Posts filed under 'Customer Service'
December 4th is Extraordinary Work Team Recognition Day – Be sure to recognize people on your team who make it possible for you to do what you do.
December 4th is also Chase’s Calendar of Events Birthday – check it out for more Calendar Marketing Ideas or to submit your own “holiday.”
What kind of holiday could you come up with to promote your business and submit to Chase’s Calendar of Events? I have created 3 holidays of my own: Get Out of the Doghouse Day, International Women’s eCommerce Day and Virtual Woman’s Day. Each one had a purpose to fulfill while promoting my many business endeavors.
In fact, I just submitted a calendar listing to Chases for Calendar Marketing! It will be interesting to see if they pick it up and include in their well-respected resource.
December 4th, 2008
November 21st is World Hello Day ~
Anyone can participate in World Hello Day simply by greeting ten people. This demonstrates the importance of personal communication for preserving peace. People around the world use the occasion of World Hello Day as an opportunity to express their concern for world peace.
Beginning with a simple greeting on World Hello Day, their activities send a message to leaders, encouraging them to use communication rather than force to settle conflicts. As a global event World Hello Day joins local participation in a global expression of peace. In fact, 31 winners of the Nobel Peace Prize are among the people who have realized World Hello Day’s value as an instrument for preserving peace and as an occasion that makes it possible for anyone in the world to contribute to the process of creating peace. (source: http://www.worldhelloday.org)
What can you do to honor World Hello Day? Pick up the phone and call people! Just call your customers and say Hello. Imagine what would happen if you did! I bet none of your competitors will be doing it….unless they are reading this and do it too.
My staff and I plan to do just that!
November 21st, 2008
Last week Heidi Caswell of Connect Simply, and yours truly Heidi Richards Mooney did a teleseminar on follow up strategies in business.
Remember when you were young and started making friends or dating, you knew instinctively that if someone didn’t “make a move” you’d probably loose the opportunity to get to know that person better. And yet, when it comes to business we may understand the importance of “making a move” (follow up) but many times we simply don’t do it. In this session we talked about that and more.
Here are jsut a few of the ideas Heidi and I shared:
Follow up strategies, what works and what doesn’t
Why “high touch” marketing is so important especially today
When you should follow up with someone
One great strategy that always works ~ that strategy is greeting cards and postcards (I’ll write more later about how I am using it to promote all 3 of my businesses)
Stories of business owners who used that one strategy to really grow their business
And other great tips.
In fact, we are sharing this audio with the readers of Redhead Marketing Blog. Go here and grab your copy: www.redheadmarketingblog.com/audio/FollowUpDivas.mp3.
You can contact Heidi Caswell at www.ConnectSimply.com. Feel free to drop me a line at heidi (at) redheadmarketing.com if you’d like us to give you a personal tour of our Greeting Cards System.
November 12th, 2008
Earlier this month I started a topic about how I gathered information to create a marketing plan for the Florida Speakers Association. I asked members how they would spread the word about FSA, who they suggest we connect with and contact (sharing their resources) and how they suggested we increase our membership base and meeting attendance.
Here are six more responses:
I find that word of mouth is great… and also the encouragement I give to others who are speakers but don’t know it yet. Also a brochure would be nice to hand out.
Contact clubs and hold a contest… have them submit club member names who would like to attend an FSA meeting to see what it is all about in helping them develop leadership and communication skills. Then, we could draw one name per month and COMP that person. This would also increase our notice data base.
We could even have a special annual day focused on local clubs and developing good speakers in clubs. We could even start a different membership category for local club member speakers who do not want to become professional, but do like to hang out with the pros.
TV and radio interviews from some of our top speakers about the FSA and what it has done for them.
Ask CEOs (with their own strong followings) to present — and encourage their own people to be part of our group. Have THEM send out notices to business media. Invite media people to discuss how public speaking skills helped them. Usually THEY will give our group free publicity if it involves them.
Do a charity fund-raiser using some of our speakers to improve skills of the people who GIVE the $$…not just get the benefit of dollars. Improve the image of us being part of an INTERNATIONAL - NOT JUST LOCAL OR NATIONAL - GROUP OF GIVING PEOPLE…THE VOICE OF THE WORLD.
October 15th, 2008
Staying in touch with your clients and customers should be an integral part of your marketing plan. In fact, it should be one most important activities that you do. In fact, there are several ways you can touch your customers from phone calls, to emails to snail mail campaigns.
Here are the ways we stay in touch with our retail floral customers:
1. We use postcards for those we have not heard from in 6 months or more.
2. We call those we have not heard from in a year.
3. We send bi weekly emails with specials.
4. We have a quarterly newsletter - Ramblin’ Rose which we send with specials, tips, flowers trivia and more.
5. And we send flowers to those customers who are the most frequent purchasers.
6. We also have a “weekly drawing” of our customer database and send them flowers to say HI.
7. Once a year we send a holiday CD filled with our specials (late November).
8. And I randomly go through our list and send thank you notes for our customers’ business once a month.
Here’s what we do to stay in touch with the members of the Women’s eCommerce Association:
1. We host monthly events which are both educational, informational events that our members attend. At the same time, have the opportunity to stick around after the sessions and chat among themselves and very often with the guests we invite to share their success stories.
2. We publish and distribute a bi-weekly ezine called eMonday News.
3. We also publish a digital magazine ~ WE Magazine for Women - for the Total Woman - filled with excellent articles about wealth, travel, business, women, balance and relationships… and much more.
4. We have a network on LinkedIn that we just started where our members can post questions, answer questions, share expertise, and get to know one another.
5. We also host bi-annual summits on a variety of topics which is a great way to reach out to our members – the most recent was “How to Grow a Million Dollar Business” Summit.
How do you stay in touch? Feel free to leave your comments and share your story.
October 14th, 2008
October 6-12 is Customer Service Week is – Make appointments to visit customers this week and make sure you call and confirm those appointments. No matter what service business you are in, if you are not confirming appointments you may be losing business. Busy customers and clients often double book (they don’t have their calendar handy) or they have to rush off to another meeting. Confirming your appointments at least the day before you will notice less wasted time, more productivity –and increased sales.
If you haven’t yet read The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service by Donna Cutting, I highly recommend you check it out.
October 6th, 2008