How many times have you been frustrated
by the switchboard or voicemail that tells you it is 530pm and
to leave a message? Worst still, you’re blandly asked
to call back again during ‘business’ hours. Here
Roger Taylor, Creative Director at Montpellier Creative (www.montpelliercreative.com)
explains that there are ways to remove barriers to doing business
with your organisation, help retain customers and capture new
sales.
No, don’t worry; I’m not suggesting bringing the
camp bed to work and manning the scramble phone for any eventuality.
What I do recommend is a sensible strategy to profiling your
business in the marketplace and ensuring that your business
is accessible, and responses are timely. We all like to feel
wanted, and that surely holds true for customers.
Let’s take a snapshot of a typical business. You have
a product or service, workforce, switchboard, a voicemail, a
workmanlike website, printed material to send to enquiries and
a price list. You also have competitors! Take a look at what
they are doing, if there’s something they are doing better
address that issue. If they are behind, maintain your competitive
lead.
For important clients, out of hours messages can be monitored,
or at the very least messages followed up the very next day.
If you have a website, make sure your contact details are prominent.
Web strategies could also include SMS message alerts, for those
of you who are on the road, and need to be contacted. These
can be easily configured into websites.
Thinking electronically, use your email sign-offs to ensure
contact details are front of mind, and incorporate new messages,
such as awards, special offers, when you circulate email sign-offs,
newsletters and other correspondence – through to a sensible
‘on-hold’ phone recording (but ensure that waiting
time is limited, or you will lose that potential sale!).
For service-oriented businesses, you should consider RSS (Really
Simple Syndication) news feeds to help your customers quickly
gain access to what's new in your world. You will also want
to look at co-ordinated email campaigns that feed back to your
website and enable you to immediately track uptake on your offer.
Remember the web works for you round-the-clock.
Together with our sister company Montpellier Interactive (www.montpellierinterative.com),
we have helped a spectrum of sole operators to international
organisations get in touch with their customers and potential
customers, but as importantly help them to become more accessible
to people who want to do business with them!
For more information please go to the Montpellier Creative site
www.montpelliercreative.com or contact Roger Taylor on 01242
245524.
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