The old saying, “The customer’s always right” may not always be true, but for the most part, I think they’re good words to live by, at least for a prudent businessman. Not too many of us can afford to lose customers these days, least of all just for the sake of winning an argument or being able to point the finger of blame. And there are lots of ways of letting the customer think they’re right, even when you both know they’re not.

In order to deliver the sort of service your customers expect, you need to first learn what they’re expecting. This is an ideal opportunity to put yourself in their shoes, and ask yourself what YOU would expect.

Essentially, they want to spend as little as necessary to get the most/best they can. They want whatever they’re buying to be at least as good as advertised, to be of decent quality, and to arrive on time. In other words, they want to feel as though they made the right decision in selecting you to buy from.

Of course, we all know that some products and services don’t really stand out from the competition in all these regards. Some may excel one way and come up short another. That’s fine, as long as the customer’s perception is that they made an acceptable trade-off.

A week late delivery might be a problem for me, but if I bought your product for 50% off, I might find it an acceptable trade-off. By the same token, if on-time delivery is the most crucial to me, I might find it acceptable to pay 25% more.

We all make that kind of trade-off decision every day. We go to a discount gas station, knowing the gas isn’t as good as the brand-name station across the street, but we’re willing to accept that, because it costs us $0.70 less per gallon. Or we may pay 50% more for a cup of coffee at the drive-through coffee shop, that’s not as good as we could get at the donut shop. But that’s okay, because it saves us the time of parking and waiting in line. We judgment calls like that every day. Some of us are more flexible on quality, while others may be less concerned about the price… we all pick our trade-offs. But most of us share the same overriding priority:

Customer Service

If we’re paying more because it’s convenient, or accepting poor quality to get the lowest price, we’re already making a sacrifice. Even though we’re receiving a benefit, human nature shows that it’s the sacrifice we’ll attach more importance to. So if the cashier is snotty with us, or the mechanic talks to us like we’re an idiot, we’ll walk away feeling negative, and we WON’T feel like we made the right decision. Normally, that means we won’t return, so someone has lost a customer.

Why? Poor customer service.

There are some golden rules in proper customer service, which violating can bear a high cost:

• Always give your customer your undivided attention. If he feels as though he’s competing for your attention, then you’re proving to him that he is NOT the most important thing on your mind at the moment. If he isn’t, he SHOULD be!
• Always give the impression that your customer’s concerns is not only your greatest concern, but that looking out for them is a pleasure!
• Always be courteous and polite, no matter how rude or abusive a customer may be.
• Always follow up and keep your commitments, whether it’s a call-back, a new catalog or a credit memo. If you said you’d do it, then DO it! It makes a lasting impression in the customer’s mind, of the quality of the experience they had with you.
• Always remember that without THAT PARTICULAR customer, you wouldn’t have a job. Treat them with the importance they deserve, and you’ll have created the impression of extra benefit they received by doing business with you.

Make it a habit to follow these simple rules, and you’ll avoid alienating customers, and will probably generate more repeat business. You can’t satisfy ALL your customers, all the time. But there’s no reason to chase them off, either.

Customers are powerful advertisements, too. Whether they’re satisfied or not, you can be sure that they’ll let others know about it. You can’t buy better advertisement than a happy customer. And hell hath no fury like a customer scorned.

Doc Sheldon

Doc Sheldon retired from his business management consultancy in 2008 and became a perpetual student of all things SEO. He began providing professional webcopy to a worldwide array of clients, and has been actively involved in SEO for nearly six years, and writing professionally for nearly forty.

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Whether you’ve set up shop in a brick and mortar shop or strictly online, when you’re trying to connect with a regional market, it’s critical that you know the local culture. That addresses a lot more than just the language and demographic of your customer base.

Obviously knowing the language is very important. Even if the language is the same as your own, there can be variations that you need to grasp, or they can hold you back. An American in Australia or the UK, for instance, will find enough colloquialisms to make life on the street interesting… without a grasp of those differences, though, business success may be very challenging.

A sign in a High Street window or on your website, inviting UK customers to optimize their savings or select a color will stand out as foreign. Likewise, using some everyday American terms could backfire on you in the UK, where they may have entirely different usages.

Language and spelling differences are fairly obvious and relatively simple to resolve. But other cultural differences can present issues, such as:

Gender roles – in some cultures, marketing to one gender may be considered inappropriate, Focusing your marketing on either men or women could alienate the populace.

Economic conditions – being unaware of economic limitations, such as unavailability of credit or severe economic hardships could put you out of reach to many consumers, as well as give you an unfavorable image.

Religious dominance – attempting to market a product that doesn’t set well with the dominant religious groups in the region could cause backlash against your company.

Political considerations – for instance, marketing western products in a political climate that is decidedly anti-western could be disastrous for your business.

Cultural mores – selling sun dresses and bikinis in a Muslim country certainly wouldn’t have much of a future, just as advertisements showing women driving probably wouldn’t sell many cars.

Educational standards – if you’re trying to sell products in a country with an extremely high illiteracy rate, conventional print ads and online advertising won’t cut it.

Civil Unrest – if the region is in a period of significant unrest, purchasing of non-essential items will typically be very soft.

There are many other nuances that may deserve attention, as well, and often, only a resident would be aware enough of them to take advantage. Being unaware of such subtleties can do your business great harm, while being plugged-in can open tremendous opportunities.

Some recent local events can sometimes be played to advantage, while others should be carefully avoided. Being aware of what makes your market tick will always give you an advantage. Being unaware can leave you with an empty till or worse.

If you’re running an online business, especially if you’re trying to cater to a culture that’s significantly different from your own, you need to inform yourself or have someone intimately familiar with the culture to advise you on any issues that could arise, as well as point out any untapped opportunities.

Presumably, you would look at the market potential for your product or service before diving into a regional market, so many of the above would be obvious considerations. But as the saying goes, “the devil’s in the details”. Don’t ignore the seemingly small cultural differences that could spell the difference between your business being successful or a miserable failure.

Doc Sheldon

Doc Sheldon retired from his business management consultancy in 2008 and became a perpetual student of all things SEO. He began providing professional webcopy to a worldwide array of clients, and has been actively involved in SEO for nearly six years, and writing professionally for nearly forty.

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People are going to talk about you, your company or your brand.  It’s a fact.  With Blogging, social media and so many easy outlets, people are taking their comments and complaints to the public.

Be excpetional

You can’t stop what they are saying, but you can have a great product/service and create a great customer experience and try to ensure that people will be out there screaming from the rooftops about how happy they are.

The best review you can create is when the customer is so happy and excited about their experience with you, that they just can’t stop themselves from sharing the experience.  It’s not a canned testimonial but an active review happening on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp and any other source they can make themselves heard.

Take a minute and think about the last time you were motivated to rave about a product or service?  What motivated you?  What did you love so much about the product, service or experience?

If you stop and think about what gets you really excited, it may give you some ideas on how you can create that same experience and feeling for your customers.

For example, I went to a new Italian restaurant not long ago and I couldn’t stop raving about the mozzarella.  Everything else was good, but the mozzarella was out of this world.  I finally asked what makes their mozzarella so different from everyone else’s and they said they simply spent a lot of time testing samples from suppliers and they decided to go with the one that tasted the best, not the one that was the cheapest.  It’s a simple thing, deciding to spend more for quality.

Thrilled!

With 90% of their dishes using mozzarella, it’s a change that will have a large impact since it truly was a very noticeable difference.  Well worth the extra money they spent.  I was already so thrilled with my meal (I guess it doesn’t take much to make me happy, just some good mozzarella) but when it came time to bring the check, the waiter first brought a few “sweet bites” for us to try.  He said “since this is your first time here, I can’t let you leave without a sweet taste in your mouth”.  It was just a couple small, Italian cookies (although they were heavenly).  But more important than the delicious cookie, was the thought behind it.  They really made it seem they a personalized experience for us.  It cost them 5 minutes of time and 2 cookies and it earned them an avid fan that is telling everyone about them.

The point of that story is to make you stop and think about what they did differently (spent time and money to ensure quality) and put thought and personalization into the experience.  They cared to ask if it was our first time here and they focused on wanting it to end sweetly.  Those are lessons you can learn from and implement into your own marketing.

Sure it’s easier when you have a brick and mortar business and can get face to face with people.  But it can still happen in an online environment.  You

Open your mind

just have to take the time to think about how to create those moments.

Remember, offering a quality product or service and offering competent and responsive customer service is a given, people expect that and frankly they deserve it if they are spending their hard earned money.  So that isn’t enough anymore.  It’s about what you can do over and above what they are expecting that will get them shouting from those rooftops.

So, yes, start with a high quality product and service and reliable and prompt customer service as your foundation.  But what else can you do to wow people?  Can you offer an unexpected freebie?  Can you share some tips and advice that they weren’t expecting that will help them get more benefit out of your product or service?  Can you deliver the product or service sooner than they expected?

You don’t want to devalue your offering by offering everything plus the kitchen sink for free – you shouldn’t have to bribe people with a ton of free stuff.  But one

It Does Matter

nicely placed freebie is nice.  The idea is you do want to create an unexpected surprise for them.

Another fundamental item you can focus on is honesty.  It’s simple, it’s obvious and unfortunately it’s a little too rare these days from sales guys.  Yes you want to present your product or service in the best light possible, but you also need to be realistic about what they can expect – are there little glitches they should know about?  Is there a big learning curve involved with your product or service?  Is there something they shouldn’t do because it’ll backfire and hurt their results?  You don’t want to be a Debbie Downer and kill the sales process with negatives but you also don’t want to hide important info and have them discover it after they buy – because that’s when the bad reviews come in.  Treat your customers with respect and arm them with the info they really need and they’ll respect you for it.

You Aha Moment

This is definitely an exercise in creativity and brainstorming.  Take a few quiet hours, in your local coffee shop or away from the ringing phone (turn IM and Twitter off, close Facebook – get rid of the distractions) and jot down your top 5 best experiences with companies or products and reverse engineer it to see what made the experience so good.  Once you identify those elements, look at how you implement them into your business.

The results?  Happier customers are more likely to be repeat customers, so it should increase the lifetime value of a customer.  Also, it should help you attract new business and earn more credibility when you have people out there singing your praises.

Jennifer Horowitz

With over 13 years in the industry, Jennifer Horowitz, Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet, has amassed much knowledge and experience and has much to say about all things SEO (marketing, copywriting & social media). Always happy to share with an audience, Jenn is now a regular contributor at Level343.

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When you entrust your company’s image to someone, there are many things to consider. Your blog may be the first “contact” a user has with your brand, and the first impression can be just as important as when you first meet an individual. But there’s much more than that to building a personality into your blog.

There are a number of characteristics that readers typically pick up on, which will allow them to form their attitudes toward your brand, directly affecting the way they receive your messages. Is your blogging persona perceived as friendly, helpful and trustworthy? Is the information provided considered reliable? Does the persona have credibility in your niche? Are these perceptions consistent?

These will often vary in order of importance, depending upon your niche and audience, but will nearly always be considerations. So finding the right individual to be the “face” of your brand can sometimes be challenging.  You want someone that is knowledgeable of your company’s products or services, capabilities, policies, procedures and values.

They must be capable of writing in an engaging fashion, dealing with customer service issues that might arise in comments, being empathetic with readers’ problems… and they must be plugged-in with the appropriate SEO techniques for making content visible to search engines while making those techniques undetectable by users.

If they can already walk on water, you may have the right person for the job.

Not Matching the Wrong Person to the Job

Let me share a little story, from the early days of my management career, that may help you avoid some pitfalls in your selection process.

Many years ago, I was hired as General Manager for a turn-around project by a large international company. One of their plants was experiencing worsening problems in meeting quality goals and production schedules. Personnel problems were everyday occurrences and all efforts of the corporate offices to find and fix the problems had been unsuccessful.

Shortly after I arrived, I saw that the Plant Manager was the biggest problem – his attitude toward the workers, specifically. I let him go and took over his functions temporarily while looking for a replacement.

My first priority was to fix the quality and production problems, and I asked my HR head who was the most knowledgeable person on the floor. She identified a 3rd shift line supervisor, but told me that he was on the final leg of a progressive path toward termination. When I asked her why the sharpest knife in the drawer was stuck on 3rd shift and slated for termination, she wisely advised me to investigate it myself, with no input from anyone else.

So I first checked out his personnel file…he’d had numerous write-ups for failing to meet standards on his production line. The previous plant manager had hammered him time after time, but although his line’s throughput had improved, it never hit the goals. He was moved to 3rd shift, probably hoping he’d quit voluntarily. He’d been branded a slacker with an attitude problem.

However, before he’d been made a supervisor, he had been recognized many times for leading the plant in individual productivity and quality checks. Hmmmm….

I met with him and learned that he had never wanted to be made a supervisor, but was forced into it. It was a classic case of someone assuming that because someone is really good at one thing, they will also be great at something else. As a business consultant, I saw this time after time.

The Moral

Don’t ruin a person’s success by expecting them to be as good at one task as they are at another. A fantastic worker doesn’t necessarily equate to a fantastic supervisor… the skill-sets are entirely different.

I know some great public relations people that couldn’t SEO their way out of a paper bag, just as I know some kick-ass SEOs that should never be allowed to meet with a client. Don’t assume that the most knowledgeable person in your organization is the ideal evangelist for your brand. There are many facets of successful company blogging… if you can’t find that perfect walks-on-water candidate, you may need to consider some sort of collaborative effort, either with an in-house team or with an external professional.

By the way, that young man on 3rd shift… I moved him back to 1st shift as a production lead, then assistant supervisor. After nearly a year of helping him develop the necessary supervisory and leadership skills, he became the best supervisor we ever had. I’ve been gone from that company for years now. The last I heard, he was the plant manager there, leading the entire company in quality and production standards.

Which just points out the fact that just because someone doesn’t possess all the skills or characteristics you need to be your brands evangelist, doesn’t mean they can’t eventually learn how to walk on water. ;)

Doc Sheldon

Doc Sheldon retired from his business management consultancy in 2008 and became a perpetual student of all things SEO. He began providing professional webcopy to a worldwide array of clients, and has been actively involved in SEO for nearly six years, and writing professionally for nearly forty.

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Today’s post is going to be a little different.  I found some funny and insightful and interesting comments I wanted to share.  Below the comments are my thoughts/lessons to be learned.  So there really isn’t one theme to this post and that kinda breaks my own rules but I loved all of these and couldn’t decide which one to focus on.

A little humor to get us started:

“My rates are as follow:

$50 per hour.

$75 per hour, if you watch.

$100 per hour, if you help.”

— Anonymous

Clients may not find this one funny but designers and webmasters can relate!  Clients: don’t take it personally – we all do this in some areas of our lives.  We help our doctor’s diagnose us.  We give tips to the car mechanic.  When it’s something you care about, you can’t help but give your input and want to be involved.  From a designers perspective, sometimes having a client involved feels like too many cooks in the kitchen and they just want to be free to do what they think is best.  As with most situations, honest communication usually helps things run smoothly.  The other thing to remember clients is that you hired a designer for a reason, so deferring to their expertise is wise and ensures you get the most out of the money you spend.

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” — Red Adair

This is one of my favorite expressions, along with “penny wise and pound foolish”.  I get not wanting to spend more than you have to and I also understand needing to be very cautious about your budget, especially when you factor in a tough economy.  However there is a big difference between spending your dollars wisely to get maximum value and hiring someone just because their price is the cheapest out there.

I could list so many quotes and clichés here, for example “you get what you pay for” and “you can’t get a Porsche for the cost of Toyota” and they are all true – but I won’t torture you with listing any more of them, you get the idea!

So how do you avoid falling into the lowest price pitfall?  Do research, ask questions and clarify what you are getting for your money.  Ask yourself if something appears too good to be true (because it often is).  Get on social media and ask for referrals from happy clients.  Ask any contractor you are considering hiring to show you results they have achieved.  When you compare quotes from different companies or contractors, be sure you are comparing apples to apples to do a valid price comparison.  Ask yourself what your goals are and where you currently stand and then consider what you think it’ll take to achieve your goals.  It’s not reasonable to reach lofty goals without a time and/or financial commitment.

“Design is where science and art break even.” — Robin Mathew

I love this one because it doesn’t get a lot of discussion and it’s such an important point.  So many people think design is just about the art and they forget about the science.  A good designer understands the science of human behavior and the science of conversions and sales.  Creating a site that is pleasing to your eye is not necessarily going to get you the results you want.  You need to be willing to marry good design with proven marketing strategies.   Ensuring your site looks good and projects the right image is important.  Creating a design that inspires an emotional response is also a good idea.  That is the art side.  Just don’t forget to factor the other side in too.

Did you know that you can use a tool in Google Analytics to see how people are interacting with your page?  It’s a good idea to check that out and see how people are responding to your different links and calls to action.  My guess is the science side of things needs a little more attention in most cases.  In your Google Analytics account, go to Content, then In-Page Analytics.  (Note in addition to seeing how they are interacting with your layout, you’ll also see what pages are getting the most clicks and you can work on jazzing up those pages!)

“Good design means never having to say “Click Here.”” — Shawn Leslie

This one is interesting.  Having a design that naturally creates a flow through the page to the call to action is always a good idea.  But I am a big fan of making things crystal clear and idiot proof, so I am not sure it’s bad to say Click Here.  If your design guides people to taking the most desired action, then you have a good foundation in place, but I would still back it up with a Click Here to ensure there is no doubt at all what the next step is.  Of course, if you take Click Here and add a reason why, it’s even more powerful.  It’s the psychology of human nature that we respond to requests better when there is a reason why.  Tests have showed that the reason doesn’t even matter, the mere existence of a reason is enough to impact results.  But since I’m all about taking things a step further, I say if you are going to give a reason anyway, you may as well make it benefit oriented.  So, in a perfect world, your design would naturally draw the eye to the area of the page where they are supposed to take action and then the text would tell them to click and it would tell them what’s in it for them.  Ex: “Click here to discover the top 10 things you can do right now to improve your website”.  People are a whole lot more likely to click on that, don’t you think?  So while a solid design may render the Click Here redundant, I think redundancy has its place in marketing.  J

“Don’t worry about people stealing your design work. Worry about the day they stop.” — Jeffrey Zeldman

Whether you are a designer of the owner of a site, this advice applies.  While it sucks to be the victim of intellectual property theft (and there are some cases where you shouldn’t just accept it and you do need to take action) I think the point of this quote is to say, create something so killer that people will want to steal it.  They do say copying is the sincerest form of flattery.

“A man who stops advertising to save money is like a man who stops a clock to save time.” – Henry Ford.

Another one of my favorites.  Pretty straight forward.  Again, I understand, we all live in the real world and have to deal with budgets.  But cutting of the thing that helps you get new business isn’t the best decision.

“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.” – Peter F. Drucker

Love this one!  One of the things I like to do with clients that are having trouble making sales is dig a little deeper.  When you find and then truly understand the problem or pain point of your customer, and then you truly understand how your product or service solves the client’s problem, then you have the ability to create copy that allows the customer to so easily see the solution to the their problem in your product or service.  They can then easily sell themselves.

“What helps people, helps business.” – Leo Burnett

A fundamental principle that all business owners should remember.  Make sure you are always offering value.  And once you’ve checked to ensure that you offer value, check again.  It’s that important.  Not sure what that means?  Remember that everyone buys because of a need.  It may be a true need or may be a desire that they’ve convinced themselves is a need.  But there is always an underlying reason.   Does anyone really need the latest MAC lipstick color?  No, they don’t.  But they do need to look good and feel good about themselves.  So now you’ve identified the true need.  Does someone really need the latest John Grisham book?  Probably not.  But they do need entertainment and escape from the pressures of everyday life.  Help them with that, and you’re set.  When you identify all the ways you can help your customers and potential customers, it helps your business.

And lastly….

“Marketing takes a day to learn.  Unfortunately it takes a lifetime to master.” – Phil Kolter

Never stop learning.  Never stop testing and trying new ideas.  Never stop finding new ways to see things and approach things.  Whether it is SEO or design or copy or social media, you can always improve.  Keep acquiring knowledge and then keep putting it to use.

I hope you found this helpful.  I find inspiration in other people’s words of wisdom and I thought it would be fun to share the wise words with my added commentary.  Feel free to share your favorite quotes and your thoughts on them!

Jennifer Horowitz

With over 13 years in the industry, Jennifer Horowitz, Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet, has amassed much knowledge and experience and has much to say about all things SEO (marketing, copywriting & social media). Always happy to share with an audience, Jenn is now a regular contributor at Level343.

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