marketing from the traditional Marketing performed offline: the extended Marketing mix (4 + 3 P’s) is built around the concept of “transactional” and its elements perform transactional functions defined by the exchange paradigm. What gives e-Marketing its uniqueness is a series of specific functions, relational functions, that can be synthesized in the 2P + 2C+ 3S formula: Personalization, Privacy, Customer Service, Community, Site, Security, Sales Promotion.

These 7 functions of the e-Marketing stay at the base of any e-Marketing strategy and they have a moderating character, unlike the classic Marketing mix that comprises situational functions only. Moderating functions of e-Marketing have the quality of moderate, operate upon all situational functions of the mix (the classic 4 P’s) and upon each other.

1. Personalization
The fundamental concept of personalization as a part of the e-Marketing mix lies in the need of recognizing, identifying a certain customer in order to establish relations (establishing relations is a fundamental objective of Marketing). It is crucial to be able to identify our customers on individual level and gather all possible information about them, with the purpose of knowing our market and be able to develop customized, personalized products and services.

For example, a cookie strategically placed on the website visitor’s computer can let us know vital information concerning the access speed available: in consequence, if we know the visitor is using a slow connection (eg. dial-up) we will offer a low-volume variation of our website, with reduced graphic content and no multimedia or flash applications. This will ease our customer’s experience on our website and he will be prevented from leaving the website on the reason that it takes too long to load its pages.

Personalization can be applied to any component of the Marketing mix; therefore, it is a moderating function.

2. Privacy
Privacy is an element of the mix very much connected to the previous one – personalization. When we gather and store information about our customers and potential customers (therefore, when we perform the personalization part of the e-Marketing mix) a crucial issue arises: that of the way this information will be used, and by whom. A major task to do when implementing an e-Marketing strategy is that of creating and developing a policy upon access procedures to the collected information.

This is a duty and a must for any conscious marketer to consider all aspects of privacy, as long as data are collected and stored, data about individual persons.

Privacy is even more important when establishing the e-Marketing mix since there are many regulations and legal aspects to be considered regarding collection and usage of such information.

3. Customer Service
Customer service is one of the necessary and required activities among the support functions needed in transactional situations.

We will connect the apparition of the customer service processes to the inclusion of the “time” parameter in transactions. When switching from a situational perspective to a relational one, and e-Marketing is mostly based on a relational perspective, the marketer saw himself somehow forced into considering support and assistance on a non-temporal level, permanently, over time.

For these reasons, we should consider the Customer Service function (in its fullest and largest definition) as an essential one within the e-Marketing mix.

As we can easily figure out, the service (or assistance if you wish) can be performed upon any element from the classic 4 P’s, hence its moderating character.

4. Community
We can all agree that e-Marketing is conditioned by the existence of this impressive network that the internet is. The merely existence of such a network implies that individuals as well as groups will eventually interact. A group of entities that interact for a common purpose is what we call a “community” and we will soon see why it is of absolute importance to participate, to be part of a community.

The Metcalf law (named after Robert Metcalf) states that the value of a network is given by the number of its components, more exactly the value of a network equals the square of the number of components. We can apply this simple law to communities, since they are a network: we will then conclude that the value of a community rises with the number of its members. This is the power of communities; this is why we have to be a part of it.

The customers / clients of a business can be seen as part of a community where they interact (either independent or influenced by the marketer) – therefore developing a community is a task to be performed by any business, even though it is not always seen as essential.

Interactions among members of such a community can address any of the other functions of e-Marketing, so it can be placed next to other moderating functions.

5. Site
We have seen and agreed that e-Marketing interactions take place on a digital media – the internet. But such interactions and relations also need a proper location, to be available at any moment and from any place – a digital location for digital interactions.

Such a location is what we call a “site”, which is the most widespread name for it. It is now the time to mention that the “website” is merely a form of a “site” and should not be mistaken or seen as synonyms. The “site” can take other forms too, such as a Palm Pilot or any other handheld device, for example.

This special location, accessible through all sort of digital technologies is moderating all other functions of the e-Marketing – it is then a moderating function.

6. Security
The “security” function emerged as an essential function of e-Marketing once transactions began to be performed through internet channels.

What we need to keep in mind as marketers are the following two issues on security:

- security during transactions performed on our website, where we have to take all possible precautions that third parties will not be able to access any part of a developing transaction;

- security of data collected and stored, about our customers and visitors.

A honest marketer will have to consider these possible causes of further trouble and has to co-operate with the company’s IT department in order to be able to formulate convincing (and true, honest!) messages towards the customers that their personal details are protected from unauthorized eyes.

7. Sales Promotion
At least but not last, we have to consider sales promotions when we build an e-Marketing strategy. Sales promotions are widely used in traditional Marketing as well, we all know this, and it is an excellent efficient strategy to achieve immediate sales goals in terms of volume.

This function counts on the marketer’s ability to think creatively: a lot of work and inspiration is required in order to find new possibilities and new approaches for developing an efficient promotion plan.

On the other hand, the marketer needs to continuously keep up with the latest internet technologies and applications so that he can fully exploit them.

To conclude, we have seen that e-Marketing implies new dimensions to be considered aside of those inherited from the traditional Marketing. These dimensions revolve around the concept of relational functions and they are a must to be included in any e-Marketing strategy in order for it to be efficient and deliver results.

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How to Contact Customer Service at Virgin Voyages?

Virgin Voyages is a prominent cruise line that has its headquarters in Plantation, Florida, United States. This cruise line provides best and incredible customer services at the time of need.

mediaimage
How to get a customer service call assistance at Virgin Voyages?

In partnership with Virgin Group, Virgin Voyages has a free customer support assistance number for its customers. Virgin Voyages is ready to direct its private alternative investment through multi-asset services. Virgin Voyages lets all crew members who work on a cruise ship to support their guest passengers with full efficacy. You need to bring your concern to the crew of the Virgin Voyages Cruise Line team who is being trained all the time and is always ready to assist the crew.

For both travellers and customers with the ability and competent support personnel, the Virgin Voyages customer service phone number is available to support its guests through the cruise assistance team by the following alternatives:

Virgin Voyages offers an on-line Chat support forum to chat with the customer service staff for answers to all kinds of queries. The customer care team offers the best support for all forms of issues about Virgin Travel.
Assistance by telephone number: By dialling Virgin Voyages customer service numbers, you can call Virgin Voyages easily and can get answers immediately for any questions from them to get product support in a very short timeframe.
By email assistance: You can even send an e-mail to your official address to Virgin Voyages. You will need to explain your problems and you will receive all the potential answers from Virgin Voyages.
Based on the social media platform: On the social media pages Facebook and Twitter, you will also be able to join Virgin Voyages, where its Customer Support staff will help you to answer different issues at Virgin Voyages.
Virgin Voyages Phone Number assistance is committed to providing one of the best fleet services by its investment in secure and efficient customer assistance technologies for optimum satisfaction for its customers. Onboard their luxury cruises, there will not be an unanswered issue and they want everybody to be happy and enjoy their rides.

Contact form assistance provided by Virgin Group

You can remove your question from the Virgin Voyages website through the medium of feedback form, which will address your issues to future Virgin crew members. It provides all-round 24 x 7 customer assistance and is keen to satisfy its consumers with a positive mentality and a love of sailing for delivery, hotel operations, product production, services and design, IT, shores and transport, service staff and sales management. The Virgin Voyages Phone Number assistance is given between 8 O’clock in the morning till 6 O’clock in the evening. Further, you can call or chat with their customer support lines (EST) anytime and in less than 72 hours they will contact you back to you. For all sorts of questions, you can dial Virgin Voyages’ phone number from your chosen destination to contact the customer service assistance support and you will get the relevant satisfactory assistance once you are linked with their team.

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10 Best Customer Service Companies You Should Learn From

Ask any ‘Pretty Woman’ fan and they’ll gleefully recount that unforgettable scene when Julia Roberts hits Rodeo Drive for a shopping spree. Remember the revenge-bliss scene in the 1990s romantic fantasy?

So it happens that Vivian visits a fancy boutique to buy herself a nice dress where she is spurned by the snooty salespeople. Later, she buys a slew of obscenely expensive outfits and then returns – dressed to the nines and carrying handfuls of shopping bags – to the one boutique that had shunned her.

“You work on commission, right?” she asks a la-di-da saleswoman.

“Uh, yes.”

“Big mistake. Big. HUGE!”

“I have to go shopping now,” she says, turning on her heels to leave (as we give a collective contented sigh at the appalled look at the salesperson’s face. She had it coming!).

Moral of the story? It doesn’t matter how deep your customer’s pockets are, it only matters how well you treat them. Imagine how different the movie would be if it was made now. What are the chances of Vivian tweeting out her anger and hurt, her tweets going viral with tons of people chipping in their own frustration, the movement gaining momentum and leading the store to a digital suicide?

In a service business, nothing is more important than having people on your team who’ll do more than represent your current culture-you must have people who push the culture you have forward, not the other way around.

More often in customer experience, you could get away with doing the bare minimum. That is mostly enough. But enough is far from memorable. It is when you go out of your way that you make people’s day!

We’ve cherry-picked 10 brands that have an unbeatable track when it comes to cultivating their customers’ happiness.

Zappos

Did you know that up to 42% of consumers expect a response with 60 minutes? Apparently, a prompt response is the norm, not exception anymore.

If there is a gold standard in customer service, it has got to be Zappos. Their support success stories are the stuff of urban legends. One such instance, they won a customer for life by overnighting a pair of shoes, free of cost, to a best man in need.

On social media, Zappos doesn’t hold back from having a little fun with emojis and GIFs, but they always adhere to their golden rule of putting their customers first. And it pays off, each time!

Delta Hotels

Mike McCready, your average Jo, was attending the #PSEWEB conference in Vancouver, when he stayed at Delta hotel. While he liked his room at the Delta, the view was rather ugly and he tweeted that with his followers. He didn’t tag the hotel, merely commenting on it, as he didn’t think anything would come out of the tweet.

He was in for a pleasant surprise when Delta responded within an hour- offering another room with a better view! And he had a dish of sweets and a handwritten card from the staff awaiting his arrival in his room. Mike was so profoundly impressed that he wrote an entire post about it, the very same day.

Amazon

If happy customers are what you have in mind, then an exuberant customer service team is what you should already have. Let your customer service team have fun. Amazon has an exciting story to tell of what can happen when companies give their teams more freedom in their client communications.

One such instance, when a witty customer service person engaged in a Thor and Odin roleplay with an equally witty customer, to the delight of everyone. ( https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/1133174/now-thats-customer-service-amazon-worker-engages-in-hilarious-thor-roleplay-to-help-replace-customers-lost-book/ This Thor and Odin exchange was legendary. The hilarious communication between an Amazon employee and a customer couldn’t go better even if it was scripted!

Now, can you imagine how dry things would have been if the Customer Service was asked to reply only with strictly professional (read stuffy), straightforward answers? More people than you’d think would appreciate humor. Just don’t crack jokes at the expense of a pissed off customer.

Westjet

There is nothing more cheerier than surprise gifts (as Westjet proved)! In December 2013, the Canadian airline staged what would become the most stunning example of ‘giftvertising’ yet.

When Santa Claus greeted each of the passengers boarding the two Westjet flights with “What would you like for Christmas?”, they thought it was a just an interesting Xmas celebration. From a warm scarf and clean underwear to holiday tickets and a big tv, their answers ranged from whatever first came to their mind.

In the following year, the number of visits to their websites doubled, with bookings increasing by 77% compared to the same month in 2012 and revenue rising by a whopping 86%!

Slack

Putting out figurative fires is what a customer service company does all day. But doing it gracefully is indeed an art! Sometimes it’s when things aren’t going perfectly that a company’s true colors come out.

As is the case of Slack when they dealt with their app-wide outage like a pro in late November, 2015. For a new company on the block, they have more than their share of passionate customers for whom Slack has become an indispensable part of many teams’ work day! That’s why when Slack went down ten months ago, users blew up Twitter.

They responded to every complaint on social with speed and humility, and diligently shared regular updates until the issue was resolved, and the app was up and running again!

Salesforce

Transparency can leave a huge impact on the ones who are on the receiving end of it. Salesforce has an excellent customer service, that plays a vital role in making it the customer’s favorite.

As they put it, “Success is built on trust.
Trust starts with transparency.”

Salesforce is so utterly customer focused and upholds transparency so much so that the company publicly disclose in real time when its cloud services are unavailable or face some reliance issues. Now that takes some nerve!

Apple

The one brand that has inspired the type of customer loyalty which sometimes borders on the maniacal, Apple earned its loyalty through their exemplary customer experience.
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backward to the technology.”
Steve Jobs – Co-founder of Apple

While the Apple products are the very definition of innovation and ease, the real soul of the company is its employees. Apple mitigates the need for reactive customer service with a focus on building intuitive products and providing quality training for users.
Apple staff are highly knowledgeable and committed to passing on that knowledge in an empathetic way. They demonstrate enthusiastic, empathetic, and knowledgeable customer service. The sheer quality of training the staff undergoes make the entire customer experience seamless, and most of all, effortless.

Nordstrom

At a Nordstrom store, a woman lost her diamond from her wedding ring while trying on clothes. She was crawling on the floor under the racks when a store worker noticed her. He asked what was going on, then joined the search.

When they came up empty, he sought two building-services workers to join the search. To everyone’s relief, the finally found the shiny diamond on one of the bags of the store’s vacuum cleaners.

The video clips that captured this incident was shared proudly with the stakeholders in a meeting when the President of Stores Erik Nordstrom said, introducing his three employees who went out of their way to help the customer. “I’ve never been through a vacuum-cleaner bag. It’s kind of disgusting, this raises the bar,” he said!

Southwest Air

Southwest is not among the most well-known airlines in the U.S. for nothing. They have the most amazing personality as is evident from what they have to say about themselves on their website.

“We like to think of ourselves as a Customer Service company that happens to fly airplanes (on schedule, with personality and perks along the way).”

One of their memorable support stories is as follows: when a woman athlete landed at the airport but her running gear didn’t show up, she was understandably distressed about the relay race that was soon to happen. She resolved to go to Walmart to buy herself a replacement before a Southwest team member drove 3 hours to deliver the bag to her so that she could continue with her team and go on with the race.

As is evident here, their dedication to customer service is simply a class apart!

JetBlue

Who, but JetBlue has an exclusive Customer Bill of Rights?

“JetBlue Airways is dedicated to bringing humanity back to air travel. We strive to make every part of your experience as simple and as pleasant as possible.” They ensure that their service is thoroughly human, especially on social, responding within minutes, guiding customers throughout, and responding with emojis and GIFs to any questions customers might have.

They have no qualms whatsoever when it comes to delivering personal service. One time, when the customer’s flight was delayed and it seemed like she was going to miss her second flight too, the manager booked her another flight home that took off from another airport and made the effort to drive her to another airport so she would make her flight on time.

It only takes a handful of disastrous customer experiences to shatter the credibility that took your brand decades to built. It pays to be long-term greedy and leave no stones unturned to ensure a supreme customer service.

Want to find your company on this list? There are no shortcuts save putting your customers in the center of everything you do. You need to know what they desire to offer them exactly that. And how do you do that?

By asking them, of course. Customer feedback surveys and market research surveys

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Good Reasons to Use Crypto-Currency Bitcoin

Bitcoin is a comparatively new type of currency that has just started to strike the mainstream markets.

Critics state that using Bitcoins is unsafe because -

They have no authentic value
They are not regulated
They can be used to make illegal transactions
Still all the major market players talk about Bitcoins. Below are some good reasons why it is worth using this crypto currency.

Quick payments – When payments are made by using banks, the transaction takes some days, similarly wire transfers also take a long time. On the other hand, virtual currency Bitcoin transactions are generally more rapid.

“Zero-confirmation” transactions are instantaneous, where the merchant accepts the risk, which is still not approved by Bitcoin block-chain. If the merchant needs an approval, then the transaction takes 10 minutes. This is much more rapid than any inter-banking transfer.

Inexpensive – Credit or debit card transactions are instant, but you are charged a fee for using this privilege. In the Bitcoin transactions, the fees are usually low, and in some cases, it is free.

No one can take it away – Bitcoin is decentralized, so no central authority can take away percentage from your deposits.

No chargeback – Once you trade Bitcoins, they are gone. You cannot reclaim them without the recipient’s consent. Thus, it becomes difficult to commit the chargeback fraud, which is often experienced by people with credit cards.

People purchase goods and if they find it defective, they contact credit cards agency to make a chargeback, effectively reversing the transaction. The credit card company does it and charges you with costly chargeback fee ranging from $5-$15.

Safe personal details – Credit card numbers get stolen during online payments. A Bitcoin transaction does not need any personal details. You will need to combine your private key and the Bitcoin key together to do a transaction.

You just have to ensure that your private key is not accessed by strangers.

It is not inflationary – Federal Reserve prints more dollars, whenever the economy is sputtering. Government injects the new created money into the economy causing a decrease in currency value, thereby triggering inflation. Inflation decreases people’s power to buy things because prices of goods increase.

Bitcoins are in limited supply. The system was designed to quit mining more Bitcoins on reaching 21 million. This means that inflation will not be an issue, but deflation will be triggered, where prices of goods will fall.

Semi- anonymous operations – Bitcoin is relatively private, but transparent. The Bitcoin address is revealed at the block-chain. Everyone can look in your wallet, but your name will be invisible.

Easy micro-payments – Bitcoins allows you to make micropayments like 22 cents for free.

Substitute of fiat currencies – Bitcoins are good option to hold national currencies experiencing capital controls, and high inflation.

Bitcoins are getting legitimate – Major institutions like the Bank of England and Fed have decided to take Bitcoins for trading. More and more outlets like Reditt, Pizza chains, WordPress, Baidu, and many other small businesses are now accepting Bitcoin payments. Many binary trading and Forex brokers also allow you to trade with the Bitcoins.

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Customer Service Improves Sales

Henry Ford said ‘The only foundation of real business is service’. In many companies, the customer service function sits outside of the sales channel as it is seen in some way inferior to sales. Yet customer service is integral to sales success. Without good customer service there will be no repeat sales, and repeat sales are the most profitable revenue any company can generate.

The selling process is not complete merely because the customer has stated that he or she will buy your products or services. Throughout the entire selling process, the maintenance of goodwill is important, but even more so after the purchase. Regardless of your customer’s previous feeling towards your company, the experience they have after they have bought will have a significant impact on future sales. Customer service doesn’t complete the sale; it reignites the sales cycle. A worthwhile maxim to adopt is: ‘a customer cannot be regarded as satisfied until we get their next order.’

Whilst customer service represents the last element in many standard sales processes it could also be argued that it is the first element in a recurring sales process. Ask yourself:

Did I ensure that the agreements reached with the customer actually happened?
Did I attempt to up-sell?
Did I ask for a referral?
What records are kept and maintained?
What feedback did I get about how the customer benefited from my product/ service?
How could customer service be improved?
Why Is Customer Service Important?

There are a number of empirical studies on the value of customer service and the effect of repeat business on the bottom line. Frederick Reicheld and Earl Sasser said that ‘if companies knew how much it really costs to lose a customer, they would be able to make accurate evaluations of investments designed to retain customers’. They found that customers become more profitable over time as increased sales; reduced costs of distribution; referrals; and the opportunity to up-sell all add to the bottom line.

Heskett, Sasser, and Scheslinger collaborated on a training programme to assist managers in understanding the lifetime value of customers and in addition advised on the importance of developing a culture whereby employees are engaged to contribute to the value chain. They postulated that employee satisfaction leads to service value which produces customer satisfaction and which in turn results in profits and growth. It is hardly surprising that happen employees produce happy customers.

What is Customer Service?

Is it just about smiling and being nice to customers? It’s a good place to start but it can’t just be about that.

It is generally accepted that it is very difficult to deliver high standards of customer service. Some say we have not been educated for it – it is not our tradition. This observation is often justified by stating that since late Victorian and early Edwardian times fewer and fewer people have worked in ‘service’. What was a major employment sector in those days has now dwindled to almost nothing.

While this has happened, employment has increased in manufacturing, sales, administration, information technology, and social sciences. Through the years ‘working in service’ came to be regarded as a dead end job that nobody wanted and would only take as a last resort. As a result, the label ‘service’ has almost fallen into disrepute, and many people see giving service as something beneath them that lesser mortals do.

However, the truth is that everybody likes and appreciates good service.

Difference between Good & Poor Service
An often quoted but unattributed statistic is that where people have been asked the question – ‘what would you say was the main difference between somewhere where you received good service and somewhere you received poor service’ – in 70 percent of cases the response has been – ‘the attitude and behaviour of the person delivering the service’. Whether true or not, it seems probable that if we receive poor service from somewhere we are unlikely to buy from that source again.

It is therefore reasonable to assume that good customer service does not involve the quality of the product (unless you have advertised a product as being something it is not) but the quality of the people delivering the product or service, and the experience the customer has of buying your product or service.

It is also reasonable to assume that you yourself know the difference between good and poor service and can put yourself in the customer’s shoes when buying your product or service.

It should be relatively easy to establish a list of thing you have purchased in the last couple of months and determine whether the experience you had of buying was good, bad or indifferent. Obviously a lot of buying and selling these days happens without the interaction of people (e.g. buying on the web) and for the purposes of this exercise perhaps you should record those activities separately. Although it might appear simple, an appraisal of your own experience, coupled with putting yourself in the customer’s shoes should provide you with a wealth of information regarding the difference between good and poor service.

Analysing Good Customer Service

Ask the customer

A simple yet highly effective way of establishing the quality of your customer service is to ask the customer. Attached is an example of a customer service questionnaire used in a car distributor showroom (customer service questionnaire).

Standards

You might check out the set of customer service standards as determined by the Institute of Customer Service. In 2007 they conducted some research into what they believe customers wanted. The top ten responses were as follows:

Overall quality of the products/ service
Friendliness of staff
Handling of problems and complaints
Speed of service
Helpfulness of staff
Handling enquiries
Being treated as a valued customer
Competence of staff
Ease of doing business
Being kept informed
Management

In 2004 the Institute of Leadership published the results of a survey with staff regarding the reasons for poor customer service. The top four reasons given were:

60% of staff believe that the main contributing factor contributing to poor customer service was bad line management
45% claim that their relationship with their line manager impacted significantly on the service they provide to the customer
60% felt they were not praised enough for good customer service, and
10% said they never receive any praise for a job well done
Definition

I have defined customer service as being:

A set of business behaviours which seek to provide superior service to existing and prospective customers; build customer loyalty and repeat business; and influence the acquisition of new customers.

The Follow-up of a Sale

A major life insurance company revealed that in nearly 60% of all life insurance lapses, the policy terminated after the second premium payment. The same company pointed out that after a policyholder makes four premium payments, lapses are negligible. The significance of these statistics is that customers must remain convinced that their buying decisions were correct or repeat purchases are likely to stop. You, through the final step in the selling process – the follow up – can influence the satisfaction your customers derive from their purchases.

Consider one of your customers whose purchases have been poor during the past year and are not likely to increase significantly in the future. Also assume that you have one highly profitable account whose purchases amount to nearly 25% of the total volume of your business. What sort of follow-up and service should you provide to each? Naturally the larger, more profitable account would probably receive greater attention on your part.

For all customers, you should analyse how extensive your follow-up should be. For most accounts, an occasional email, letter or telephone call should suffice. For more active customers you might need to make in-person calls every week or so. Customers who have made or are likely to make large purchases at some time in the future certainly deserve the best personal service you can provide.

Many salespeople are fond of quoting the Pareto Principle in regard to sales, saying that around 80% of their customers provide them with only about 20% of the total sales volume in their territories. Conversely, about 80% of total sales volume comes from only 20% of their customers.

Your principal responsibility as a salesperson is to sell products or services profitably. This should be your rule of thumb when servicing accounts. Your time is limited, but time spent with customers is often an investment in greater sales and future profits. Even accounts that are semi-active or lacking in potential might become high volume purchasers if service and follow-up activities can improve their attitudes toward you and your company.

Follow-up activities vary substantially by industry and product. At one extreme, it is unlikely that a Scout selling raffle tickets house to house during his annual fundraising will make any follow-up calls during the year. On the other hand, a retail merchant buying household products for re-sale may require regular assistance from their supplier such as inventory maintenance, merchandise displays, and co-operative advertising programmes that can be part of the follow-up. Even the Scout group will need to deliver the prizes and should publish a list of winners.

Ideas for Follow-up

Thank you communication

You are far more likely to get repeat orders if you develop an amicable relationship with your customers. Any activity that helps to cement this relationship, from a simple ‘thank you’ to hand delivering a substantial order, can benefit both you and your customer. A simple goodwill builder, but one far too frequently overlooked, is sending a thank you letter, card, or email soon after a sales call has been made.

You can develop a few formats and then modify to suit each specific customer and specific occasions such as moving to new premises, or even more personal such as birthdays or recovering from accident/illness. The cost and the time expended are minimal compared to the goodwill that a ‘thank you’ can create.

After-Sales Service & Assistance

Even if the product is not delivered in person, a telephone call or an in-person visit may enable you to help your customer with the proper use of your products. Customers who do not know how to use a purchase may blame you or the product for their frustrations and problems. Besides instructing your customers on the proper use of your products, you may also be able to point out additional uses for the items. Sometimes there may be minor repairs or adjustments resulting from faulty installation that you can correct or arrange service for. In some cases, you may create goodwill just by checking with customers to make certain that their orders were fulfilled and delivered as directed on purchase orders. You might find some of these suggestions regarding follow-up activities useful:

Make a follow-up ‘goodwill building’ visit to your customers within a week after delivery of the product to make certain that the order was fulfilled properly.
Make certain that the product is satisfactory and is being used properly.
Offer suggestions to the customer on ways to make more effective or additional use of the product.
Use the follow-up visit as an opportunity to obtain new prospects i.e. ask for referrals.
Handle any complaints or misunderstandings as soon as possible and with a positive and courteous attitude.
When you make in-person follow up visits, be sure they are not ‘waste-of-time calls’. Before making the call, ask yourself ‘How is my customer likely to benefit from this call? What do I want to achieve?’

Personal delivery

In some instances, you might be able to develop more satisfied customers by delivering your product in person. For example, life insurance agents frequently deliver policies in-person as soon as the contract is prepared and returned from head office. Five major reasons for this type of in-person delivery are:

To review the features of the policy
To reassure the client that a wise purchase was made
To remind the client when the next premium is due in order to make the sale stay solid
To promote the sale of additional life insurance in the future
To solicit referred leads.
There is a double reason for after-sale selling. Firstly, the existing buyer is, and always has been, a great referral source. Secondly, some sort of professional friendship is developed which can be a future useful testimonial to a new prospective customer.

Goodwill

Goodwill is a factor related to customer attitudes and sentiments toward you and your company. The loss of goodwill is, in effect, the loss of sales. Goodwill building is not automatic. It requires a deliberate, conscientious, and sincere concern about customer interests and needs over extended periods of time. Virtually every step in the selling process has an influence on goodwill.

Goodwill is not concrete – you cannot put your finger on it or measure it accurately in currency. Nevertheless, goodwill is of significant value since it helps the salesperson in making initial and repeat sales. Furthermore, customers with favourable attitudes towards your company and its products are also excellent sources of referral business.

Keeping Customers Satisfied and Staying Competitive

Getting a prospect to place an order and become a customer is long and arduous. Although the search for prospects to turn into new customers never stops, you should also never stop building good relationships with your present customers. They deserve your follow-up so that they will receive the products or services ordered. A commitment to service is required to keep your present customers buying from you. It is service that builds goodwill. In competitive markets it is not products that are different; it is the after sales service provided that makes the difference.

The Importance of Developing Enthusiastic Customers

Enthusiastic customers are one of your best sources of prospects because they are excited about what they buy and want to share that excitement with others. Because of our natural reserve, that is not something we do lightly, so we always take notice if a colleague or friend speaks highly of a company.

If you deliver what customers want at a fair price, without any problems, they are should be satisfied. Although that is better than being dissatisfied, you need more than this to ensure keeping the customer and increasing sales. You have to develop customer enthusiasm about your products and services. You must deliver more than the customer expects. This breeds enthusiasm, which produces a climate that ensures loyalty and increased sales and recommendations to others. Here are some suggestions for producing and maintaining enthusiastic customers:

Keep in touch: check after delivery to see that things are going well. Check again later and ask for leads on new prospects.
Handle any complaints promptly: problems are inevitable. Do not ignore them. They grow with neglect. Do more than the customer expects in satisfying the complaint.
Be a friend: think of the customer as a friend and do things for them accordingly. Send birthday cards or postcards while you are on holidays. Congratulate him or her on awards or advancement.
Give praise when it is due: look for things for which you can give legitimate praise: something the firm has done awards, increased earnings, and a big order. Congratulate the customer personally for awards, election to an office, and honours. Customers appreciate attention too.
Send prospects to your customers: if your customers are in business, send leads or refer prospects to them. It is human nature to respond in kind to anyone who does us a favour.
The Competition

Learn as much as you can about the competition’s products and services. Study how they bring their products to market, their policies, their pricing levels or strategies, the markets they serve, and their customers. Use this information to carry out a SWOT Analysis described elsewhere in this book.

List the strong selling points of your competitors and next to each list a similar or better customer benefit from your own product or service. Don’t assume that every prospect or customer of yours knows your competitors’ strong points. Emphasise your own customer benefits during the sales call. Don’t mention, or sell, your competitors.

Analyse why prospects or customers are buying from competitors and prepare a detailed plan to convince them that they should be buying from you.

Continually review and reinforce the reasons why your customers are doing business with you.

Continually strive to build a close relationship with your customers so they can be more dependent on you.

Earn the right to ask for more orders based on your commitment to service. Remember: your best customers are probably your competitors’ best prospects. Keep working to keep them satisfied and buying from you.

A competitor’s customers are loyal and satisfied because the products or services they receive fit their organisation and requirements now. These conditions can and do change so customer satisfaction is relative.

Becoming a Preferred Supplier

When competing against established suppliers, you may first have to get on the list of acceptable suppliers. To do so this you must create awareness and then an interest and desire for your products or services.

Consider sending copies of advertisements, newspaper articles, or trade journal reports in which you and/ or your company appears, to your customer. Use testimonial letters and recommendations. This will alert your customer to your acceptance by other companies in the same or similar activities.

Invite members of the customer’s firm to visit your plant, your headquarters, your offices, customer installations, or trade shows.

Suggest that their present suppliers are quoting a fair price; however, with new products and services continually being introduced, inflation, improved efficiency, higher productivity, maybe you can do better.

Ask for a copy of their bid specifications and requirements so you can prepare a proposal and quotation for their review and evaluation.

Suggest that they can determine whether or not what you have proposed will give them more value for money. Offer them:

trial orders
sample equipment
thirty day service evaluation period
money back guarantees
These are all part of what it may take for you to become an acceptable supplier. Your creativity as a sales professional will be really challenged by thinking of ways and means to become an acceptable supplier to prospects that are apparently satisfied by their present suppliers.

Complaints

‘We don’t have problems, we have opportunities.’ A cliché, but very true in the case of complaints. It has been estimated that only one in twenty customers complain when they get bad service. The vast majority just go elsewhere! Worse still, the average person tells nine people about the bad service they received. They tell everyone but you. A complaint is an opportunity in identifying ways of improving your services and hence the goodwill of your customers.

Most of us do not like criticism. Therefore, when people complain to us, whether it is face to face or not we try to defend ourselves. Even if the complaint is directed personally towards us, which it rarely is. In doing so we sometimes resort to attack, only making the situation worse.

The best way to deal with complaints is to: -

Acknowledge the complaint
Listen carefully for information
Do not defend or excuse
Empathise with the caller
Promise to put investigate it
Promise to call back is necessary and do so
All the customer wants to know is: -

That you fully understand their problem
What you are going to do about it
If you deal with people in this way, there is no reason why every communication of this kind should not result in both parties being satisfied.

This positive result is not necessarily dependent upon the issue being fully resolved it is dependent upon responsive and responsible communication.

Remember, when a customer complains, they are giving you a second chance to put it right

When the complaint is received over the telephone:

Note down the facts.
Summarise your understanding of the facts back to the customer to ensure clarity.
Phone the customer back when you said you would.
If you have not solved the problem by this time, give a progress report.
Agree a common method for handling complaints in your organisation. Include procedures for complaints that are face to face, by ‘phone and by letter/email. Draw up a complaints form. It should include:

Date and time received.
Who received it?
Department.
The details of the customer: name address, telephone number. Make sure that it meets data protection standards on keeping the information (every organisation should have this as a written procedure and ensure that everyone is aware of this).
Complaint details.
The nature of the complaint.
Action to be taken and deadline.
Sign off when dealt with, and where appropriate signature of line manager.
Build into the process a method for building customer relationships by getting in touch with the customer two weeks after the complaint has been dealt with to confirm that the complaint was dealt with satisfactorily.
Staff need to ensure that they:

Don’t take complaints personally or be defensive; this isn’t an attack on their competence.
Take responsibility and ownership on behalf of the organisation and explain to the customer that they will do their best to sort it out.
understand that bad news spreads
don’t get drawn into an argument
remain calm and professional
The rule for complaints
A complaint is a customer communicating their dissatisfaction at the service or product that we have provided, it is an important message that tells us where we are going wrong and gives us vital information about our customer’s wants, needs and expectations. You can’t buy this information!

Regaining Lost Customers

All organisations lose customers, some for very genuine reasons such as relocation or closure. Sometimes though, they go either because we do something wrong or a competitor makes a better offer. After losing a customer to a competitor ask yourself:

‘What can I do to get this customer back’?
‘What has to be done to assure myself I do not lose more customers for similar reasons’?
Prepare a list of all the things that could have gone wrong with the account. Next, set up a convenient meeting with your former customer for a frank discussion so you can clarify the position. Consider key areas such as price, delivery, proper handling of warranties or guarantees, and service calls

Say that although you’ve lost this particular piece of business, it is your intention to win it back in the future. You want to gain their support in helping you to identify what went wrong by discussing the problems. Consider the following:

Have you kept them abreast of all your new products or services?
Have you kept them abreast of important price, personnel or policy changes?
Have you visited them on a frequency appropriate for their business

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