Set Menus

Sure, it’s an old standby, but it still makes the evening feel special to the patrons.  Instead of your regular menu, create a few set menus especially themed for the evening, with everything coming in portions built for two, each paired with the perfect wines from your cellar.  You have to prepare fewer dishes that way, but you can still charge a premium for the meal and happy couples will pay without complaint.  Plus, don’t forget to dress up the menu itself, too!  A great menu cover will drive home how special the meal is, designed from top to bottom for Valentine’s.

Aim for Ambiance

Do what you can to rearrange the place and make the layout especially for couples.  Get rid of large tables and for the love of St. Valentine, shut off those bright overhead lights.  Dim lights and candlelight should be the rule of the day, even if you’re just a cafe.  If you’ve got the time, try to make each table its own little “pocket” of warm light, and pull out some partitions to isolate one table from another..  An intimate meal makes for an intimate couple, and they’ll remember you for it fondly.

Go Exclusive

Not every restaurant can do this, but give it some thought.  Few things can put a damper on a couple’s fiery evening faster than having to stand in line for an hour just to make it to the bar, only to wait ages more for their food to arrive.  Worse, if this happens you can be sure they’ll blame your restaurant for the crowd and refuse to come back.  If you make Valentine’s Day a special reservation-only evening, you can ensure you are giving the truly best service to the most people you possibly can – and no more.

Roll Out the Social Media Bandwagon

When preparing your ad campaign for your V-day delights, don’t neglect the Internet, especially if you’re aiming your arrows at younger couples.  This is the time to dust off your Facebook page, Twitter account, email lists, and Google Local listing.  Best of all, Internet promotions are free (well…they do take time so I guess they aren’t 100% free).  Also, while coupon nights are generally a bit lame and can feel tacky, having small, exclusive promotions that are only for your online customers can also help bring in the hip crowds.   Besides, they’re never too young to become a valuable regular at your restaurant!

And finally, call this one an unValentine’s Promotion:

Have a Singles Night the Day Before

This lets you stretch a single holiday into two days!  There are plenty of people who always feel left out on Valentine’s.  Why not give them their own evening, with its own menu and promotions, the day before?  Be playful with it.  You could give menu items names like “The Souffle of Self” or perhaps “The Bachelor Pad Thai,” playing up the virtues of being single.  Plus, if some lonely singles happen to meet at the bar, perhaps they’d be interested in making reservations for the following evening…

These are just a few ways your restaurant can succeed this Valentine’s Day season.

What specials are you running at your establishment on the 14^th?

Debit Cards or Bank Cards vs. Credit Cards

While convenient, debit cards can turn an otherwise harmless on line buy into hours on the phone disputing charges if stolen. Debit cards are directly linked to your bank account which means easy access to all your hard earned dollars.

Experts suggest using a dedicated credit card for making purchases on line. Credit card companies can easily reverse fraudulent charges whereas banks aren’t as quick to reverse charges.

Auto Fill

Another convenience that can turn disastrous is auto fill. Don’t allow your laptop to save credit card data or passwords, especially on a shared laptop or on your cell phone. More and more consumers are using mobile phones to purchase on line. A stolen phone can result in thousands of dollars of counterfeit purchases. It’s best to be safe and not save any passwords or credit card information on any device.

“Remember Me”

Similar to the above point, clicking the “remember me” box can prove devastating. On a shared laptop or a lost cell phone someone could rapidly and easily log into your account and make purchases without you knowing. Don’t click “remember me” and you’ll reduce the risk of getting grinched.

Computer Safety Scans

Phishing scams and viruses are all ways hackers can get onto your system and steal your data. That’s why having an updated anti-virus program is essential if you wish to do any on line purchasing during Green Week.

Secure Internet Access

Along with an up-to-date anti-virus program you should also make use of secure access to the world wide web. If you have a wireless setup make sure your access is password protected. If you’re “using” an unsecure wireless connection of your neighbors – make sure you don’t buy any products on line.

Trust Your Gut

If an on line store looks sketchy or a deal seems too good to be true – trust your gut. Don’t make a buy on a site that doesn’t look trustworthy (no matter how many gold star emblems they have on their homepage).

Your Youngsters Can be Victims

Be mindful of your kids during this time of year as well. They can just as easily click on an unsafe link or be the victims of on line fraud as you can. Inform your children about the dangers of buying online and sharing information online or on their phone. Companies like internet provider Comcast suggest a family safety contract for your kids. Communicate with your kids and teach them to avoid dangerous situations online. Opening up the dialogue with your children about their online practices is important to keeping your family secure .

How are you avoiding the cyber Grinch this holiday season?

All in all, many people hate customer service. This has caused many companies to rethink their approach to providing help for their consumers, without the hassles that many of their customers experience. The rise of interaction on the Internet, thanks in part to social media; with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, companies and customers can get together in order to learn more about products or even ask.

While Facebook would seem to be the easiest and most logical way of offering customers help, Twitter is actually a great way to answer quick questions, especially with the direct message aspect and the ability for others to perhaps find the answer to a similar question they have.

Don’t think this could work? Larger companies, like Comcast, are using Twitter to help answer consumer questions as tweets. Comcast is one of the largest cable and Internet service providers in the greater United States, with a good deal of consumers for their services of cable, Internet, and phone. With so many consumers, the wait times for customers trying to contact their customer service can be long, sometimes more than ten minutes; this is a hassle for users, who are already frustrated with the situation of their products not working.

How does Comcast deliver customer service through Twitter? Through their official Twitter account, someone monitors any questions that users have. Twitter users who also use Comcast sign up to follow the company, which allows them to receive any updates or notices from the company when they have promotions or specials. It also allows users and Comcast to send direct messages to each other, which can give a more personal touch to any questions asked.

Another good thing about providing customer service is the ability for employees of Comcast to address any problems to consumers. For instance, if a member of Comcast – like @ComcastJon – happens to logged on to Twitter, he can provide assistance in the case that @ComcastCS is unavailable.

Using Twitter to provide customer service can be a great way of answering consumer questions; with the ability of Twitter to be used through mobile technology can mean that, if a user’s Internet is down, they can ask and receive an answer via their mobile device. Twitter also means that users don’t need to be stuck on hold or waiting for a customer service representative to answer their call nor do they have to go through the automated system which can sometimes be worse.

Best of all, Twitter is absolutely free and can help spread a company’s online presence to both current and new consumers.

How are you using social media today to help with customer service?

The grocery store chain Albertsons has responded to this feeling among consumers by announcing their intention to remove all of their “self-check” registers at their stores.  Kroger is also going to take on a similar policy. Reactions are mixed; with some feeling like it will do wonders for customer service (as well as adding additional jobs) and others feel it takes the “choice” to interact with a human being away from the consumer. This comes at the same time that Albertsons is also announcing a DMV Kiosk in Las Vegas.

The trend here, when you consider it, is pretty simple to see: People want great customer service, but they don’t want to deal with rude employees. If you’re planning on removing a “self-service” or “automated” system, here are some things that I think you need to be sure to do.

• Retrain front line employees in the art of customer service. You have to make customer representatives care about the interactions with their customers. It has to be a pleasing part of their day.
• Create a Twitter account and assign someone (not an intern) to the responsibility.  There will be some people who will not be excited about the new approach to customer service, so you have to give options on how they can get in contact a member of your team.
• Trust employees to make the right decisions. You have to give people some room to maneuver to turn what could be a losing situation into a winning one.  This comes down to educating phone operators and giving them some room to help.

It can be a bit of a daunting thought to remove all of the “non-personable” aspects of your customer service.  Albertsons and Kroger are both looking at a situation where they will need more staff on hand to create a great experience that will keep people coming back. If you’re currently considering this, just be sure that you plan ahead and be prepared to handle the additional volume that will occur.

Maranda Gibson is the community manager and a customer service representative for AccuConference, providing conference calls and web conferencing.  You can see more customer service and communication tips on the AccuConference Blog.

A recent survey performed by the Federation of Small Businesses indicates that many of the 1,700 polled believe providing better customer service is an integral key to growing their businesses. Whether exposing employees to in-house training in areas such as sales, marketing or public relations, the overriding sentiment was that increasing the company’s care and concern for the paying client seemed paramount to its success.

One of the more recent developments in the ways businesses operate is a focus on something known as customer relationship management, or CRM. In effect, CRM is akin to taking customer service to new levels by providing employees with tools and data they need to exceed the customer’s expectations.

The implementation of CRM into the company’s operations has multi-tiered effects on information organization, sales forecasting and indeed tends to lead to increased sales, and as importantly to the long term growth of the business and increased perceptions of customer service. The following list will focus on and expand how a business’s use of CRM affects the customer directly.

4 Direct Effects of CRM on the Customer Experience

1. More Satisfied Customer Base: The early part of the 20th century saw a number of brand names become synonymous with the products sold by the company. Think Kleenex or Band-aid. Of course in those days, there was very little, if any competition and this allowed the company to develop a large base of customers who became habitual buyers. As long as the business treated the paying clients well, their growth and profits seemed guaranteed.Today’s markets certainly have much more competition, however the concept of developing a satisfied customer base holds true. Providing the ones main source of revenues with satisfactory customer service is an excellent way to firmly establish the company in the marketplace and ensure its growth in the long term.
2. Customer Loyalty Improvement: Some savvy marketer once came up with a concept for the tobacco industry that fully encapsulates the concept of customer loyalty. The paradigm that was filtered into their customer base was that a cigarette smoker would rather fight than to give up their particular brand. This very same concept holds true for any brand looking to increase the loyalty of their paying consumers. By providing excellent customer services, the company increases the chance that someone who buys their products would actually pay a little more or go a little farther in order to have the quality and service they have come to expect. Lower priced imitations of their favorite goods would only cause them to reaffirm their brand loyalty that much more.
3. Customer Retention: It is certainly true that it costs more to get a customer than to keep one. Retaining the businesses best customers is one of the key focuses of CRM and when considering the implementation of such a plan, bearing in mind the cost factors of getting new clients versus keeping existing ones can be a strong rationale for investing in the technology required.While some customers look for the deal with every purchase they make, others look to be cared for. They become loyal to a brand and its company when they know they can expect quality products and be serviced even beyond their expectations. The business looking for long term customer retention must place excellent service to the paying clients above even their own goals of profits. Customers see this in the company and tend to reward the business by staying with them for very longer periods of time.
4. Direct Customer Referrals/WOM: Most businesses understand the power of word of mouth advertising. When the above three factors come together to produce an extremely satisfied customer, an inevitable result is that customer’s desire to spread word of the treatment he or she has had at the hand of the company.In days past, the rule of thumb was that each person knew or had some direct connections with upwards to about 150 others. Known as the Dunbar Number, this sphere of influence was one way that a company would hope to get knowledge its brand products passed around. Today, however, the concept of spreading the word to only 150 others seems quaint. With the advent of social media and the communities which have spawned as a result, even the most average of individuals can have hundreds or thousands of others they communicate with on a regular basis. Today, direct customer referral is big business, and the best way to understand the power of this phenomenon is to harness social CRM for the benefit of the company and its customers.

The speed and power of the Internet can make amazing things happen very fast. It is important, however that when considering how to grow ones business, to have a realistic expectation on what will happen and when. Yes information travels faster today thanks to email and the World Wide Web. But when considering the implementation of a plan which may include CRM, it is important to remember that investing in such a game plan is a long term proposition.

Information gathering, storage and processing takes time. Training employees on use of the tools and various other aspects of providing quality customer services will also take some time. Most importantly, the business needs to put the time and effort into helping their customers feel important and appreciated in order to begin to see returns on any CRM investment.

It’s no secret that tough economic times put The Fear into even the most forward-thinking entrepreneurs. Faced with plummeting revenues, they look for ways to slash their operational costs, delaying or eliminating altogether the implementation of new technologies that ironically are the very thing they need to push their companies back up on the profit fast track.

During industry downswings, strategic business management and planning is more critical than ever. Sales force automation (SFA) information systems are software or application packages that help companies succeed by streamlining and integrating sales, marketing, and support efforts. The basic SFA package is typically a contact management system that provides a business with the ability to track its customers at all phases of the sales cycle. Often this capacity is coupled with lead management capability. Other customizable functionalities may include variations on sales forecasting, order management and product information, organized by industry: SFA presets exist for small business, communications, financial services, healthcare and even the public sector.

The price of success? Much less than one might suppose thanks to web-hosted customer relationship management (CRM) systems—so-called “cloud computing”–whose on-demand pricing models save businesses money by allowing them to scale their own usage to customer demand.

Cloud computing is a term used to describe the delivery of software applications over the Internet, as opposed to software that is run using in-house servers. Cloud computing uses a subscription pricing model: a business only has to pay for the options it needs. Not only does this eliminate the huge up-front capital investment required by client/server-hosted software packages with similar functionality, it also eliminates the need for an IT support team. Software is up and running instantly—no more losing valuable contacts waiting around while the package is installed. Most sales force automation packages are customizable, meaning a company only has to pay for the lead management features that fit its own business model. Over the long run, huge cost savings accrue because businesses are freed from having to buy, install, maintain and/or upgrade hardware and software.

Papa Murphy’s is the largest take-and-bake pizza operation in the world and the most popular—every year since 2003, the franchise has won the coveted “Best Pizza Chain in America” award from Restaurants and Institutions Magazine. With 1,100 franchise operations in 34 states and Canada, the business is truly an American success story. But long after the business became successful, franchise management was still relying upon email and Excel spreadsheets to track their operations. This was costly, time-consuming and inefficient. Clearly what the company’s managers needed was close-to-instantaneous mobile access to data.

With help from a sales force automation partner, Papa Murphy’s implemented web-based reporting forms for its franchise managers that were speedy, flexible and easily scalable. This enabled the chain to keep track of customer relationships, franchise relationships and other crucial data. With 95 percent of its employees working remotely, they also needed apps that could be accessed remotely using BlackBerrys. Papa Murphy’s has witnessed better data quality, faster data capture and much less administrative hands-on time for its sales people—who can instead use the time they save to focus on face time with customers and finding more franchisees.

Satisfying customers and reducing costs at the same time may seem like a lofty goal to achieve, but with sales force automation applications that run in the cloud, your business can do it.

What’s the best way to stay in touch with your existing customers, reach new ones, and follow up on leads? That’s a question that companies have been asking themselves for a long time. All too often, their attempts to find the answer have been haphazard and less than fruitful.

Sometimes just accessing the customers’ accounts is haphazard. Contact information, purchase history and service call data can all spread over several different databases. Some may even be in the form of handwritten notes stuffed in a file cabinet. When a customer calls, there may be a mad scramble to pull all the information together so that you can hold an intelligent conversation.

Marketing campaigns can be difficult and time consuming to prepare. All of your customer email addresses are lumped into one database, with little to identify who buys what, or any good way of personalizing the messages. You end up simply blasting the information into the ether, and never know whether it ends up in spam folders, is deleted without being read, or actually translates into a sale. Wouldn’t it help to be able to capture and analyze that information?

You can. In fact, all of these issues can be easily rectified by using contact management software, or better yet, contact management applications that run on the Web. These cloud-based applications can have several distinct advantages: they are updated in real time, easy to access even when you’re not in the office, and user-friendly. Most importantly, however, they can streamline information, sort and analyze data, and generate automated reports so that you don’t have to manually assess everything.

With cloud-based customer relationship management applications, every authorized user has the same, comprehensive view of the customer account. When someone calls in with a question, the CSR can call up an interface that shows all relevant information, and even offers some opportunities for upselling and cross-selling. The salesperson who’s calling on a customer can use her access to the cloud to view purchase history, upcoming product launches for pre-ordering, and even promotions or discount that might be available. After she closes the deal, the sales manager can easily see this status and route a new lead to that rep, or generate a forecasting report.

If you must have an employee retrieve data from your customer database and then try to set up profiles or contact information, you are doing double work. A good contact management software program will have all of that information consolidated in one place.

These were the types of issues that StepForth Placement, which provides SEO services as well as placements for small and medium-sized companies, was facing. Since a large part of their business comes from word of mouth referrals, fast and accurate contacts with customers were critical to continued success. StepForth needed to have instant access to all of its contact and account information, but their legacy system was disorganized, so they were unable to associate contact information with specific documents, or emails with pertinent records, or reseller data with clients.

Their solution was to chose a cloud-based customer contact management solution, which provided them with a way to organize data in a logical and accessible manner. The results? The time to prepare quotes was reduced, complete customer records could be retrieved in just a couple of clicks, and StepForth’s client relations improved. Not only that, but they lowered costs and saw their revenue grow. In the first year of using the new system, the company’s sales increased by 20 percent.

Contact management software, clearly, offers a vast improvement over the old sticky-note-and-a-prayer method that far too many companies are relying on. If you really want to improve efficiency and get results, consider running these software applications in the cloud for accessibility and scalability.

Customer relationship management (CRM) is all about relationships—and not just with customers. Yes, CRM’s goal is about connecting with customers and being able to translate that connection into successful growth and increased sales, but it’s also about helping all of your departments communicate with one another—sales, marketing, warehousing, R&D, accounting, customer service and even the executives up in their corner offices.

CRM strategy focuses on the customer, but it works by giving the sales team and managers better tools to do their job. Using cloud-based applications, salespeople who are on the road can receive leads, collaborate with colleagues, and see a 360-degree view of the customer in order to maximize every customer interaction. The managers can instantly route leads, monitor reps’ performance and have reports automatically generated. In short, they get real-time visibility of the entire sales cycle.

Cottingham & Butler is an insurance broker of employee benefits and risk management services, which was working inefficiently with Excel spreadsheets and other record-keeping programs. Each rep managed his or her own leads, but had no good way of sharing information with colleagues, which meant that duplicate leads and uncoordinated prospecting were all too common. Cross-channel data capturing was difficult at best, and since the company had several distinct business units, each of which needed to fine-tune any CRM solution, flexibility was also key.

The company selected a vendor that provided a customizable, easy-to-use architecture that incorporated lead capture and routing, data management, accurate metrics reporting, and a common, comprehensive,  up-to-date view of the customer. This has allowed Cottingham & Butler to address its customers with a unified system that provides the most efficient, targeted sales and customer service.

Guiding managers and the sales force to work together is what CRM strategy does best. By giving them both a single, comprehensive view of the entire customer profile, CRM strategy succeeds in customer satisfaction and loyalty—which, of course, can translate into sales growth.

CRM coordinates communication from all channels, to improve customer service and aid sales, including devices and methods like mobile telephones, PDAs, email, Web searches and social media platforms. Combined with the CRM knowledge base and providing sales with updated information, the data capture capabilities from these sources helps enable not only customer service but also marketing campaigns and research and development initiatives.

CRM strategy makes managers’ jobs easier and more productive. It helps them become more organized and flexible. Managers rely on CRM for its capability to improve sales organization and the resultant increases in the bottom line, which helps them do their jobs better. Streamlining communication between managers and the sales force is enhanced because all customer and sales information is in one place where it can be easily accessed by all. Managers use CRM for sales tracking, for distributing information and for sales forecasting.

Customers are the recipient of better information about products and sales specials. They feel like the company knows all about their needs, and that it gives them special attention. CRM strategy is a win-win program for everyone; it’s all about relationships.

There are a number of elements that work together to develop customer loyalty. Of course, you need a solid product or service. Friendly and personable sales people help, as do a robust social media presence and an easily navigable Web site. You can’t discount the elusive brand image. Yet perhaps most important of all is the customer service you provide.

There’s almost always a way to improve customer service solutions. Just listen to a customer who has recently made a phone call to customer service or a help desk, and they’ll tell you all about it: they don’t like to be put on hold, they don’t like being bounced from agent to agent, and they hate having to repeat their account information each time they speak with someone new. They don’t believe it when a recording tells them that “your business is important to us.” After all that, customers especially hate when a rep doesn’t even have the answer to their question.
All of these things frustrate customers—and may well drive them to the competition. If your company wants to alleviate customer frustration and build customer loyalty, you need to investigate some of the solutions that are provided by cloud-based customer relationship management, or CRM.

One of the primary practices businesses can implement to improve customer loyalty is to provide multiple contact options. Some customers prefer live chat, email, an FAQ database, a user forum on your Web site where they can get answers to their questions, or a searchable self-service knowledge base. Other customers like to contact your business through Facebook or Twitter. Customers prefer variety because the contact selection may depend upon the customer’s resources or environment at a given moment. Other inquires may be more efficiently handled via online chat or email. Customers can gauge the amount of time it will take to answer an inquiry and select the contact option to best suit their needs. The less time a customer waits, the better the customer will feel about the business–increasing customer loyalty.

Having multiple ways for your customer to get in touch also reduces the workload on your customer service department or call center, and allows them to spend more time with the customers who do like to call on the telephone, or who need a little additional service.

Businesses that have not automated their customer service centers often lose tickets, related correspondence, and other pertinent information related to a customer file. When this information is integrated into the system, customer service agents can track the status of a customer complaint. Ticket management applications will assist customer service agents with logging, tracking, routing and resolving customer issues. These apps can automatically remind customer service agents of follow-ups and instruct them on resolution advice.

Customer service solutions can include desktop sharing to allow the agent to view the problem live during a chat session. Additionally, customer service agents can escalate the communication from chat session to a phone session seamlessly. These tools also provide real-time communication and assistance during a visit to the website or other communication. Workflow tools are available to assist customer service agents with streamlining their processes.

Many businesses employ customer service software to improve business practices. Several have cited up to 90 percent improvement in first contact resolution rates. Additionally, those who use live chat or Twitter have a 60 percent higher resolution rate than via email or phone. Companies who utilize Web 2.0 technologies and “cloud-based” computing have increased their customer loyalty and cut costs by using this technology.

Practical Application:
LiveLeader is a company based out of Oslo, Norway that utilizes Web 2.0 technology in order to provide their customers with seamless interactions. LiveLeader was able to save nearly $200,000 with web-based technology. They were able to scale the software and deploy it to each of their employees with little or no downtime. By deploying the technology, they were able to stay abreast of customer requests, improve customer service and consequently, maintain loyalty over time.

Customer service solutions that are paid for via subscription service and run through the Web are one of the best investments your company can possibly make to increase customer loyalty, improve your image, and grow your business.

Contact management software allows agents to manage data from inbound and outbound calls effectively. Once information is entered into the system, any agent can easily refer back to the information for follow-up calls and other correspondence enabling contact center agents to become more productive. Additionally, contact management applications can also be accessed by other departments, such as sales and marketing, in order to maximize opportunities and see a comprehensive view of the customer profile.

Managers may utilize contact management software in order to remind agents of best practices throughout the day. By monitoring calls and customer interaction, managers can ensure that agents remain compliant, so that customers receive the best service possible. It’s no secret that agents who are compliant close deals with clients who really desire the product. This reduces product returns and associated fees that accompany returns, such as shipping, restocking, etc. Contact management software also permits managers to know which customers are likely to purchase the product. By identifying key customers, managers can avoid spending too many resources on customers who may never purchase the product.

Practical Application:
ABN AMRO is a financial institution that handles over $90 billion in assets and employs over 19,000 employees. The company, which is based out of Chicago, IL, required contact management software to help their agents handle multiple service channels. The channels consisted of phone, email, live chat and Twitter, just to name a few. Agents would often be on the phone with a customer and request that they access their online account in order to verify information while on the call. Customers with dial up had to end the call, log on, retrieve the information and call back into the call center. With contact management software, the customer does not have to disconnect. The customer can initiate an online chat and provide necessary information to the agent.

ABN AMRO customers also had the option of Web self-service. This service provided customers with a Real-Time Internet Technical Assistance (RITA). This tool allows customers access to customer service 24 hours per day and seven days per week. The tool uses voice recognition software and predetermined automated messages. When the customer speaks, the computer finds a pre-recorded answer that best matches the question posed. ABN AMRO fields nearly 900 calls in this manner every month. This significantly reduces the call volume. As a result, agents can provide quality service to the calls they do field live. Contact management software has allowed the customer base to increase while the number of agents remained the same. ABN AMRO is pleased with the results.

The usefulness of this tool is far reaching. Contact management software integrates emails, important documents, faxes, calendars, and reminders into one tool. Contact management applications or Software as a Service (SaaS) allows customer service agents to access all information from one area, while also allowing the establishment of private areas where agents can store information about clients or assignments that are specific to a particular agent. Since the data is updated in real time, this means that no one has to worry about having outdated information.

Mobile or global access to SaaS architectures that run in the cloud allow executives to travel, employees to telecommute, and call centers to be located globally. All the agent needs is an Internet connection and an headset, and they can log in and begin working. This is another cost saver for your company, and another of the many benefits that a contact management solution can provide.